Simple, Outdoor Summer Activities: Old Fashion Living with Young Kids

Outdoor summer activities offer the perfect opportunity to reconnect with nature and create lasting memories with your kids. But sometimes it is helpful to have some direction or a list of ideas to draw from.

With loads of backyard fun, these simple, old-fashioned outdoor summer activities encourage creativity, adventure, and quality time away from screens. And they are full of opportunities for your young kids to get physical movement, practice social interactions, and master fine motor skills.

This post is part of a series on enjoying a simple, slow, wholesome summer. If that is of interest to you, you may also enjoy:

• Our Daily Summer Routine
• Our Weekly Summer Routine
• Indoor Summer Activities to do with Young Children
• Out and About Activities with Kids
• Slow and Simple Sabbath Summer Routine with Young Kids
• Easy Summer Salad Dinner Ideas for Families (coming soon)

These ideas will help if you and your kids are looking for some outdoor summer activities for a simple day at home. Or if you need to provide some structure to your kids’ independent play time with direction.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

Why Choose Outdoor Summer Activities To Do At Home (or Near Home):

Buckling kids into car seats isn’t my idea of fun. And if you live somewhere warm, sometimes the whole ordeal of going somewhere and needing to pack water bottles and snacks and figure out how to nap a baby in the heat is a barrier to getting outside!

But there are PLENTY of ways to enjoy time in the fresh air right outside your door. In fact, we’ve spent the vast majority if our time home this summer. And we’re definitely racking up outdoor hours.

So if you are wanting some outdoor summer activities to try with your kids WITHOUT driving anywhere, I hear you! Read on for some great options:

Chalk Art and Sidewalk Games (Activities 1 – 7)

If you have some concrete, black top, or even a patio or deck available to use, you can encourage your kids to get creative with sidewalk chalk for an outdoor summer activity. Our kids enjoy:

• hopscotch
• writing messages on the sidewalk
• doodling
• creating floor plans for playing “house”

If you are looking for something that you can do with the kids, you could

• use chalk to delineate a race course
• play tic-tac-toe with chalk
• draw an epic bike or scooter track with twists, parking spaces, and intersections to navigate

Chalk makes a great medium for creative concentration AND physical movement and activity. Both of these things are fantastic to integrate into outdoor summer activities. Doing so will help kids burn off energy outside of the house!

Hula Hoop & Jump Rope (Outdoor Summer Activities 8 – 13)

Both hula hooping and jumping rope are outdoor summer activities that get little bodies active and expending energy. So they’re a great option to integrate into rotation for fitness.

They also promote motor skills and coordination. And if you include counting or music, hula hooping and jumping rope are outdoor summer activities that incorporate math and music appreciation!

For some specific ideas of how to utilize hula hooping and jumping rope, you can:

• Have a dance party with hula hoops
• Create a race course that must be navigated while hula hooping
• Compete to get the highest number of jumps in a row while jump roping
• Learn how to jump doubles (such as double dutch) with 3 people
• Try to learn different jump rope patterns
• Turn on music and try to jump rope through a whole song

Visit Elderly Neighbors (Activities 14 – 19)

As part of your outdoor summer activities, consider visiting elderly neighbors. Many elderly experience loneliness, particularly if they live alone. And loneliness is detrimental to their physical, mental, and emotional well being.

One of our responsibilities as parents is to teach our children that they have the power to make someone’s day much, much better by showing up and being friendly.

Although kids might be full of energy and thus exhausting to someone who is elderly, just knocking on the door to say hello could lift someone’s spirits. Or you could ask if there is a quick job you could do to help out.

Being helpful is a great way to encourage kids social awareness and sense of responsibility.

For some specific ideas to consider and prompt your neighborly visits:

• Send the kids out to pick a bouquet of flowers for an elderly neighbor and deliver it together
• Bring a special treat to a neighbor – maybe an easy-to-reheat meal or some fresh garden produce or baked goods, and have the kids help you
• If you have a budding reader, consider having the child practice reading a book to an elderly neighbor
• Ask an elderly neighbor if they enjoy card games, and if they do and mention a specific game, go home, look up the rules on youtube, and teach the kids how to play it so they can offer to play with the neighbor
• Offer to help for 10-30 minutes doing yard work or tasks around the house for an elderly neighbor, particularly if the children can help too
• Find out if there are any unique skills or tools an elderly neighbor has that your kids would enjoy learning or doing (our girls love to crack macadamia nuts with an elderly neighbor)

Washing Things (Outdoor Summer Activities 20 – 23)

Since outdoor summer activities often involve warm weather, turn kids’ energy into a productivity hack! Chores that include water can easily become opportunities for water play.

And contributing to the family and the home by participating in chores is beneficial for the child. Even if the chore doesn’t get done QUITE as planned, the kids will have a great time!

• Fill up empty (clean) spray bottles with water, hand out rags, and let the kids have fun washing a sliding door or easy-to-access window
• Hand over the hose and a bucket of sudsy water and let the kids wash the car
• Create a bike or scooter car wash, and let the kids hose and scrub their toys
• Ask the kids to help wash furniture – yard chairs or bar stools or anything that needs cleaning that won’t get ruined from being wet

Helping with Laundry (Activities 24 – 27)

Sometimes, changing the setting for doing simple, everyday chores can unlock moments of connection and teaching in new ways. Which is why I love to do laundry outside!

