Ep 71 - 5 Fun Outdoor Therapy Activities for Summer
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Laura Park Figueroa: Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always a hundred percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to [00:01:00] therapy in the great outdoors this week, we are going to be talking about. Therapy activities that are really, really fun for children to do in the summertime. Now I realize if you are listening to this, this is a podcast that is. Broadcast worldwide. That's the amazing thing about podcasting is. You publish it and it goes out all over the world.
So I know that some of you are down under and it is winter. But I'm sorry. I live in the states. And a lot of times when I am recording the podcast, I'm thinking about things that are relevant for my practice right now, because that's, what's on my mind. So. I did do episodes on winter activities, which you can search on the therapy in the great outdoors website, where the podcast is hosted.
So you can go there and look up some winter ones. If you are in winter right now. Or tag this episode and save it for later for when it is summer in six months, if you're down under. Right now, though, in the us, it is summer. And I was going to just do three activities, but I [00:02:00] kept when I went to find photos of these, because I'm going to do an Instagram post to go along with this episode that has some photos and I. Kept finding other things that I wanted to include.
So now I'm going to include five activities. So. Let's dive right in the first one is making giant bubble wands and. Making a solution to make giant bubbles. So if you have never done this, I love this activity because it is really something that you can't do indoors. You really need the outdoor space for movement. And the grandiose experience that it is to make these giant bubbles.
So in the show notes, I will link. A, a couple of links for how to make the giant bubble wands. And then the best solution that I have found for the giant bubble solution. But basically what you do is you take two wooden dowels with a little wire islet screwed into the [00:03:00] end of the wooden dowel. And some cotton string that attaches to those islets.
So you have two sticks each with a little wire circle screwed into the end of each of them. And the string goes around. The. Goes through those wire eyelids and makes kind of a. Loop in in one of them is shorter and one of them is longer. You will see if you go to the website, maybe this wasn't the best activity to choose, because it is hard to explain, but. I basically follow the directions that are in the show notes on the website that this amazing educator or mom or someone made.
It's a really great it's the one that I used when I made these in my practice. And it works really well. And that I like this activity because. It allows the children to build something. I often find that children like to make things, especially, they like to make things when they are functional.
Right? So making these giant bubble wands is what you can do. And then they get this reward of [00:04:00] doing the giant bubbles. And there is a bubble solution that includes glycerin. So it makes the bubbles, very viscous and thick to be able to make these gigantic bubbles. And I will put a few pictures up on Instagram this week.
If you follow me there, you can see them. But if you've never done this before, it is a very fun activity for kids and something that is. a, Great multisensory experience and you need the outdoor setting in order to do it as well as It is a kind of water play . So there's an element of, of nature in the activity as well.
Okay. Along those lines, water play is a great thing to do during summer, especially if it's really hot.
I think this is a natural kind of thing that our brain goes to when it's really warm outside. One of my favorite things to do. If you have access to a body of water or a Creek. Is to make toy boats using recyclable materials. So I recommend having corks rubber bands. [00:05:00] Large paper clips that they can kind of use as is, or unfold in order to have a piece of wire. Sturdy toothpicks work as well.
Popsicle sticks, duct tape, and maybe some small plastic containers like recycled, you know, just containers of cream, cheese, or whatever, whatever you have from your own house, little yogurt containers, whatever it may be. So you bring all of those materials and you let the children, you just kind of lay them out in an attractive way and then let the children go to town, making their toy boats.
I think there's actually a book to call toy boat that you might want to look up as well. If I can find it, I'll put it. I'll put it in the show notes for you. And then. Once they have built those. I always bring like to bring things, to let kids. Kind of personalized, whatever it is they have made. So I'll often bring stickers or Sharpie markers or washi tape is really fun because it's really easy to rip and wrap around things.
So [00:06:00] those are kind of some fun, additional things to have on hand in order to allow the children to decorate their own. Creations. So you might notice here that I don't have large, big things. And that is because I really try to, when we plan for my practice, I try to have things that don't require a lot of big equipment, but that you can kind of put in a small backpack and take with you into the woods or into any location where you are.
