9 Ideas for Winter Walk
If you ever lived in a country with snow, you know how much fun winter walks can be! If you have snow, lucky you, enjoy the snow and skip to the ideas 4-9! But if, like for us, the winter is cold, rainy, and grey, read on for ideas on making walks with kids fun. In our family, we are staying extra careful and avoid playgrounds because of the pandemic. So we had to get creative to make our walks fun. Here is what we came up with.
Riding scooter or bicycle. I bet you came up with this yourself too! It’s super fun. And there are plenty of other kids on the walk using all kinds of vehicles. So it’s fun to look at the traffic, see who is using what, and feel we belong. Once my baby boy is able to join, I am sure there will be some racing between the kids too.
Playing in puddles. Puddles are so much fun! A close favourite for us sharing first space with riding the scooter. Big puddles are good for walking, smaller ones for splashing and jumping (hello Peppa Pig!). My daughter also loves playing with sticks and leaves in the puddles and coming up with stories and characters. One day she is fishing with a stick, another day her wellies become duckies and go to the grass for some food and then go swimming. Then the wellies convert to dolphins and want mommy dolphin to join them in the puddle. There is no end to the stories and fun! And if it’s under the rain, even better! No problem at all for the little girl!
Ponds with birds are all-time favourites too. There are endless conversations with my three-year-old about why the birds are in the water or out of the water, why the tree grows in the pond, what the birds eat etc. We don’t worry about feeding the birds, apparently bread is not so good for them. Some grains are OK to feed, but just observing the birds is fun too.
Taking photographs, as a hobbyist photographer, I consider one of the best activities on a walk. But you know what, it’s fun for kids too! We have this camera for my daughter, she recently received it as a gift. I hope we will have many many walks observing nature around us and taking photographs together.
A construction site was a huge hit this winter. I know, one needs a bit of luck to find a construction site near home. But if you are lucky - congratulations! We were lucky to have two diggers working for two months on a construction site near us. We checked the progress every single walk, the diggers’ drivers waved at us and said hello. We observed many activities diggers can do and Santa brought a toy digger for my girl on Christmas.
Roleplay: no one canceled role play outdoors. It’s as good as indoors if not better! My daughter is big on role play and comes up with something every minute. Our favourite games at the moment are “traffic light” and “a bus”. Traffic light means my daughter tells me when it’s a red, yellow, or green light and I need to follow the rules and stop if it’s red and go if it’s green. I have to admit this game can be frustrating for an adult! But my daughter enjoys it and so we play… in moderation. The bus game is role-playing boarding the bus and going somewhere. We walk with a pram, so the pram becomes a bus. My daughter is super cute staying on a “bus stop“ of her choice and waving to the bus to stop! She then pretends to buy a ticket and in some time rings to get off.
Counting cats is an activity we have enjoyed since summer. It’s simple. We walk around trying to find cats and count them. We then come home and tell Daddy how many we saw and what colour they were. We do know the most likely places to encounter cats, so it makes the task easier, and we rarely go home with zero. At least one cat comes to meet us. I have to add that cats are favourite pets for my daughter and so she enjoyed finding them a lot.
Naming dogs is another fun activity. It’s about observing dogs in the park, how they play, what they do. We have a few books at home with dogs as main characters. So we name them according to the book characters if they look alike. It’s fun to give a dog character and enhance what we see by making stories about them.
Do it the Montessori way. This one idea is enough to have fun even if nothing else from above works out. Montessori suggests walking with the pace of a child letting the child lead the exploration of the world. Paying attention to what the child is interested in, helping to understand, but also just letting the child lead, be curious, take his/her time, and enjoy. It requires patience and presence from a parent, but this way a walk around the block can become an adventure every day. We certainly do it this way often, my daughter absolutely loves it and I find it fascinating to observe how she learns about the world and what interests her.
What are your favourite things to do outdoors in winter? Could you add to the list in the comments, please?
