My grandparents had a huge garden with so many beautiful flowers. One of the things my sister and I loved doing there was make mud pies. We even made one for my parents as a welcome home gift one time. My nan said we could use any flowers in the garden except for the daffodils. So what did we do? We decorated with daffodils. Oops.
So of course when I was putting together the Memory Makers Family Edition, making a mud pie had to be one of the activities 😊
So this all got me thinking about other activities you can do in the garden and there are so many! Even if you have just a teeny tiny space, there are still lots of activities for you to do.
1. Make garden soup
This was another favourite thing to do at my grandparents place and we now do it with our girls and they love it!
It's super simple, you just go around the garden picking leaves, flowers, petals, seeds, berries, whatever you find and putting them into a bucket. You then fill it with water and voila, garden soup!
2. Bug Bingo
With this one you can come up with different bugs together and write them down in a bingo chart or if you sign up to The Bay News (our newsletter) you will have access to a whole bunch of free downloads, including a bug hunt bingo. You can sign up here or just scroll to the bottom of the page.
Have a wander around your garden looking in the bushes, under any rocks, and having a little dig around to find your bugs.
3. Make a fairy garden
Collect petals, flowers, leaves, rocks, and any pretties you can find and make a fairy garden. If it is a more permanent garden you could add some old toys the kids no longer use.
My girls tend to make them with rocks on the driveway for some reason, but you could make it in a part of your garden, in an old shoebox, in a container, an old pot, a wheelbarrow, whatever you can find.
4. Sketch
Take a sketchbook and walk around your garden until you find something you'd like to draw or paint.
Paint the landscape of your garden or the view you see from your garden.
Sit at a table outside and draw the bugs you see.
5. Play
Chase, jump rope, hide and seek, set up an obstacle course, the list of games is endless!
6. Make nature pictures
Collect things from the garden - flowers, petals, twigs, leaves, berries, grass, feathers - and make pictures with them. It could be a collage, a self-portrait, their favourite animal, the garden, or whatever their imagination can come up with.
7. Rock painting
Go on a hunt for rocks around your garden, or dig down a little to see if you can find any. If you can't find any try some cheap paving stones or a bag of pebbles from Bunnings.
Make pet rocks, decorate and write messages on them, make them into little potted plants, make stamps out of them.
8. Dig for treasure
Bury some old toys, shells, 'fossils', fake coins and jewels in a section of the garden and the kids dig around to find it.
Make it into a fossil hunt with dinosaur bones or an archaeological dig with old cups and plates. The kids have to be extra careful to make sure they preserve the dig.
For more fun activities to do together as a family (including more things to do in the garden!) grab a set of Memory Makers Family Edition.
And if you have fun activities you love to do with your kids in the garden, let me know in the comments!