Outdoor Play Gift Ideas That Parents Really Want
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It might be winter, but this is also the season when we free up some extra spending dollars to get a few of the outdoor play items we might not have in the budget the rest of the year. This Christmas give the gift of outside fun to your family. Check out these great ideas to create a vision for the way you can use the space you have. By adding some of these fun, high quality kid-activators they will be using that forgotten corner of the yard or lonesome tree.
While you are at it, get everyone in on it too. At our house the grandparents are always asking what they can get for the kids. Don’t squander this precious opportunity to double your Christmas wishlist coverage. You can use this guide to create a plan for hundreds of hours of sundrenched play time in your own yard and as you will see, some of these gifts can be used inside over winter or year round for a great play space.
Next time you wonder what kids really need..
They need to be tired!
You know it. I know it.
The only ones who don’t know it are the kids themselves.
This is why we have to be extra sneaky about getting them outside in the sunshine and fresh air. Sure, it is good for them, but the truth is; play is the only way to tire those kids out. Summer days are long and well tired kids sleep in sometimes. Having some new fun things waiting for them makes the transition to outside after a long winter an anticipated event. Our kids could not wait to get their HugglePods outside as soon as the weather turned last Spring.
Many of these ideas can be modified for the indoors, apartment living and city life too. A quick search of Pinterest gave me some great ideas for hanging a hammock indoors and found the perfect brackets for HugglePod reading nooks in the basement. If you can imagine it, you can create it.
Get Them Playing Outside…Longer!
In 2012, we got our first Slackline from Slackers. So naturally, we ordered the Slackers Ninja Line from Hearthsong to add to our outdoor activity spaces. It was sold out for months, but as soon as we got it, we set up between two sturdy trees. You can change the arrangement of the holds to increase or decrease the difficulty. My kids have gotten so tall that I need to set it much higher than I thought. They’re catching up on me. I had to get the stepstool, and no I am not good at it at all. I guess I need to get in line with them. You can add a timer and create a challenge course that will keep the kids striving to beat their own time.
Outdoor Play Zone Ideas
- sand and water play area
- family garden, veggies and flowers
- hard surface for bike and ball play
- club house, treehouse or fort
- imagination stations; pretend kitchen, garage
- art station
- playset, slide, swings
- yard games station
- zipline, tree swing, rope course
We have added to our outdoor play areas as the kids have grown. Now we have basketball, volleyball, cornhole and a firepit with our grown kids and the older teens can host their friends. Big or small, you can have fun together outside in every stage.
Getting Outside Means Kids Get Moving
If you are like me, you know that tired kids make for a happy mama. They have less energy for arguing and less drive to procrastinate at bed time when they have played outside in the sun all day. As we transition from summer to winter, we moved the HugglePods from the tree they hung in all summer, under the cover of the house. I ordered some heavy duty brackets on Amazon and we are going to hang them up as a reading nook in the basement. I’ve see them installed in an older child’s bedroom as well. These are great for a child who likes to get away and have more quiet than the others. My daughter likes to read in hers all summer long.
Build Years of Fun Adventures
This cargo net from Hearthsong is going to be the ladder to our treehouse project. We are working on a huge suspension bridge. The telephone poles and cables are up, but the wooden steps are going to have to wait until spring. This will be a fun way to get up to the main platform for scrambling kids like ours. This net can also be set up between two trees as a climbing wall. It would be just right for smaller kids to work on crossing while not getting too far off the ground.
We Love Our Classic Slackline too
We have yet to have a child develop the skills shown in the instructional video, but that doesn’t stop us from breaking out the Slackline year after year; trying to get across the two inch wide strapping without using the provided guide rope overhead. We got it from Hearthsong in 2012 and it has been in use every summer since, with all ten kids. It stays out in all weather. I check it every year for wear, but it still looks as good as the day we got it. All you need is two trees. You can set it fairly low to the ground, especially if your kids are lighter, then the rope sags less.
Children Need Unstructured Play Time to Build Their Creativity
Whether you let your child create a homemade Mud Kitchen like our girl did or if you would like a cleaner approach, like this premade kitchen from Hearthsong, the result is the same; a child who creates.
Outdoor Play is formative & FREE play is essential
Summer is the best time to give the kids places to express themselves and explore how to relate to others. “Around the House” play is where kids learn and practice interpersonal skills and explore things like conflict resolution, sharing, friendship, quiet and wonder. It is so much more than mud and water.
What Are We Playing Outdoors…
- Cornhole
- Horseshoes
- Volleyball
- Basketball
- Nuke ’em
- Wiffle Ball
Dreaming Big, Scaling to Fit You
You don’t have to be independently wealthy to get home court advantage. We live out of town in a hundred and fifteen year old farmhouse. With a bit of saving and some ingenuity we were able to build a basket ball court and a small patio for a fire pit for under $2000. That includes the in ground hoops, pit and balls.
We had two 24’ concrete silo pads in the back yard from when it was a working farm. There was a gap of about fifteen feet between them that we decided to fill in with concrete to make one large, playable surface.
I used an concrete calculator app to figure the math. All a needed to know was the cost of a yard of concrete in my area. The concrete needed for the court was a truck and a half. We decided to order two full trucks use the excess to create a small 10×10 patio space off of our garage to use for a fire pit we picked up early in the spring.
We dug out the dirt the old fashion way; with a shovel and sweat. Then, we prepped the space by framing it with leftover lumber scraps. Next, we laid the wire grid for under the concrete. Finally, floated the concrete smooth and brushed the surface for texture ourselves to save on costs.
With five teens still in the house we wanted to give them some place to hang out where they could feel some independence and autonomy. The older boys have a few friends who come over a shoot hoops in the summer and all the kids love to have a little fire going on fall nights when they can. Although it is usually us parents and our adult kids at the fire pit. Outdoor play
It took some planning and saving, but in the end it has been worth the expense and with three kids still waiting to become teens, I feel like this will get used for quite some time to come
