The weather forecast can easily put a damper on the outdoor-fun plans of children. Whether it’s cold and cloudy after a proper rainfall or rainy and uncomfortable, kids will quickly start demanding to do something fun. For many adults, this weather means staying inside and enjoying a hot cup of tea or coffee. In contrast, most children do not feel that way and would rather spend time outside exploring the world when it is wet.

Remember the time as a child when you really wanted to jump into every puddle? There is something magical about rain puddles for children because they can feel the splash of water on their legs, use toys that can float in them, and just jump from one puddle to another. Instead of convincing the kids to play in the house, it is a great idea to think about ways to use a rainy day as an advantage and get outside for some water fun. Here are a few ideas to help create an interesting and adventurous water experience.

1. Jump in the puddle

When it starts raining, you can encourage the kids to put on their raincoats and boots and go outside to enjoy a few jumps in different puddles. Besides the fun your children will have, puddle jumping is also a teaching activity because children develop better gross motor skills of jumping and stomping when trying not to fall into the puddle. It is also a good way to teach kids about cause and effect as they see water moving. Many children will love to jump in puddles while it’s still raining because of the movement the rainfall creates in the puddle. This activity is best suited for those days when it is still warm such as on a rainy summer or autumn day.

2. Experiment with floating and sinking

Puddles are a rich experimental source. Children can pick up items that they find in nature in order to explore properties of floating and sinking. Do leaves or sticks float? What about rocks or a folded origami boat? Children can experiment further by having a look at what happens when they throw rocks into the water. Why do ripples form when stones are dropped in a puddle? There are many other questions children can ask and try to seek answers for through playing in the rain.

3. Make music

It can be loads of fun to listen to the sound rain makes. Children will experience that the sound rain makes when falling into a puddle is quite different to the sound it makes when falling on garden furniture such as a table. There is also a difference when listening to hard and soft rain. While listening to these different sounds, you can encourage your child to replicate the sounds using utensils you can find at home, including pots, measuring cups, brushes, or a drum. Another idea is to make up songs and sing while playing in a puddle. There are many songs for rainy days online, but you can also come up with your own songs. These very easy and basic activities support children in developing their sense of rhythm and rhyme, which are vital awareness skills.

4. Explore options of imaginative play

When it comes to creating their own play realities, children have very little need to ask parents for help. But parents can do the following: they can encourage the little ones to explore their surroundings and provide them with some tools to live out their ideas. For example, many children love to think of puddles as soup. In order to let them engage in this ‘puddle soup cooking’ activity, it is helpful to provide them with some scoops, spoons, and buckets. Children imagining a world where they stir, measure, and serve soup isn’t only a lot of fun to watch, it also enriches each kid’s language when they focus on the imaginary action and describe processes to parents, friends and themselves. This way, imaginative play is a good time for children to practice and improve their vocabulary. In addition, these activities have a positive impact on children’s self-confidence as well as their fine motor skills due to the usage of measuring cups and other kitchen utensils.

Nature is a wonderful place to teach children through play. Even rainy days provide loads of opportunities to have fun and explore nature. The next time the kids sit inside the house on a rainy day telling you that they are bored, put on the raincoat, find the rain boots, open an umbrella and head outside to find puddles. They will provide endless fun!

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Their desire to do so is driven by their natural instinct to explore and discover using senses and motor actions. Thus they build a storehouse of knowledge about the physical world. Through this and similar outdoor activities children master essential life skills such as problem-solving, ability to focus and respond to changing contexts, as well as decision-making. In other words, exposure to natural settings enhances their cognitive development.

One of the brain’s most important functions is to collect, process and interpret information from the environment so that we can learn how to survive.  In order to understand this process, let us have a look at imaginary life threatening situation:

A pack of hungry wolves is chasing us. They are getting closer and in less than 2-3 minutes they will attack. We have the same time to reach for the shelter where we’d be safe. This is when our brain takes full control over your actions. We need to think quickly and make the right choices as soon as possible. In life threatening situations each step we make, and every detail matters. Our survival depends on all our previous knowledge and experience. We run as fast as we can till we notice a large piece of wood at some 20 metres distance. It’s as high as our hips, like a hurdle. On your right is an abyss; on the left is a thick forest. There’s no other way but to jump over a tree branch. When facing severe danger the brain uses its spare capacities and works seven times faster, in order to be able to process greater number of information than usual. In normal circumstances it takes three seconds for a man to run 20 meters at a full speed. However, we have the impression that the time to get to the branch and jump over it lasts much longer.

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How does the brain carry out this remarkable feat? People often report the “bullet time” phenomenon, where time appears to be going slow during dangerous events. When faced with a life-threatening situation, our brain is presented with more information per second than it is accustomed to and processes them at a faster intensity in order to make the right move. It’s a survival tactic. In addition, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories. The more memory we have of an event, the longer we believe it took. Therefore, an illusion of time dilation could facilitate an effective escape.

On our “endless” run towards the branch, the brain records a contrast between the green scenery around us and the branch without leaves. At last it finds a crucial match, linking this situation with the same experience found in our childhood memory, the cracking sound of dry branches beneath our feet while walking through the woods. We suddenly realize that we don’t have to jump over the branch or go underneath it; it’s dry and it will break under our weight.

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What would have happened if we hadn’t experienced such activity when we were young? Perhaps we would stop for a moment to think what to do next and lose precious 3-4 seconds, which may even lead to fatal consequences. One of the most important functions of our brain is to receive and process information and create connections between certain regions in cerebral cortex, that positively affect the child’s cognitive skill development.

A child’s neurological system is naturally designed to seek out the sensory input it needs in order to develop into a strong and capable individual. If a child is spinning in circles just for fun, it is because he or she needs that sensory input. Movement and physical play facilitate the development of new connections (synapses) among brain cells and the overall organization of the brain. As these connections develop, child’s fine and gross motor skills, socialization, personal awareness, language, creativity, problem solving and learning ability are improved. This is why they need to climb the trees, jump on the bed, run through the woods, splash in mud puddles. These are all natural and necessary experiences that will encourage their cognitive skill development.

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However, nowadays it seems that the number of couch potato kids, stuck in their rooms and glued to TV and computer screens is constantly growing.  Due to their physical inactivity, the brain is deprived of important sensory input causing poor stimulation of physiological mechanisms that slowly lose their abilities (dynamic eye accommodation, fixation of the object in motion, complex types of movement involved in running…). Many people share a common belief that video games can benefit the brain by providing the necessary stimulation. However, such activity is contrary to the human evolution process. One of the greatest inventors the world has ever seen, Nikola Tesla, once said that we are the result of a centuries-long continuous adjustment to the natural environment while large and sudden changes in this process can produce unpredictable and possibly catastrophic consequences. Therefore it’s crucial for children to spend more time in natural surroundings and outdoor unstructured play, and to learn by doing in order to stimulate the growth of the cerebral cortex and create more neural networks in the brain and throughout the body.

Parents, from their part, should encourage activities such as jumping, catching a ball, skipping a rope etc. to facilitate the overall development of their children and prepare them for life challenges to come. Rather than say “no” to everything physical they attempt, we should provide them a safe environment to explore and enjoy nature. Springtime rain showers create a lot of mud puddles to splash in and every kid deserves a good pair of boots. Jumping into mud puddles won’t get your kid into a top university. However, the joy they found in doing so is a perfect demonstration of how incredibly beautiful childhood can be. And what it is supposed to be all about.

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