Easy Outdoor Sensory Activities at Home

Outdoor Sensory Scavenger Hunt for Kids

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Frozen Treasure Find

This is one of my favourite activities as it keeps the kids busy for hours.

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Scented Bubbles: Calming Lavender Bubble Recipe

There are so many fun ways to play with bubbles and this is a great homemade recipe to use.

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5 Trampoline Games

Playing on a trampoline is good for kids' moods and health. These trampoline games are great fun.

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Bug Action Cards for Kids

These bug action cards give kids ideas for practising their gross motor skills while getting fresh air.

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Nature Sensory Bottle

As kids explore outside, they can collect items to create their own unique sensory bottle.

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Nature Inspired Spring Sensory Soup

Pour, dump, scoop, and stir with this sensory soup.

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Nature Weaving

Nature meets art in this sensory rich weaving project.

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Ghost Hands Campfire Fun

Ewwww! This is so sticky and messy, but kids completely love it!

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Edible Freezie Painting

Even toddlers can participate in creating art with this taste-safe "paint".

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Cotton Ball Painting

Big movements and lots of interaction is required for this cool art activity.

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Calming Lavender Sensory Bin

There are only a few simple supplies needed to make this calming sensory bin for kids.

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Photo Scavenger Hunt

Older kids will enjoy exploring outdoors in a photo scavenger hunt.

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Bubble Wrap Body Slam Painting

Bubble wrap body slam painting is as hilarious to watch as it is to do. Great proprioceptive sensory input too!

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Shaving Cream Polka-Dot Sidewalk Painting

Shaving cream painting is a neat alternative to sidewalk chalk.

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Toilet Paper Roll Bird Feeder

Use your empty toilet paper rolls to create a bird feeder. Then watch as the birds come to eat.

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Simple Summer Sensory Activity

This is so easy to set up, but the best ideas usually are. My kids always love this game.

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Photo Credit: www.steampoweredfamily.com

Flower Oobleck

Summer, sensory, and science combine for this ooey-gooey gorgeous flower oobleck.

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Photo Credit: happilyevermom.com

Nature Soup

A mess free nature sensory bin for toddlers and siblings to do together. Gather materials outside, freeze them, and make a nature soup that will help kids cool down on a hot day as they mix their nature soup together!

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Photo Credit: teachingmama.org

Sensory Walk

Exploring the sense of touch with the toes in a sensory walk!

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Photo Credit: littlebinsforlittlehands.com

Nature Sensory Bin Outdoor Explore and Discover

Create a real nature theme sensory bin to explore the senses! Go on a nature hunt and collect materials to build an outdoor sensory bin. Make sure to talk with your kiddo about all the smells, textures, and items found in nature.

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Photo Credit: frugalfun4boys.com

How to Make a PVC Pipe Sand and Water Table

Make your own sand or water table using PVC pipes. There are so many play opportunities with this.

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Photo Credit: handsonaswegrow.com

DIY Mud Kitchen in One Weekend

Make your own outdoor mud kitchen for messy exploration.

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Photo Credit: happyhooligans.ca

Outdoor Sensory Play - exploring herbs

Make some "homemade" sensory soup using weeds or herbs from the garden.

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Photo Credit: www.notimeforflashcards.com

Mud Soup

Pretend play doesn't have to be complicated. How about some good old fashioned mud soup?

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Other easy ideas for outdoor sensory activities you can do at home:

• make mud pies
• water balloons or an old fashioned water fight
• obstacle course – Use anything you have on hand such as hula hoops, slides, wood, pallets, tunnels, pool noodles, chairs, and tires. 
• jump rope
• relay races
• sprinkler, kiddie pool, or Slip ‘n’ Slide
• tag
• yard work – Great for proprioception and for teaching good work ethic! Think raking, mowing (for kids who are old enough), picking rocks, and carrying firewood or bricks.
• dig in the sandbox
• gardening – digging, planting, pulling weeds, and picking are all great tactile sensory input.
• bike rides
• hikes or nature walks
• family campfire
• tree climbing
• interval circuit – set up exercise stations in the yard with signs like “10 Jumping Jacks”, “1 Run Around the Yard”, “10 Supermans” (my kids loved this activity!)

Of course as with all sensory activities, adult supervision should be used. 

In case the weather doesn’t cooperate, you can find a great list of indoor sensory activities for home here.

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This is a great hands-on sensorimotor activity that encourages children to explore their senses and the world around them.

