Raising awareness of the importance of parks and green spaces is Love Parks Week 2014 – currently running until August 3.  Its aim is “to encourage people to visit, enjoy and take pride in their local parks and green spaces, driving the message that our parks and green spaces are essential to healthy, happy and strong communities”.  

The campaign began in 2006 building on its success each year – but surely 2014 must be seeing its greatest participation yet with the continuing stunning weather causing more of us to flick open the sun lotion bottles, grab a football and a picnic and head down to our local park.  Why not take a few printables with you to extend your trip and keep everyone entertained?

Spoilt for choice for green spaces in your area and want to remember what you like best about each one?  American blogger Corrie Haffly has provided her readers with some park survey printables with spaces for the name of the park, what you actually call it, the date you visited and how long it took to get there.  The tick boxes include a soccer/baseball box but substitute football for this and obviously we’re all looking for pretty much the same things at our parks (although I might add ice cream seller!).  Corrie plans to laminate her sheets and use a dry-erase marker so that they’ll be reusable.

Want to share the outdoor fun?  Then why not use Rooftop Post’s Picnic Party Invitation?  Your guests should even be able to fulfill its request to bring the sunshine with them this year!

Tesco Living also has a range of picnic printables available in its Kids Zone.  A colouring page, a sheet to create your own dream midday feast by cutting out pictures of food and sticking them on the picnic blanket and the very cute make your own teddy to take with you to transform a simple alfresco meal into a teddy bears’ picnic adventure are three activities sure to appeal to most imaginations.

You’ll want to keep everyone entertained after all the edibles have been enjoyed and not everyone is a sports enthusiast or just content to sunbathe so Tesco Living also has scavenger hunt printables available to download.  The country one will have children “spotting buttercups and drawing daisies” and there’s also one for the beach and one for an urban setting too.

With the Woodland Trust’s Nature Detectives you can turn a simple scavenger trail into a piratical treasure hunt!  Including quiz questions that fit into a crossword, a wordsearch and anagram sheets as well as a questions template, clue tags, a prompt to draw your own map and certificates to personalise your own summer explorations this sounds great fun – although it’s a bit concerning what some children may bring back to earn their gold coin for finding “something pongy”!

Free treasure hunt printable labels are also available from NurtureStore.  Part of its Simple Play series, Cathy points out the versatility of treasure hunts being adaptable for different age ranges as well as being able to encourage “reading, writing, maths, team work and lots of active play”.  She also gives ten different ideas of how you can customise your own hunt including letting older children make up a hunt for each other.  These labels and arrows are also great for scrapbookers in general but especially if you’re planning a layout featuring photos of your children mid quest.

For a couple more colouring sheets check out Family Time’s Cartoon Animals Picnic design and Ink Factory’s own Fairy Tea Party in a park setting (if your child likes this design it’s also available as a reward chart with stickers to accompany it).

Can’t visit a green space this week or need an idea for a rainy day?  Check out Education.com’s two Park Playground printables that are part of its Pop-Up Neighborhoods series.  Including swings, slides, a train, pop-up children, trees and bushes, little ones can colour, cut and construct their way to creating their very own park at home.

 

Do you love finding printables on the internet?  Do you have any particular favourites?  Or have you features some on your own blog?  Email karen.malpass @ inkfactory.com with your fun-filled links and we may be able to feature them in a future post!