It's magical midwinter – wrap children up warmly and make the most of this special time of year. Playing outdoors strengthens children's immune systems and build physical and emotional resilience. Consider starting outdoor play sessions with a vigorous ‘parkour’ routine, leaping and bounding and rolling and twisting your way around the space to warm up. Julie Mountain

activity

IN A TIGHT SPOT

Giant outdoor art can be tricky in small spaces, so use your walls and any vertical posts or fences to suspend temporary canvases. Giant screens and oversized painting materials also encourage your artists to be physically active in their creativity – no bad thing in cold weather. The reverse side of wallpaper or lining paper is traditionally popular for outdoor painting, but experiment with different and more testing surfaces – newspaper (absorbent and easily torn), cling film (needs very thick paint), corrugated cardboard (creates abstract marks when ‘splattered’), cotton sheets (good for marker pens), bubble wrap (a real challenge) – anything you can find really, that demands children think about how to create marks that will stay put.

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