Risk Taking Activities For Toddlers & Young Kids
Risk assessment for kids is an important part of childhood development, even if we as parents don’t like to watch. Here we go through a few risky play ideas and risk taking activities for kids to do with supervision to help with their risk assessment skills.
Risk Taking for Kids
You don’t have to be a helicopter parent to cringe when you see your kids climbing high frames or trees in the park, or playing with nails or knives. It’s totally normal to be worried.
Most parents will cringe when thinking about risk taking activities for toddlers and kids.
But it is important to allow children to learn and practice risk assessment in daily life in order to learn how to face obstacles.
Risk taking activities at home or outside is great for fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and more importantly, these risk taking activities help them learn.
Risk Taking Activities For Toddlers & Young Kids
While risk taking in childhood is really important each risk taking activity requires supervision, and most importantly, risk assessment by the child.
Here are some great examples of risky play and risk taking activities for toddlers and young kids.
1. Hammering Nails With Kids
Hammering nails probably isn’t on the top of your kids activity list for your toddler, however it is a great risk assessment activity to start with.
Kids love to hammer and bang naturally, so why not work on their hand eye coordination, and their fine motor skills to hammer some real nails (or plastic ones for real young ones)
For this risky activity you can set up a board or piece of wood and supervise your little one with some real nails.
You should demonstrate how to do the activity first and allow your child to have a turn on their own. Perhaps hammer the nail half way to start with so that it is stable, reducing the risk of harm.
Your child will learn that if they hit too hard, or put their finger in the way they could end up with a bruise.
Supervision for this risk taking activity should be one-on-one, so you can be ready to intervene at any point.
Not quite up to the real thing? Then this is the next best option.
Grab your kids one of these wooden peg toys and work your way up from there once they have practiced a bit.
Cutting Fruit With Kids
When children help in the kitchen they are more likely to try and eat new foods. A great risk taking activity for toddlers, and young kids, is cutting fruit.
For this risk taking activity for kids, you can set up a variety of fruits on a table. It could be anything. Perhaps for toddlers you can start with softer fruits and vegetables like watermelon, banana, or cucumber, and then move onto harder fruits and veg like apple, orange, pineapple, etc.
Providing your little one with different textures are great as they will need to cut differently.
To start with, you can give them a butter knife with the softer fruit and vegetables. Demonstrate how to cut the food and then allow them to practice cutting with your supervision.
With older kids or as little ones get better at the activity, you can give them a sharper knife. Use your own judgement with your child.
Children will learn so much with this risk taking activity. They need to take care when using the knife in order to avoid cutting themselves.
If you’re after a great knife for kids, this set is the perfect place to start. Kids can use them safely with a little supervision and get chopping straight away.
Climbing
Another fun risk taking activity for toddlers and kids is climbing.
No, we aren’t talking about high trees where you can’t reach them, (although that may come later) but perhaps there is a tree at the park with low branches they can practice on, or you have a climbing frame at home.
Perhaps you have a playcentre near you where there are some climbing frames or even a rock climbing centre.
Climbing is one of those risky activities where parents generally freak out and hover. However, if you start small you can learn to trust your child’s ability and watch them use their own risk assessment to judge whether they can go ahead.
Of course supervision is important, as well as starting small. Once they get better, their hand eye coordination will improve as well as their strength and movement.
Balloon Popping With Darts
This a really fun risk taking activity for kids but also anyone – who doesn’t love playing with darts! You just need to make sure the kids are well supervised with this one as you don’t want them throwing the darts around at each other.
For this activity you need some blown up balloons and some darts. For toddlers or kids starting this risky activity for the first time, you may want to fill the balloon with some water to weigh it down.
For the first one you can show them the right way to do it. Or you can also give your child a dart and guide their hand towards the balloon to help them pop it.
This is a great risk taking activity for toddlers and kids to help them learn hand-eye coordination, trial and error, and achieving a goal.
If you aren’t ready for real darts to start off with, we have another option for you! Check out these magnetic dart board below and move up from there once your little one gets the hang of it.
Risk Taking Activities
As much as it scares us, children need to be able to learn risk assessment for their own development. They see adults doing things and want to do them too.
Allowing them to participate in risky activities will help them develop skills in a safe manner teaching them so much in the process.
Let us know how you go with risky play in your home and if you try these risk taking activities for kids with your own let us know how you go.
Do you have any other risky activities for toddlers and kids that we should try? Let us know!
Fun Kids Activities
Looking for more fun kids activities? Check out these posts:
- Best kids activities to do at home
- Best backyard activities for kids
- Montessori practical life activities
- Best sensory activities for kids
Make sure you check out our Facebook Page or join our What’s on Melbourne for Kids Facebook Group if you are in the area.
