8 ways playing in the garden helps your child's development

Always looking for ways to keep the kids physically and mentally active? Before enrolling them in a slew of expensive sports and lessons, consider using your own yard to keep them entertained. Free unstructured outdoor play is the prime vehicle through which kids develop physically, emotionally and intellectually. "They encounter interconnection, which is a key intellectual stimulus," says Cam Collyer, director of the Learning Grounds program at urban environmental organization Evergreen. He also says that time spent outside in natural settings can build imagination, fitness and empathy. "Think of the yard as their workshop."

Tweaking your yard to make it free-play friendly is not only easy, but inexpensive, too. Here are eight ways your can make your ward more free-play friendly for your kids.

1. Add things they can manipulate
Give them the ability to squish, form and change the consistency of substances with an area for sand and water play – if you don't have sand, dirt works just as well. Add cups, pails and spoons for stirring. This kind of activity helps develop mathematical reasoning, including basics like measuring, adding and subtracting as well as more complex concepts of mass and volume.

2. Let them make believe
Kids are innately able to turn loose parts like sticks, leaves, stones or bricks into anything they want, whether it's bridges, magic wands, toy swords, or people and animals. The more basic the item, the more they learn to engage their imagination. A good imagination is a precursor for creating role-playing fantasies, which researchers have linked to improved early literacy (it helps build abstract thinking), language (learning how to get their thoughts across to others) and social skills, such as negotiating, persuasion and sharing.

3. Materials to build forts
Stock your yard with materials they can build with: planks of wood, logs, willow sticks, tarp or other outdoor fabric for roofs, and rope or twine for binding. Allow them to collect fallen branches, and discard big empty boxes in the yard for them to use. Let them know they can use these materials, but don't tell them how to use them, let that part come naturally. Building their own shelter, especially for eight to 11-year-olds, acts as a bridge between the safety of the home and their desire to test out independence in the outer world. Plus, it enhances early concepts of physics such as balance, stability and strength.


Page 1 of 2 – Learn why your backyard is the perfect place to introduce kids to risks on page 2.