Make the garden fun for children
Use these ideas as a guideline to engage your children in the garden.
It’s time to unleash the big fun guns and get children away from the TV screens. Create the ultimate child friendly outdoor play space with some of these ideas.
The funky monkey jungle gym
Instead of a standard wooden jungle gym, get creative with something totally unique.
There are several companies that can provide custom requests, so think about what your child would really enjoy. Perhaps they like to climb high, or swing on bars, maybe they like hiding spots, a cooking or experiment station, or perhaps they need a structure to just explore their gross-motor skills.
Cowboys and tepee’s
This idea is great for the bigger family and for when the friends come over. It’s super easy to build a couple of tepees in the backyard from pole and plastic tarp or canvas.
Grab ready-made tepees and supplies to build your own from your local nursery. The children can decorate their own special tee-pee and add fun accessories. This structure can be used as an outdoor reading nook too.
Friends of the fairies
Engage fine-motor skills and imagination with a little fairy garden filled with lovely magical goodies.
Try use the fairy garden as more of an organic outdoor dollhouse that’s functional to play with or in, rather than purely ornamental. Secretly hide a few friends and let them hunt for the missing bounty.
Everyday beach day
Reinvent the standard sandpit. Get children excited about outside by introducing something like a pretend beach day for all the inland children.
Dig a decent sized hole, layer with plastic sheeting, and then fill with soft beach sand. Throw in a couple of beach toys, an umbrella, an ice cream for bribery, and sunscreen to bring back holiday memories. Don’t forget a few buckets of seawater.
Sing-a-long pipes
Here’s a cost-effective way to engage the music-loving child. Create a suspended pipe curtain set up using different sized PVC tubes.
Include a mystery music box nearby with drum sticks, seedpods and DIY stone shakers. Children can start a band in the backyard and have fun developing their love of music and rhythm (or just have the freedom to make a noise for a while).
Eat with a theme
Harvesting food from a themed edible garden becomes an adventure and a sensory exploration.
You can create a raised food garden inside a wooden structure that’s shaped and painted like a dragon, for example.
Perhaps children need to take a handful of compost as a peace offering to the dragon guardian as they enter his edible-castle. Include a basket for them to collect yummies and open up the space for any-time snacking, straight from the Earth.
Games to play all day
- Hopscotch: Paint a strip of cement with blackboard paint and DIY a chalk holder goodie or paint rainbow blocks with numbers.
- Noughts and crosses: Build a life-size version for tactile or visual stimulation.
- Puzzles: Life-size versions can include painted pictures, poems and even math sums.
- Netball and basketball: Install a hoop pole and DIY a colourful ball station.
Friendly plant picks for children and pets:
- Majesty palm (Ravena rivularis)
- Golden creeping Jenny (Lysimachia aurea)
- Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)
- Lily grass (Lirriope muscari)
- Japanese Rush (Acorus Golden Edge)
- Mizuna (Brassica rapa var)
- Australian Tree Fern (Cyathea australis)
- Creeping mazus (Mazuz reptans)
- Apple mint, garden mint, basil, and rosemary
- Pet and dog grass
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