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It can become very hectic trying to keep the little ones entertained during the summer! It is handy to keep a stock of garden activities for children in mind in case you suddenly need to entertain, distract, or even educate your children. Whether it is summer or winter, the garden can always be your best friend. Planned correctly, even the humblest of gardens can contain enough imagination and intrigue to be a fun playground.

Here are some top garden activities for children to keep them entertained this summer!

1. Create Art from Nature

There is so much potential with art and nature! With a little dash of magic, the bounty of the earth can keep children enthralled for hours. Better yet, doing art outside means that they also get a good amount of sunlight and fresh air, with no chance of getting paint on your furniture. Win-win! Here are three art and crafts ideas to give you some inspiration.

Prints

A simple and easy activity. Get lots of interesting leaves and petals, coat them with a layer of paint, and press them down on paper. Your kids can marvel at the strange veins and textures that appear in the paint! For those who are old school, you can also crack out the potatoes and carve some designs as well.

Painting Stones

Painting stones is a cute activity that will help decorate your garden and provide your children with hours of fun. They can paint patterns, smiley faces, hearts, and characters on the stones and pebbles. When they are dry, you can find places for them in the garden to showcase their creative handiwork.

Create a Fairy/Troll Garden

This one requires a little bit of advanced planning. A tub, a bit of glitter, some dollhouse accessories, a few fairy figurines, and – hey presto! You’ve got all the ingredients for a fairy garden. For boys, you can swap the figurines for trolls and make it into a monster garden instead! It becomes a wonderland of play and magic, and you can make up some adventures or quests for the fairies and trolls to go on too!

2. Plan Fun Exercises

With all that boundless energy children have the garden is the perfect arena to tire them out. There are the old playground favourites, such as the skipping rope and hula hoop. Sports equipment is always handy to have at hand too, like footballs, basketball hoops, and bikes (if your garden is big enough). If you wanted to try out some more structured form of exercise, you could even throw on a children’s fitness video. Take your laptop or tablet outside, put on some Joe Wicks, and make it a fun challenge to see who can keep up!

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3. Become a Bug Detective

Set the children a challenge to see how many different kinds of bugs they can find and unleash them upon the garden! Sometimes, it really is the simplest of activities that children can find so rewarding. This activity will have them combing up and down the garden, looking between rocks, underneath logs, on tree trunks, and in the bushes. If you give them a magnifying glass too, they won’t be able to resist!

4. Host a Tea Party

Many an afternoon can be spent in your garden, with teacups and cupcakes, having a tea party with the little ones. You can make it formal and dress up in fancy dresses. You can get pretty tea sets for cheap from the local charity shop.

You can even do a theme, such as Alice in Wonderland. If you wanted it to be a bit more casual, make it a garden picnic instead. It is a fabulous time for both family bonding and cake! And so you can use your outdoor seating table throughout the year, you could install a canopy or shade sail to provide protection from the weather. Sails are available in a range of fabrics and sizes and could be a fun project to install with the family too.

5. Teach Them Gardening

This, of course, is the greatest thing about a garden. Nature itself! Instilling a deep respect for the plants and wildlife around them is one of the most rewarding gifts you can give them. So let them take part in caring for the garden. Teach them how to plant flowers. How to pull out weeds. Different types of trees and shrubs. Maybe grow some vegetables with them, so that they can have the pleasure of eating it with their dinner later.

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There are lots of fun garden activities for children to keep them entertained and occupied. Whether it is coming up with sporty game ideas, or magical fairy wonderlands, with a little spark of imagination both you can your children can have hours of healthy nature-tastic fun!

Cover picture credit: Flower photo created by freepik – www.freepik.com