Outdoor activity ideas and inspiration

From mid-March to the end of May 2020, Harpswell Heritage Land Trust (HHLT) posted a simple outdoor activity idea and nature riddle for kids every weekday. Some days we also posted other resources, like downloadable chapters of the Junior Ranger Activity Book.

Created to support parents who found themselves homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic, these activity ideas are a great jumping off point for any outdoor adventure. Click here for a list with links to all 50 activity ideas.

Nature riddle

What early spring bird is likely to be seen hopping around your yard snapping up earthworms, often in groups? Click here to read more about this common bird.

Make a museum

This activity has become one of the favorites of Nature Day Camp kids and leaders. It’s so simple and open-ended, yet it can engage children (and some adults) for hours. If you love collecting and sorting and arranging, like me and my daughter, this is a great activity for you!

If doing this activity with kids, start with questions. Ask them: What is a museum? What kinds of museums are there? What do you like about visiting museums? How are museums organized?

Tell them their job is to create their own museums. I encourage you to do this outside and let them choose natural objects for their museum, but this could be done indoors as well. Let your kids decide what kind of museum they want to create. I’ve seen campers create rock, nature, art, history and children’s museums, all with the same materials found on the beach.

Once they are finished, have them give you a tour of their museum. They can choose to charge admission (e.g. one acorn and one rock). Have siblings tour each other’s museums. Or give a virtual tour to the grandparents.

You can integrate writing and science into this activity by encouraging kids to write labels for the artifacts in their museum, research the objects in their museum, draw a map of their museum and write a description of their museum to convince people to visit.