So this one is a little bit heavy. This idea of making the toy boats, it's a little bit heavy on the supplies, but it is a. Small amount of supplies. You don't need a, you don't need a ton of recycled or They're small supplies, I guess, is what I'm saying. So you can fit those in a backpack and then walk into your Creek or your body of water and do the activity out there in nature. And then you have to test them out, of course, and see if they actually float. So there's a lot of learning here as well. All right. The [00:07:00] third idea is to have a mud kitchen.
So mud kitchens are really fun. You basically can go to a thrift store and you can get a bunch of materials for kids to use. Like. Old pots and pans or baking sheets. Spatulas spoons and allow them to go to town and just play in and dig in a muddy area. So this is another thing. If there's, if you have a body of water, it's another great great.
Place to do to set up a mud kitchen. If they have access to water in some mud and some other natural materials around. One of the things that we like to do in my practice is to do the great nature baking show, like the. Isn't it called the great British baking show. I can't remember. I'm I'm I don't watch a lot of TV, so I can't remember if that's the name of it, but I think it is. And we call it the great nature baking show. And have the children do a cook-off and give them materials they need to use, and you can kind of set it up like a they're
they're presenting their [00:08:00] baking that they did. So it's a fun, little idea to make mud kitchen play kind of fun and, and make it like a, like a game for them. All right. The fourth idea is to do balloon ball volleyball. So if you have never seen these fabric Covers that you can get like on Amazon and I've linked one in the show notes for you. You put a fabric cover over a balloon. And then it makes the balloon. Move more slowly.
So most of us, if we've been probably if we're PTs or OTs, or maybe even speech therapist, if you've worked in a pediatric clinic indoors, You maybe have played balloon balloon volleyball, like where you're popping a balloon kind of tap, tapping a balloon to, and from one another inside of a clinic space. Now. The problem with this activity when, when you're indoors and especially when you're outdoors is that balloons have a mind of their own.
They don't go in a firm trajectory. Right. But when you buy this [00:09:00] fabric cover to go over the balloon, it actually allows the balloon to travel in a more predictable trajectory and gives it a little bit more weight, but it moves slowly the same way a balloon does or more, more slowly, I guess I should say then a ball would. So you can actually allow children, the ex they become more successful with it, right?
Because they have the experience of being able to kind of anticipate more easily where the balloon will go as well as more time because the balloon is kind of going a little bit. More slowly than a ball might go. If you're, if you're playing with a, like a playground ball or something like that. So what I do with balloon ball volleyball.
So we have a big, my balloon. I cover that it's just a fabric cover that you blow up a balloon inside. My balloon ball cover actually is a big one. So it makes like a very big balloon ball. It's almost, I get like I'm punching balloon size balloons to put [00:10:00] inside of it. I'm not sure if the one I found on Amazon is that size.
You'll have to look at the link and kind of do some research for yourself, but. So when I set up balloon ball volleyball, we blow up the balloon inside of that fabric cover. So we have the balloon. And then we put a rope between two trees and the goal is for the kids. You know, we kind of divide the group.
This is a group activity, sorry, I maybe should've said that at the beginning. Not all of these have to be group activities, but this one is definitely a group activity. Where you have half the kids on one side, half the kids on the other side, or you can play kids versus adults. They always love that. Each on you have two teams, right?
One-on-one side. And one on the other side of this, of this rope that you have tied up between two trees. And then the goal is to basically like volleyball to bat the balloon back and forth across the, the. Rope. Which is serving as the net or whatever. And not let it touch the [00:11:00] ground. So if it touches the ground, your team lost the point or whatever, and the other team gets the point. So this game is a little bit chaotic and fun.
And I have found that all kids like it, we barely ever keep score and actually have a winner. It's kind of like. Whoever wins that round is the winner and they get to celebrate and then we play again. And just, if it goes to the ground, oh, well, it's not really it's not very competitive, I guess is what I'm saying. But it is a very fun activity and the kids, the kids really get into it and think it's funny because it's this like, Big kind of floaty ball
it adds kind of a novel element to a ball activity. If you have children that are working on ball skills. Okay. I really beat that one to death. All right. Last one. Last one is making ice cream in an ice cream ball. So I have an ice cream ball. Basically. It is a ball that [00:12:00] has a hole in one side to put ice in.