In our house, laundry has to be washed, dried, and folded basically every day. So if it starts to feel monotonous, that’s when we mix it up!

Here are some specific ways you can incorporate everyday laundry tasks into your outdoor summer activities:

• Sort laundry outside. If you have a big pile of dirty laundry to catch up on after a trip or a busy week, recruit the kids to help you make a giant pile in the yard. And then sort it into different piles together (darks, lights, towels, etc).
• To burn a little extra energy while sorting laundry, put the piles to sort into 10-20 steps away from the pile you’re sorting from. And turn it into a race where you see how fast kids can run the item to the sorting piles
• Hang laundry outside to dry. If you have a laundry line or a clothes drying rack, putting them outside in the sun and letting your kids help you hang up the laundry can be a fun way to complete a chore together outside in beautiful weather.
• Fold laundry outside. Set up a card table or use an outdoor table and fold your laundry outside with your kids. For extra fun, turn on an audio book or podcast that you can all enjoy together.

Backyard Water Play (Outdoor Summer Activities 28 -34)

Nothing beats a hot summer day like engaging in some water play! Playing with water in various forms are classic outdoor summer activities. If you need some ideas, consider:

• Set up a sprinkler and let kids run through it
• If you have a trampoline, put a sprinkler under the trampoline and add some refreshing fun to jumping
• Grab a spare large storage tote or storage tray, fill it with water, and let the kids have a personal soaking pool
• Set up a plastic table that can be adjusted to a kids’ height. Put some mixing bowls and containers of various sizes on the table with a large bucket of water next to the table. Let the kids have fun transferring the water around as they please
• Fill up several bowls with water and let the kids give their cars or dolls a bath
• Sit in a lawn chair with a garden hose and play garden hose freeze tag. If the water spray gets the kids, they have to freeze and a sibling or friend has to tag them to unfreeze them
• Put some dish soap in a large mixing bowl with water and give kids a whisk. Let them create as much foam as they are able

Weeding and Yard Work (Activities 35 – 40)

Weeding or gardening are great outdoor summer activities because they often can yield tasty or beautiful rewards.

And digging around in dirt is fantastic for kids’ microbiome development. So whether the flower beds actually get weeded or the cucumbers actually get picked, if the kids are interacting with the natural world and getting a little dirty, it’s a win!

• Choose a small section of the garden or a specific weeding task and have your kids help you for a set amount of time. Use the time to engage in fun conversation like, “Would you rather…” or “If you could…” type ponderings
• Ask the kids to pick veggies in the vegetable garden – cherry tomatoes and green beans are two of my kids’ favorite harvesting jobs
• If you need to trim hedges or bushes, consider letting the kids help with their own pair of secateurs or recruit them to haul away branches and leaves
• When you need to dead-head some flowers, the kids can help you and pick themselves bouquets as well
• Offer to buy a bouquet if the kids make them (feel free to give them pointers on what you’re looking for – long stems, at least three different colors of flowers, some greenery, etc)

Climbing Trees or Finding Forts (Outdoor Summer Activities 41 – 46):

If you have a yard and it contains some trees or bushes, your kids have a treasure trove of outdoor summer activities they can do!

And physically, their opportunity for moving their bodies is perfect for proprioceptive play. Of course, while they are getting beneficial sensory input, they will also be building muscle strength, imagination, and developing problem-solving skills.

If you need some inspiration to help encourage your kids, here are activities our kids enjoy:

• Climbing trees
• Playing in the hedge (creating a “house” in the hedge with different spots assigned to be different rooms)
• Doll tea parties under bushes
• Creating roads for cars under the hedge
• Hunting for bird nests in the hedge and checking on the eggs regularly
• Building a fort from natural objects

Driveway/Neighborhood Walks (Activities 47 – 51)

Going for walks or bike rides outside your door are perfect, low stress outdoor summer activities. Timing them for slightly cooler parts of the day, like in the morning or evening, can make them enjoyable activities for the whole family.

We incorporate short walks on our driveway into our daily summer routine, and there are a variety of ways to add some special fun to a family walk:

• If your walk includes concrete or black top, have all the kids select an inertia car or truck to take along on the walk, and see how far the inertia vehicle can go
• If your walk includes hills and a relatively smooth surface, grab a uniquely colored felt ball for each person and let the balls race down the hill
• For flatter, rocky or grass paths, grab a hula hoop for each person and see how far you can get the hula hoops to roll while you’re walking
• Bikes or scooters, depending on the terrain, are fun activities for driveway walks – our kids love ride a second hand toddler tricycle down a hill on our driveway
• And if you have an avid jump-roper, let them jump rope while you walk

Grab a Sunhat: Outdoor Summer Activities Are Waiting!

There are so many options for enjoying the long hours of summer. A slow, relaxed summer doesn’t need to include vegging out in front of a screen.

And I truly believe you and your kids will enjoy and remember a summer full of both indoor and outdoor activities that challenge their creativity, develop their problem solving, and allow for plenty of proprioceptive play.

I hope this list of ideas has been an inspiring launch point for your own outdoor summer activities ideas, and that you and your family have a fantastic summer being present with each other and making your own fun.

Let me know in the comments below which ideas resonated with you, or if you have other fun outdoor summer activities your family enjoys! I’d love to hear from you.