How to create a Sensory Scavenger Hunt:

Setting up this scavenger hunt couldn’t be simpler! Print off the Sensory Scavenger Hunt checklist or create your own. Give each person a crayon or marker along with their sheet. Go outside and begin the scavenger hunt.

This can be done in your backyard, a nature preserve, or park. All that’s needed is the paper, something to mark it with, and a child eager to explore.

Use the activities on the checklist to teach or reinforce the different sensory systems. Each item lists the sensory system that it corresponds to. This is a great way to help kids learn the terminology.

The scavenger hunt includes samples for the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, vestibular, proprioception, and interoception senses. 

This is an excellent example of a hands-on way to reinforce the concepts of sensory processing that are taught in the My Sensory Self Workbook for Kids. By allowing kids to actually do things representing each sensory system, it will make the concepts more concrete for them.

My kids completely loved the sensory scavenger hunt. They appreciated that it went beyond the usual “finding” that goes on in a typical scavenger hunt. One of my daughters particularly liked the rolling and balancing activities while another preferred being still and finding shapes in the clouds.

This activity is such a fun way to explore nature through your senses! Plus, it’s a great boredom buster.

You can also create your own sensory scavenger hunt specific to your backyard or indoor space. Kids can help design the scavenger hunts as well or help brainstorm additional ideas.

This gets great discussions going about all the different senses and how we can use them.

If your child finds rolling or balancing difficult, you can choose other vestibular tasks to replace those. I also have one daughter who can’t stand the smell of flowers, so while her sister loved smelling ALL the flowers in our yard, I let her smell the grass instead.
To get your free printable Sensory Scavenger Hunt, just enter your email address below. 

You can also combine this activity with creating a Nature Sensory Bottle or Nature Sensory Bin by collecting some of the items found along the way. Just like that, you’ll have a double dose of sensory fun!

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Rainbow Soap Foam Recipe:

Materials needed:

• food colouring
• water
• Palmolive dish soap
• hand mixer
• optional: glitter

1. In a bowl, add 1/4 cup water, 2 Tbsp. Palmolive dish soap and 5-10 drops of food colouring. I also added some glitter in the same colour as the food colouring to this step.

2. Mix on high with a hand mixer for about 2 minutes, until peaks form.

3. Put the foam into a shallow bin. On a rainy day, you could put it into the bathtub.

4. Rinse the bowl and beaters and follow the instructions again using a different colour of food colouring. Repeat until the desired number of colours are created, adding each to the bin.

When I had made four colours of soap foam, I brought the bin outside and let the kids play and explore with it. They enjoyed mixing the colours and playing with the foam. They tried to use it to paint on the concrete with their hands, but mostly only the glitter stayed visible.

My girls really enjoyed the textures of the soap foam and seeing the different colours they could create by mixing.

They enjoyed every step of this activity from helping me mix the recipe in the kitchen to playing with the finished product.

Even one of our new kittens came over to see what all the fuss was about!

Be sure to have your kids wash their hands when they are done playing so that they don’t get soap in the eyes accidentally and of course, as with all projects, adult supervision is recommended. 

Find these instructions along with the coolest sensory play recipes around in the Sensory Play Recipes eBook. You’ll find recipes for everything from slimes to oobleck to edible paints and playdoughs and more.

Join our free 5 part email series and get a sample of 5 recipes from our Sensory Play Recipes ebook:

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The kids had so much fun with this and they had no idea that they were actually doing really important sensory work! Setting this activity up could not be any simpler. All that is needed is a bucket full of water and some sponges. I bought two packs of six sponges each at the dollar store. For twelve sponges, I spent $2 and I am planning to turn them into two other sensory activities after this, so it was a very cost effective idea. If you already have sponges around the house, this can be a free activity.

Most kids love a good water fight, but there are two problems with a typical water fight at our house. One is that we live in the country and have to have our water trucked in so we can’t waste too much of it. The other is that in a water fight involving hoses or water guns, things tend to deteriorate quickly and an actual fight usually ensues. We had better luck with the sponges and I was clear to lay out the ground rules before they started. One of the ground rules was that mommy was not a target!

The kids not only got the sensory feedback of the water and the sponges, they also got the feedback from wringing out the sponges, particularly overtop of their siblings’ heads!!!

