Outdoor Math Activities for Your Preschooler

Looking for outdoor math activities for your preschoolers? We got you covered. Summer offers many opportunities for you to spend some time with your kids, but just because you’re having some summer fun doesn’t mean you want to forget learning too. A great way to ensure you get quality time with your young children while still making learning a priority is to do some outdoor math games. Not sure where to start? Here are a few outdoor math activities you can try out with your preschooler.

Fun Outdoor Math Activities for Your Preschooler

Measuring Shadows

A fun way to introduce measurements to your preschooler is to go outside and measure your shadows. To do this, you’ll need to find a yardstick or a measuring tape that’s long enough to measure different lengths of shadows. Have your preschooler stand still on a flat surface and demonstrate how to measure the length of the shadow. After you measure your preschooler’s shadow, switch roles and have them measure yours! To make things more interesting, you can try measuring shadows at different times of the day. Stand in the same spot and see how the length of your shadow changes with the different positions of the sun.

Find the Number

Your preschooler doesn’t want to sit still to learn. Young minds learn best when their young bodies are moving and exploring. To help your preschooler learn the different numbers, create some number cards on a heavier material like foam squares or felt. Set them out randomly on the lawn or driveway. Once they’re in place, practice calling out different numbers and have your preschooler run to the appropriate card! Your child will quickly learn to identify the numbers and will have a blast doing it! The following cool math games for kids, will help them with numbers too. Don’t forget to check it out.

Skip Counting Hopscotch

Hopscotch games are fun outdoor math activities that you can easily put a learning spin on without much effort. Instead of the classic hopscotch layout, use (affiliate link) chalk to create a hopscotch game course. The numbers can go as high as you like, but try use numbers 1-20. Once you’ve designed your game course, have your preschooler hop from number to number skip counting. Start by counting by ones and have your preschooler hop through the entire course. After you’ve counted by ones, practice skip-counting by twos, with your preschooler jumping from 2 to 4 to 6. Continue doing this by skip-counting by threes, fours, and fives until the distance is too far to go.

Outdoor Shape Search

Learning to recognize the different shapes is an important math skill your preschooler needs to know. Instead of sitting inside and tracing shapes on a piece of paper, go exploring. Take a walk around your neighborhood and see how many shapes you can spot in real life objects. Soon, your preschooler will be spotting triangle roofs, rectangle doors, and circle treetops.

Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest

Who doesn’t love spitting or throwing food? Your preschooler is no different, so use this silly activity to help teach distance and basic graphing skills. Use chalk notations on your spitting surface to help measure the distance a watermelon seed goes and then line everyone up at the start line. Take turns spitting the watermelon seed as far as it will go. After each turn, color in a bar graph to show how far the seed went. If your kids enjoy this game, check out our watermelon math craft!

Getting outside and doing some outdoor math activities helps teach your preschooler that learning can be fun. Not only are you teaching your preschooler important math skills, you’ll also be teaching motor skills like balancing and jumping. It’s a win-win no matter how you look at it!

What are some fun ways you teach your preschooler math with outdoor math activities? We’d love to hear from you.

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