Be inspired by these totally amazing ideas for outdoor play spaces, with dens, nooks, climbing structures, mud kitchens, imaginative small world play and more! The one-stop shop for finding play space inspiration for your backyard, garden or outdoor classroom!
Over on my Imagination Tree FB page I often share inspirational images and ideas for outdoor play and learning, as nature play and creativity is one of my biggest passions as both a teacher and educator. Not surprisingly, these ideas are so popular with all my readers and I’ve decided to round up the best ones into visual collections so that you can find them all in one places and refer back to them frequently when you need more ideas!
They’re being featured in photo collages with the links to the actual projects below each one.
56 incredibly inspiring outdoor play spaces for kids!
Firstly, let’s get inspired by these gorgeous outdoor cooking areas and mud kitchens! There are SO many of these around to be inspired by at the moment, but these particular ones caught my eye for being child-sized and natural in their set up. There are also some lovely storage baskets for displaying loose materials in easy distance.
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Next let’s look at these amazing play structures! If only I had the space for some of these!
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Dens, forts and nooks are amongst my absolute favourite type of outdoor playspace for kids! These are all wonderful and use a great range of materials. The sandpit in a boat is simply genius too, as is the natural climbing and sliding structure- perfect!
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Here are some more, similarly inspiring large play structures and dens.
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More wonderful features to add to the outdoor play and learning environments! How incredible is that boat and the puddle jumping! Perfection.
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Hobbit play structure (amazing!)
I would love to see every one of these in every outdoor classroom! Shallow streams are my kids absolute favourite place to play!
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Natural loose parts and a mirror
And these are just irresistible little seating and small world play areas!
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And these are some of the most inspiring ideas for diverse small world play I’ve seen! The ball chutes wall is awesome too for so many motor skills.
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And here are yet more fantastic mud kitchens, car ramps and free play spaces! Inspiring.
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Loose parts in construction play
Lastly, how wonderful are these DIY additions to the backyard playspace?! Brilliant.
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Up-cycled chairs for imaginative play
And here are some fun ideas for outdoor play and learning from my own site right here too!
Plant a vegetable garden together
Still not enough ideas?! Come and follow my Outdoor Play and Learning Pinterest Board too!
If you enjoyed this outdoor play spaces post please pin it for easy reference in future!
See all our other outdoor play ideas here in the archives!
The outdoor environments are truly inspiring. I just love the dinosaur garden!
Thanks so much Cynthia! There are some very creative people out there!
Absolutely amazing!! Love them all! I so wish I had the money to buy all this for my little Princess…. Very good source of ideas. Thank you so much. Love your page.
Such a great post full of ideas and inspiration Anna! Thanks for including our chair bus and construction quarry area. So much to love about outdoor play 🙂