This easy activity can easily be turned into another sensory game using the same bucket of water and sponges. If the water fight disseminates into chaos or if the kids get bored, they can go over and wash your car or the side of the house. You can add soapy bubbles to the water for this if you want (don’t add the bubbles to the water fight portion of the activity lest someone get it in their eyes) and you’ve now created another simple summer sensory activity and possibly, created enough time for yourself to run and throw a load of laundry in the wash or read a few pages in a book!

If you are looking for other easy activities to do with your kids this summer, you may be interested in joining me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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Outdoor Sensory Bins

Calming Lavender Sensory Bin from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Rainbow Soap Foam from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Sensory Play with Rice and Daal from In the Playroom

Dirt Sensory Bin Challenge from Life with Moore Babies

Summer Sensory Bin from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Easy Sand and Water Table Sensory Activities from A Beautiful Ruckus

Polar Sensory Bin from In the Playroom

Sensory Painting Activities

Bubble Wrap Body Slam Painting from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Bubble Wrap Stomp Art from Lemon Lime Adventures

Mud Painting from Fun-a-Day

Edible Freezie Painting from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Textured Leaf Printing from The Preschool Tool Box

Cotton Ball Throw Painting from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Sensory Ice Activities

Upside Down Ice Toss (vestibular play) from Lemon Lime Adventures

Ice Painting from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Ice World Sensory Play from Learning 4 Kids

Ice Excavating from Living the Chaotic Life

Frozen Treasure Find from here on The Chaos and The Clutter (one of my kids’ favourite activities ever!)

Water Sensory Activities

Splash Party from Jornie

Giant Bubble Bath from Life with Moore Babies

Water Exploration Station from My Buddies and I

Having Fun with a Water Blob from There’s Just One Mommy

Pretend Play Sensory Activity from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Sensory Science Activities

Jello Science Experiments from The Chaos and The Clutter

Mad Scientist Lab from There’s Just One Mommy

Sink or Float? from Buggy and Buddy

The Smelly Pumpkin Experiment from Fun-a-Day

Preschool Science and Sensory from Teach Preschool

Sensory Recipes

Lavender Scented Bubble Recipe from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Rainbow Fluff from My Buddy and I

Make Your Own Flubber from Living the Chaotic Life

Jelly Digging from Adventures of Adam

Colour Matching with Moon Dough from In the Playroom

Bubble Dough to Bubbly Oobleck from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

Mess

Making Mud Pies from Meaningful Mama

Preschool Mud Day from Fun-a-Day

The Control Freak’s Guide to a Messy Play Date from Left Brain Craft Brain

A Splatter Paint Universe from Artchoo

Mud Kitchen Activity from Happy Hooligans

Shaving Cream

Shaving Cream Polka-Dot Sidewalk Painting from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Rainbow Cream Pie Sensory Play from There’s Just One Mommy

Shaving Foam Car Tracks from Adventures of Adam

Ice Cream Game with Shaving Cream and Ice from JDaniel4’s Mom

Writing in Shaving Cream from Meaningful Mama

Gross Motor

5 Trampoline Games and 5 Activities from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Backyard Olympics here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Spider Web Trellis from JDaniel4s Mom

Backyard Obstacle Course from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Go on a Sound Walk from Buggy and Buddy

Texture Walk from Life with Moore Babies

Sensory Walk from Teaching Mama

Scavenger Hunts

Photo Scavenger Hunt from here on The Chaos and The Clutter

Outdoor Sketching Scavenger Hunt for Kids from Buggy and Buddy

Nature Bracelets with Masking Tape from Meaningful Mama

Sensory Motor Scavenger Hunt from The Inspired Treehouse

Adjective Scavenger Hunt from Meaningful Mama

I hope that some of these ideas help you and your kids to have a sensational sensory summer!!!

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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Moon Dough.

Moon dough is so easy to make and provides hours of fun. I recommend playing with it outside as it does tend to be a messy activity.

The basic recipe of moon dough is 8 cups of flour mixed with 1 cup of baby oil. If you are making this for a younger child who may try to eat it, you can replace the baby oil with cooking oil. It will not have the scent but will be safer for younger children.

Sensory Bags.

Sensory bags are just as easy to make as moon dough is. I put about equal amounts of water and baby oil in a sandwich bag and then added a few drops of food colouring. You could also add glitter to the bags. The kids really enjoyed squishing the bags and especially liked laying them flat and seeing the colour displace when touching the bag with their finger.

Sensory Bottle.

To make this one, I just added baby oil, water, glitter, and a few drops of food colouring to an empty water bottle.

