Create your own outdoor centre at home

Nothing beats a sunny day spent playing outdoors during the school holidays. While lots of children enjoy playing in the park or kicking a ball with friends, there are plenty of other activities to keep them busy.

Turn your home into your very own outdoor centre with these activities.

Create a chalk obstacle course

Get children active with an outdoor obstacle course – all you need is chalk and a paved surface. Use the chalk to draw lines, loops and zigzags, or to write instructions. What you do is up to you, and you can make the course as easy or as challenging as you like depending on your child. This is a great way to help children work on their motor skills. You can also add in activities that work on other skills like mental maths, speech, or music.

The chalk will wash away in the rain which means there will be opportunities to switch up the obstacle course with new activities if you want to.

It’s important to remember that while drawing on pavements with chalk is allowed, drawing on walls that don’t belong to you is not.

If you want to try an obstacle course on a bigger scale, try the Aero Trek at Calshot or the high ropes course at Tile Barn.

Build a den

Help your little ones feel like real adventurers with den building. You can do this indoors or outdoors depending on the weather. Find something to use as a structure – this could be tables and chairs or trees. Then, you’ll need something to provide shelter. You could use a sheet, a tarpaulin, or fallen branches if you’ve got some. Lastly, you’ll need something to tie all the parts together. You could use rope, shoelaces, or even old inner tubes from a bike. Then it’s up to you to decorate the inside however you want!

Make sure your den is made from as lightweight materials as possible so that you don’t get hurt if anything falls. It’s also important that you only use fallen materials from trees and plants to build your den, never remove anything from them yourself.

If you want to learn all the techniques for building a den out in nature, visit Tile Barn for a bushcraft adventure.

Try sock archery

Put your skills to the test with sock archery. Watch the video to find out how to play.

Make a paper boat

If your child enjoys splashing about in water, try making paper boats with them. It’s a great way to help children understand how things float. There are lots of different methods for making paper boats, so you can experiment and see which works the best. You don’t need to go anywhere to see how well they float. Try putting them in the bath, the sink, or even a bucket or box filled with water.

You can find a stream to race them in if you want to get competitive. If you do this, make sure you take the boats with you afterwards so that you’re not leaving litter in the water.

If you’re brave enough, you could visit Calshot’s Lagoon to try a whole variety of different watersports. You can also try your hand at canoeing at Argoed Lwyd or Runway’s End.