Summer is a great time of year to spend time outdoors learning from nature. Your kids of all abilities and interests will find activities suited for them to participate in or be observers.

If your youngster has trouble moving around a pair of binoculars might be just the hobby item that gives hours of pleasure. I still enjoy stopping on a walk or hike and taking time to use my binoculars to watch the birds in the distance. And, in the middle of the afternoon we watch birds with binoculars from our back porch.

This is an activity that can lead to a lifetime hobby of bird and animal watching that does not require a lot of running around. In fact, it is by keeping still and quiet that animals will come up to you the closest. Think of how a duck blind works. A shack is built with horizontal slits in the wood to observe animals.

I love sitting on the bench in the duck blind peering out at egrets in the ponds in the dunes park near us. The water is fresh and rises to the surface from a water table several hundred feet deep. It is the same water that is piped to our house, naturally filtered by meters of sand on its way to the surface.

An offshoot of observing and being in nature is keeping a journal of the days observations. And with encouragement, your child may enjoy drawing pictures in his journal of what he has seen that day, and then writing a story that further tells about the days experiences.

I like to encourage the kids to write creative stories using animals and places they've been. (Never hurts to get some writing practice in.)

Other fun activities for your kids with learning disabilities that are not academically frustrating are ball games and skipping rope and even exercising using the hula hoop. Hopscotch is always fun and with the big sidewalk chalk that washes away, it can be a different variation of the game as often as the rain falls or the chalk is hosed away.

No sidewalk chalk handy? Pieces of granite rock and oyster shells make temporary lines on the sidewalk, too. And if you have a sandy place, use a stick to etch in temporary hopscotch squares, that can be wiped away quick as a wink!

All youngsters deserve summer time fun - be creative and enjoy the great outdoors along with your kids!

Article by Susan Kramer

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