Easy Outdoor Games to Play with Kids

After talking about the pirate themed chalk obstacle course the other day, I got to thinking about other easy, low prep games and activities you can do with kids outside. A lot of these are ideas I found on Pinterest that don’t link to blogs anymore if they ever did, but often that’s all the detail you need to figure out what’s going on.

First, a couple from blogs that are still alive. If you have a lot of trees in your yard or in your park, you probably also have a lot of sticks, so you can pretty easily do this stick maze activity from Mother Natured. Build the maze yourself or have one child build if for another. Either way it’s lots of fun and you can keep it built to use as a labyrinth or for pretend play.

If it’s hot where you live you might want outdoor activities that involve water like this fill the bucket relay game. The only thing you might not have at home is giant sponges, but this is still pretty low prep, inexpensive and lots of fun if you have two or more kids to play. Check out how to do it from The Resourceful Mama. And check out my post all about ice and water sensory activities for more ideas to beat the heat.

Make some x’s and o’s or use something you already have to be your game pieces (you can also just draw them on paper plates for a super fast version) and make a large tic tac toe board on the sidewalk. The bonus of reusable game pieces is kids can play with the same grid over and over, which is great if you don’t have a ton of space.

I also love the idea of drawing a big bullseye on the sidewalk or driveway and using beanbags or sponges to try to hit the target. If you have hula hoops you can also set them in a grassy area and have kids try to hit them.

Check out more fun outdoor games for kids from The Printable Princess. These are more for big groups of kids, but if you’ve got a classroom full these are good ones to have on hand for getting some energy out.

Do you have favorite outdoor games for kids to play when it’s hot? I’d love to hear about them!

Sea turtles are a fun ocean creature that’s fun to learn about in summer, so let’s take a look at some learning activities related to sea turtles.

We love to start with the parts of an animal, and Homeschool Preschool has a parts of a sea turtle printable worksheet you can grad. There’s a cut and paste version and one where kids can write in the parts by hand.

Pair that with the sea turtle life cycle sequencing activity from The Keeper of the Memories, which has both a numbered version and one with the words first, next, then and last to get them thinking about the language used to tell stories in a sequence.

This video on sea turtles from All Things Animal TV will give you basic facts about sea turtles, and Growing Play has some turtle facts for kids as well as a printable maze, dot to dot and color by number activity sheet.

Real Life at Home has a sea turtle word search printable, and you can build a cute 3D turtle with this printable from The Artisan Life. Homeschool Preschool also has a cute pattern sequencing worksheet with turtles.

Homeschool of 1 has some really cute turtle activity sheets including a color by number, letter maze, finding the letter t, writing, tracing and counting activities.

There’s also a printable sea turtle activity pack from Hawaii Travel with Kids. This one includes turtles made from different shapes for kids to identify, parts of a turtle and life cycle, a word search, a page for doing a report on a specific species of turtle and a page for practicing writing the letter t. There’s also a mermaid puzzle. (This content is free for subscribers.)

Preschool Play and Learn also has a nice set of turtle themed worksheets, including a dot coloring page, a cut and color to learn how to spell turtle, practice writing and finding the letter t, an ocean animal I spy, counting to 10 and sorting colors of turtles.

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