If your child is anything like mine, they just love being outside rain or shine. Emilia loves to pull on her wellies (more often than not on the wrong feet) and race around the garden so why not make it a learning opportunity too.

So for my first blog I thought I’d share some fun activities that you can play in the garden to help learn letters of the alphabet. These games can be shaken up to learn numbers, colours, animals, spellings etc the possibilities are endless.

So here’s my top 5…

1. WHAT’S IN YOUR NAME? HUNT: Write the letters of your child’s name on post its and hide for them to find and put in order. Emilia loves this game and she then often hides them for me to find too.

2. WATER PAINTING: Use chalk and write letters on a wall. Call them out and get your child to wash them off with water and a paintbrush. Another alternative is to squirt them off with a water pistol.

3. CAR COLLECTION: Get your child to hide letters in the garden and you call them out or give them an alphabet checklist to tick off as they collect them in a car or on scooter or alternatively just on foot. Watch out for this one, we had a few car crashes and even rolled the car once. I dread to think what she will be like behind the wheel when she’s older. 

4. WINDOW CLEANER: If you have patio doors like me, use a dry wipe pen and write loads of letters on the door. Then give your child a cloth and get them to rub letters off when they are called out or shown on flash cards. 

5. BIG DIG: Using small stones write letters of the alphabet using sharpies and then hide them in a sandpit (or large plastic stackerbox). I made a checklist for Emilia to tick them off as she found them. For older children get them to make different words from the letters found in a time limit (20 second dig).

FINAL TIP: All of these games should be fun, never force them to be played and remember toddlers attention span is really short.