As a parent or carer, you always need to be thinking of activities for your children – they’re full of energy and endlessly curious and it’s your responsibility to feed the fires of that curiosity and energy. In the summer it’s a great idea to get your kids outdoors, but safety is a paramount concern.
Today we’re looking at outdoor activities for your kids with safety in mind: ensuring they’re supervised and mindful of hazards.
Treasure Hunts
Scavenger hunts and treasure hunts are a classic summertime outdoor activity – and can be adapted as an inside game for rainy days.
The simplest form of scavenger hunt is just a list of items to find – if you’re outside, leaves, stones, even small insects might be targets. You could make a list yourself, based on your knowledge of what’s to be found in your garden or local park, or find one online. If you’re worried about the mess or danger or collecting objects, you could request pictures of each item on the list rather than the item itself – the ubiquity of smartphones makes this easy to put into action!
If you want to make life easier for yourself, or make more of an event of the activity, you could buy a product like a Treasure Trails treasure hunt. Modern day scavenger hunts come with clues, narrative and even hints you can request via SMS.
Scavenger hunts make a great safe outdoor activity for children: it’s easy to enforce the limits where your children are allowed to search so you can keep them supervised, and they are indeed best worked on together as a family bonding activity!
Paddling Pools
While playing with water comes with risks, it’s also a uniquely pleasant way to spend a summer day so it’s worth assessing those and finding ways to mitigate them so you and your kids can enjoy the fun!
If you leave your paddling pool full in hot weather it can become a haven for insects and bacteria. Emptying and refilling it every day is both impractical and wasteful, but if you buy a fitting cover you can protect it from the worst of the exposure – and even help it warm up as well!
Of course the biggest risk when children are playing in a paddling pool is injury and even drowning, rare as that may be. The most important thing you can do is make sure your children are never left to play around water unsupervised. Always have a designated water watcher who’s fully engaged in their task and ready to intervene at the first sign of trouble.