The weather has started warming up and despite it technically still being winter it is a beautiful 25 degrees and sunny. So, what better way to spend a public holiday than outdoors with some friends and an obstacle course.
Children love obstacle courses and not only is it a great way to help them burn off some energy but it also builds on their spatial awareness development. By getting them to complete obstacle courses they engage in a variety of movements such as climbing on top of objects; crawling under, through and round objects, balancing along objects and hiding under objects. All of these activities teach them about the relationship between their bodies, objects and the areas around them.
You don’t need anything fancy to make an outdoor obstacle course and you can simply use what you have around the garden.
Plastic baths and shells are fantastic for climbing into, climbing on and turning over and then hiding under.
You can also challenge your children to find small spaces in the garden to squeeze into and hide in. Let’s hope that my children don’t make this a regular hiding spot as I certainly can’t fit in there to get them.
Lie a ladder down and get your children to jump through all the spaces.
Jumping up and down on the trampoline.
Another fun part of the activity was making long body tunnels and crawling through each other’s legs. Our children were too quick for me to get too many photos but here is one where they decided to use hula hoops to crawl through instead.