Must haves for outside play

[Inspired by Reggio]

We are lucky in the backyard in winter cause all the 'shade' from the leafy trees is gone and it is nice and sunny out there in the morning ... we have a huge deck I can shovel off and allow the 'wee one' to crawl around and pull up at the table and sit and rock toys without freezing just sitting in the snow or on a sled the whole time and for the older kids I put out the sensory tubs with 'snow' in them to stand at for them to paint in or dig in or whatever so my little shovels do not get lost out in the deep snow of the yard ~ cause that happened my first year and we had to go the rest of the winter with no shovels cause a snowstorm blew up and we'd not tidied them up proper and well they were 'lost' in the feet of snow ~ so now only the 'long tall shovels' get to come off the deck the tiny ones stay in the sensory bins.

My spouse is great at shoveling the sidewalk for riding toys and does a path to the 'Little Tykes cottage' so that it is still accessible and like Wonderwiper the other kids play in that to make 'snow food' and so forth.

And with all the shoveling we get lots of 'hills' back there so some taboggons for the older kids to slide on.

We still love to do things like chase bubbles in the winter, play music and dance.

We also walk to the park when the weather is 'nice' to be out longer and enjoy what that has to offer with bigger hills for sledding and so forth.

[Spixie33]

We have a large play structure in the back yard - the kids still love going on that and going down the slide and into the snow. They also use the swings all year round.

Backyards are great just for making snow angels too.

When we go in our front yard then I have the red plastic snow shovels for each child. They love those and a few yellow construction vehicles where they can push and build using snow.

When we go to the park - we take beach shovels and buckets.

Besides our large playstructure with swings - I have tons of stuff in the back yards - some smaller slide structures, a step 2 castle, some rocking toys and a toy picnic table. Most of these don't get used in the winter