100+ Fun Outdoor Activities For Toddlers (ePub)

Let's go and play outside

Did you know that the average toddler's attention span is four to six minutes? You read that correctly, four to six minutes. That means aside from the roughly twelve hours spent sleeping and the other hour and a half spent eating, parents need to fill approximately ten and half hours of their child's constant, undivided attention. To make this figure more realistic, ten and half hours equals six hundred and thirty minutes each day. If you want to know the math, roughly 126 activities (at 5 minutes each) a day, parents switch between to keep their toddlers attention. No wonder parents of toddlers often feel exhausted, frazzled, and overwhelmed. One hundred twenty-six activities a day is enough to boggle anyone's mind.

Admittedly as parents, we get bored too. There are only so many times we can sing "Baby Shark" (doo-doo-doo-doo), play with the same spinning toys, or visit the same places before our burnout gets the best of us, and we resort to giving our children an iPad or putting them in front of the TV for entertainment. We are frustrated, tired, and need a break. Therefore, we do what is easy and know what will keep our kids quiet and busy for hours.

Parents need variety and ideas to keep those activities fresh, exciting, educational, and fun. More importantly, we all need to step away from the TV and iPad and get out of the house. Studies have found that toddlers who get outside have stronger bones, develop healthier habits as they age, have less depression and hyperactivity, act out less at home and school, and are more creative.

That is where this book comes into play. We have composed a list of over one hundred different activities to get you outside having fun with your toddler.

• The first chapter discusses ten tips to have you prepared for outdoor playtime.

• Chapter two gives you twenty-five outdoor spring activities, from jumping in puddles to painting clay flower pots. Each activity will also have your toddler learning fine motor skills and critical thinking skills.

• Next, in chapter three, we outline twenty-five summer activities, from ways to make swimming more fun to creating your binoculars to go birdwatching.

• In chapter four, we have tons of fall fun with traditional fall activities like trick-or-treating to ways to get more creative like an outdoor treasure hunt.

• Chapter five takes us to winter, where we discuss fun things like making snow angels to frozen nature sun catchers.

• Finally, because it is always fun to bring the outdoors inside, we conclude with ten activities that you can do inside that still contain an outdoor feel.

Our purpose is to help parents feel capable of providing fun, engaging, entertaining outdoor activities that toddlers and parents can do together. Ultimately, we hope this book gives parents the tools and confidence to turn off the TV and iPad and create memories with their toddlers that are creative and unique.