And then the other side you put the there's like a little canister inside of it and you put the ingredients for ice cream and then you roll the ball. Or shake it for about 20 to 30 minutes and it, and it makes ice cream. It's like a manual ice cream maker essentially. Now I have one that has a a soft. Shell to it, but I have found that the ice cream ball is very It's very. It's very easy to break.
We've had like three of them in my business and I actually don't see the one that I have. The third one that we've had. I don't see it online. I do have a link to one that I found on Amazon in the show notes, but I don't see the one that I personally have, but basically it's the same concept. The one that I've linked in the show notes just doesn't have the. The like kind of soft surface cover on the outside. So it's a it's a hard plastic ball that you're going to get.
If you get the one at [00:13:00] the link that I, that I have in the show notes here. And what I would recommend is if you. If you do buy the one that I have in the show notes, and it is a hard plastic surface, you have to be very intentional with the kids to let them know. That it's not like a real ball that you can kick and throw.
You have to shake it. You can only shake it. Or roll it or give it to someone else. So we like to do games where we sit kind of in a circle with all of our legs out wide and we'll roll it across the circle. Or we do games where we'll stand in a row and we pass it over head and then under our legs and then overhead again, and then under our legs. This one was not so successful when we made ice cream.
The last time the kids were not having it. I think we had a lot of kids with some motor challenges and they were just like, no, I'm not doing that when. When they saw me imitate it. So keep it simple for the kids. If you have kids that struggle with motor skills, then maybe just [00:14:00] sit in that circle and roll it back and forth and just sing, or talk to each other, ask questions and kind of keep their interest long enough to actually roll the ball around for 20 minutes.
And I love this activity one because you get to eat ice cream and that's very motivating for kids. And two, because that motivating factor is there of having the ice cream later. You you get kids engagement because they really want to eat the ice cream. And you can tell them, well, if we don't keep moving the ball, we don't get to eat the ice cream, the ice cream.
Won't won't. It won't make the ice cream. If we don't keep moving the ball. So in some ways, if kids can understand that there is going to be ice cream, you can get them to do a lot of different motor skills that you may not. Easily get them to do if the, if you don't have the motivational factor of the ice cream afterwards.
So I've had great success with it. I love the ice cream ball. It's one of my favorite, like. Toys, I guess you would say to bring into a nature based session. First like a [00:15:00] celebratory we always have, if you listen to my a couple episodes ago, I think it was episode 69 and 70. I talk about some about how we plan camp in my practice. And one of the things we do is on Fridays of every camp week, we have some sort of a celebratory activity and the ice cream ball is always a great thing to pull out for those little parties or celebratory times when you're ending your week together.
And you're doing something to kind of bring closure and celebrate the progress that the kids have made that week. So that's it. We have giant bubble wands, water play, making toy boats, mud, kitchen, balloon ball volleyball, and making ice cream with the ice cream ball. Those are five of my favorite outdoor treatment activities for summer.
If you guys have other activities that you love, please share them inside of the therapy in the great outdoors community. That space is a community space for all of us to share things like this in order to help everyone inside of our nature based therapist community. I always love hearing the creative ideas that you all come up with for your [00:16:00] sessions. And it helps our whole community when we're willing to share these things, because sometimes the activities that are in books just do not work for the type of kids that we see as therapist. Right. They have too many supplies, too many steps, too many complex directions, whatever it may be.
So. When you as a therapist come across something that works really well. It's just wonderful. If you can share it in the community, because then other therapists can have success as well. And we can all help more children, which is really the point of the entire. TGO community that we have online. So, all right.
That's it for this week and I will see you all next time. Bye.
Wait a second. Don't go yet. Do you want 120 ways that you can take your pediatric therapy work outdoors into nature? I wrote the free, big, huge list of nature based therapy activities just for you. The Big Huge List will give you quick ideas for nature based sessions. In the Big [00:17:00] Huge List, there are activities for gross motor, fine motor, visual perceptual, executive function, balance, group collaboration, and team building, social, emotional, and self regulation skills, as well as speech and language, and a whole section just for swing activities.
So go on and get your free Big Huge List so you can get started taking kids outdoors or have some new ideas if you've been doing this a while. You can download your free copy at therapyinthegreatoutdoors. com slash list. So until next time, get outside, connect, reflect, and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors.
