Make this summer memorable with our top summer outdoor activities for preschoolers that will keep your kids busy and learning through play all summer long. This post will help you discover water play, gross motor, and learning activities for preschoolers. These outdoor summer activities will excite your kids to be home with you and make this summer super fun. 

Fun and Easy Ideas

We spend about 4-6 hours outside each day in the summer. We can do so much outside to make each day exciting and fun. Here are some of our favorite and easy ideas.

• Making sun tea
• Get up early to watch the sunrise
• Stay up late to watch the sunset
• Outdoor scavenger hunt
• Rainbow scavenger hunt
• Make a bird feeder
• Stargaze
• Go camping
• Build an outdoor fort
• Outdoor movie night
• Chill in a hammock
• Chalk games like tic-tac-toe
• Play HORSE or PIG with basketball and other made up games
• Finger painting
• Make a sundial
• Collecting sticks, rocks, and leaves
• Painting rocks and hiding them around the neighborhood
• Set up outdoor bowling
• Build a fire and roast s’mores
• Grill out often and eat outside
• Have picnics 
• Take lots of walks
• Bubble painting
• Make slime
• Make taste safe mud
• Make taste safe foam
• Grow a garden together and take care of it all summer
• Make a bird feeder
• Make a bird’s nest with sticks
• Play in the rain
• Jump in puddles
• Pick flowers
• Blow bubbles
• Create giant bubbles and bubble wands
• Use a bubble machine for a bubble party
• Catch bugs
• Nerf wars outdoors
• Squirt gun fights

Fun Water Play Outdoor Activities for Preschoolers

First of all, let’s start with fun water play activities for preschoolers. Since the summer is a great time to play outdoors and warm, water play is a great way to cool off and have fun. For a bigger list of water play activities for preschoolers check it out here! 

• Floating lemon water sensory bin
• Running through a sprinkler 
• Visiting a local pool or water park
• Playing with a water table
• Painting with water
• Setting up a car wash for their toy cars or even your car
• Water balloon fight
• Floating ice water sensory bins
• Toy rescue! Freeze some toys or pom-poms and have them melt the ice, and use tools to get the toys out
• Set up a dog wash and get those pets clean
• Freeze water in muffin tins and place ice puck hockey with sticks
• Throw rocks in a creek.
• Do sink or float experiments to incorporate science to see if items sink or float.
• Water balloon fight

Need more water play activities? Find over 20 ideas and instructions here!

Gross Motor Activities for Preschoolers

Developing gross motor skills is important for preschoolers. First of all, gross motor skills are the bigger muscle groups for sports, hand-eye coordination, and more. Here are activity ideas for gross motor outdoor activities for preschoolers. For a more complete list and directions click here!

• Playing hopscotch
• Visiting different playgrounds
• Making a backyard obstacle course
• Climbing trees
• Riding bikes
• Riding a scooter
• Water play ideas mentioned above
• Neighbor kickball or soccer game
• Yardwork
• Drawing on the ground with chalk
• Any running, jumping, and movement will increase gross motor development.
• Draw a balance beam out of chalk and walk on it
• Hiking 
• Flying a kite
• Jump rope
• Jumping through hula-hoops
• Attempting to hula hoop
• Corn hole
• Bean bag toss
• Beach ball catch
• See how long they can keep a balloon in the air
• Balloon volleyball
• Ladder jump

Check out more outdoor gross motor activities for preschoolers here!

Outdoor Learning Activities for Preschoolers

Learning never stops in our household, and when preschoolers have the opportunity to learn through play and nature, they are more than likely to retain the information. We love learning through play and strongly believe outdoor activities for preschoolers is a great place to learn. In addition to the topics above, everything they do is a learning activity and development activity. Here are some outdoor activities we do with learning in mind. For more details on outdoor learning activities for preschoolers click here.

• Reading a book outside.
• Learning the street signs such as stop signs, yield signs, crossing signs, etc
• Studying local birds that we see on a frequent basis outside. Learning about their homes and diet
• Studying insects and other bugs. For example, learning that insects have six legs and spiders have eight, so they are not an insect.
• Studying the wildlife and animals outside
• Drawing shapes with chalk and identifying them through a game of hopscotch
• Finding sticks, rocks, or other objects outside and determining the largest, smallest, etc
• Studying the local trees around the neighborhood
• Tracing letters with chalk
• Finding objects outside that begin with a specific letter
• Search for animal tracks and figure out what tracks belong to what animal

Make sure to check out more outdoor learning activities and ideas along with how to use the world to teach click here!

Easy Science Outdoor Activities for Preschoolers

Along with, the outdoor learning activities there a lot of outdoor science activities for preschoolers too. Here are some ideas for outdoor science activities!

• Study the clouds and create a cloud identifier 
• Make a nature potion
• Study the different types of rocks from the rock collection they have gathered
• Solar oven see if you can cook anything using the heat from the sun
• Snag a caterpillar to butterfly kit and release the butterflies after learning about the life cycle
• Create a compost bin and watch it change
• Create nature discover sensory bottles
• Make sun prints
• Test sunscreen
• Create a wind gauge
• Create different parachutes to see which ones work the best
• Make a rain gauge
• Count tree rings and learn about trees
• Make a human sundial
• Build a lightbox
• Test your water and the ph levels and test bottled water and hose water too

Outdoor Games for Preschoolers

In addition to all of our gross motor and learning activities, we also love to play games! Here are some game ideas to play outside! Not only will these games help develop other skills such as gross motor but they are just fun to play with kids of all ages!

• Playing tag
• Playing Duck Duck Goose
• Playing flashlight tag
• Playing hide and go seek
• Play cards like Uno, Crazy Eights, Go Fish, etc
• Bring a board game outside to play
• Musical chairs
• Simon Says
• Water balloon baseball
• Balloon toss
• Three-legged races
• Create boats and have a race across a small pool
• Create a marble run and race
• Color golf game
• Nerf gun target practice
• Follow the leader
• Kick the can
• The floor is lava outside addition
• Red light green light

These summer outdoor activities for preschoolers are fun and make each day memorable. These will keep you busy all summer long with the water activities, gross motor activities, specific learning activities, and just our fun list of outdoor activities! You may notice that most of the games provided are also great for gross motor activities too! What fun outdoor ideas for preschoolers from our list will you try this week? Let us know in a comment below!