I will be featuring sensory activities every day this week in celebration of the launch of my new eBook, Sensory Bins.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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I used fingerpainting paper because it is glossy and doesn’t tear easily. Incidentally, this seems to be my go-to paper for all edible art projects as it is also what we use for pudding painting and condensed milk painting.

This is as simple as cutting the tops off of store-bought freezies (or making your own) and handing them to the kids to paint or drip onto the paper. Some of the kids chose more of an abstract creation while some chose to make shapes or houses or trees.

Some of my kids even chose to lick their papers! And of course all of them chose to eat the rest of their freezie when they were done their painting! (a few clever kids even convinced me that their art needed more than one colour, therefore they needed a second freezie to complete their masterpiece!)

This is part of my series of Summer Sensory Activities.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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I actually made one big frozen treasure find for the kids all to work on together and then little ones for each of them just for fun.

For the individual ones, I used empty yogourt containers and put a few small items in each. I used glittery foam stickers, sequins and pompoms. I then filled them with water and froze them. The little ones were much more challenging to unmold than the big one was, but after having them sit in water for a minute, they came out easily.

The larger one took more time to make as I made it in layers. I used an empty ice cream bucket and placed some items at the bottom before adding a layer of water. I then put that in the freezer and when it had set, I added a few more items and a layer of water that I had added some blue food paste to so that it created layers of blue. The interesting thing is that the layers of regular water I added afterwards each took on a bit of the blue but less with each layer, creating a really cool effect that was completely unintentional!

The weather hadn’t been great, so I wasn’t in a rush to complete this and took a few days of adding layers here and there and keeping it in the freezer in between.

For the “treasures”, I used a few play coins, sequins, ocean life shaped ice cubes, pompoms, silk flowers, foam stickers, string that I wound through the layers, toy fish, and mini pinwheels. I tried to stick with a summer theme.

I ran the bucket under the water for a few seconds to release the ice creation from the ice cream pail and set it outside for the kids to play with. They used spray bottles, squirt bottles, a turkey baster, and plastic spoons to try to release the treasures from the ice.

This occupied them for a long time and it morphed into a bit of a science project as they decided to experiment with different temperatures of water in their bottles and with different techniques. It was also a good way to cool off on a hot summer day!This project is part of my series on Summer Sensory Activities.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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I gave the kids a patch of soil where in years past we have planted a garden. This year, we only managed to plant in the pots on our deck, so this patch by the garage was just sitting there filling with weeds.

I provided them with a few garden tools and a small garden play kit from the dollar store that included a watering can and some plastic gardening tools. I also lay out some gloves and packets of seeds. I gave them no direction whatsoever except to point out to the older ones that on the packets of seeds, it lists how deep they should be planted and how far apart. I then set them loose in this gigantic sensory bin to do as they pleased!

It was a bit of a challenge for me not to want to give them instructions or show them how to plant so I had to consciously step back and let them explore. I was there if they wanted to ask questions but I let them just have fun and do things the way they wanted to. Some of them ditched the tools after awhile to get in there with their hands and really get muddy once they had poured water in there!

They especially liked that I gave them real seeds to plant. I imagine we may have some surprise vegetables popping up in a few weeks!

When kids are just starting out with gardening, following the “rules” of gardening isn’t what’s important. It’s about fostering a love of nature and giving them an opportunity to experience watching something that they planted grow. If their seeds are planted too close together or with vegetables they “shouldn’t” be next to, worry about teaching them those things when they get older.

The point of this exercise is to set them free to explore through their senses and discover the joy of gardening.

This life sized sensory bin is part of my 5 Days of Summer Sensory Activities Series.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

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The set-up for this particular art was very simple and the finished products turned out quite well!

To prepare for this, I poured tempera paint in ice cube trays and put them in the freezer. I let them set for a bit and then inserted small popsicle sticks in them before allowing them to freeze completely. I actually left mine in the freezer for several days because it was a rainy week and I was waiting for a day when the sun came out!

When it came time to the actual painting, I ran the bottom of the tray under water to loosen the paint pops and then gave the kids their ice paint pops and let them paint away! As the paint pops melted, some of the kids used their hands to spread paint around.

I forgot to add that Snuggle Puppy really got into the whole “sensory” concept and decided to lick the ice pop! I do not recommend you try this one at home!!!

This is just one of the projects we did as part of our 5 Days of Summer Sensory Activities.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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