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Summer Activities for EYFS: 20 Ideas for the Summer Term
20 summer activities for EYFS on sun, water, the seaside and sports day, each tagged with its area of learning, with NHS sun safety built in.
The best summer activities for EYFS children happen outside in the cooler parts of the day and in the shade in between. Here are twenty, grouped around four summer-term themes: sun and shadows, water, the seaside, and sports day and moving on. Each is tagged with its EYFS area of learning, and the NHS sun-safety advice is built in rather than tacked on.
The EYFS (early years foundation stage) is England's framework for children's learning and care from birth to the end of the Reception year.
How do you keep under-fives safe in the summer sun?
Work out where the shade will fall before you choose the activities. The NHS page on sunscreen and sun safety has a section just for children. In its words, "From March to October in the UK, children should:"
- cover up with suitable clothing
- spend time in the shade, particularly from 11am to 3pm
- wear at least SPF30 sunscreen
It adds: "Apply sunscreen to areas not protected by clothing, such as the face, ears, feet and backs of hands." And for the baby room: "Children aged under 6 months should be kept out of direct strong sunlight."
Drinks matter too. The EYFS statutory framework requires fresh drinking water to be available and accessible to children at all times, so put a water station where the play is. Your setting's own sun policy covers who applies sunscreen and with what permission.
Summer makes some of the best kinds of movement easy, too. The NHS names playing in water, alongside chasing and ball games, among the kinds of active play it rates highest for getting toddlers moving.
What can EYFS children do with sunshine and shadows?
Morning is shadow time. Shadows are longest when the sun is low, which also keeps you outside the NHS's 11am to 3pm shade window.
1. Shadow tag (physical development)
The chaser doesn't touch anyone: they have to stand on your shadow. Children quickly learn to run with the sun behind them, or to hide their shadow in the shade of a tree. Play it before 11am or after 3pm, when shadows are long.
2. Which things make a shadow? (understanding the world)
Collect a wooden block, a clear plastic bottle, a leaf, a colander and a piece of coloured cellophane. Hold each up in the sun and look at the ground. Development Matters lists an object casting a shadow and light travelling through transparent material among the natural processes to explore.
3. The shade hunt (personal, social and emotional development, mathematics)
Send children to find every shady spot in the garden and count them. Which is biggest? Which is coolest to stand in? Then let them choose where the picnic blanket goes. It turns the 11am to 3pm shade advice into something they own.
4. Dress the teddy for the sun (personal, social and emotional development)
A teddy, a doll's sun hat, a T-shirt and some sunglasses. Children dress the teddy for a hot day and explain each choice, then check themselves the same way. The early learning goal for managing self includes dressing and looking after their own personal needs.
Which water activities suit a hot day in nursery?
Put the water tray in the shade and keep it there. Change the water every session, and never leave a child alone with it.
5. Painting with water (physical development)
Buckets of water and big decorators' brushes on a sunny wall or fence. The marks vanish as they dry, so the wall never fills up. Making marks with water on walls and other large upright surfaces is one of the ideas in Development Matters for building big shoulder and arm movements.
6. Sink or float? (understanding the world)
A tub of water and a basket of things: a cork, a key, an apple, a sponge, a pebble, a plastic boat. Children guess first, then test. Development Matters names a boat floating on water as a process to observe. Ask what happens to the sponge as it soaks up water.
7. Full, half full, empty (mathematics)
Jugs, cups and bottles of different sizes in the water tray. Fill one, pour it into another, and talk about what happened: it's full, it overflowed, there's only a little left. Comparing capacity is part of early maths, and spills are the fun part.
8. The ice cube race (understanding the world)
Put one ice cube on a plate in the sun and another on a plate in the shade. Check every five minutes and draw what you see. The early learning goal for the natural world includes understanding changing states of matter, and children can predict the winner before you start.
How do you bring the seaside into nursery?
Not every child has been to the beach, and not every family goes away in summer. These work whether a child's holiday was a week in Cornwall or a trip to the park.
9. The seaside café (communication and language, mathematics)
Set up an ice cream kiosk with playdough scoops, cones from card and a tin of coins. Customers order, servers count out change, and everyone argues about flavours. Model new words: cone, wafer, sprinkles, change.
10. Crab walks and starfish jumps (physical development)
Crabs walk sideways on hands and feet, tummies up. Starfish jump out wide and back in. Seagulls swoop with arms out, and jellyfish wobble on the spot. Call the animals in any order, faster each time, across the grass.
11. Writing in wet sand (literacy, physical development)
A tray of damp sand, a stick and a shell. Children draw, make marks and try the first letter of their name, then smooth it flat and start again. Development Matters suggests large-scale sensory mark-making, such as fingers in wet sand.
12. What goes in the suitcase? (understanding the world, communication and language)
A small case and a pile of clothes: sun hat, wellies, swimming costume, woolly hat, raincoat. Is today a trip somewhere hot or somewhere cold? Children pack and explain. It brings in talk about places families visit, near and far.
13. A postcard from somewhere (literacy)
Children draw somewhere they've been, a beach, a grandparent's house or the swings, and make marks or write their name on the back. Post them in a class postbox and deliver them at home time.
Which sports day activities work in the EYFS?
Sports day for under-fives is about taking part, taking turns and trying again. Practise in short bursts in the weeks before. Our sports day games have more races by age.
14. Beanbag balance walk (physical development)
A beanbag on the head, or flat on an open hand, and a walk along a chalk line without dropping it. It's the safe practice run for egg and spoon. Make the line wiggly once straight is easy.
15. Ready, steady, go turns (personal, social and emotional development)
Every child gets a turn holding the flag and starting a race, and every child cheers the others home. The early learning goal for building relationships includes working and playing cooperatively and taking turns with others, and the flag makes waiting worth it.
16. Beach ball catch (physical development)
A big, light beach ball and two hands. Throw it gently to each other, and take one step back after every catch. Drop it and you step forward. Ball skills are on the Development Matters list for the 3 and 4-year-old band.
How do you get children ready to move on?
The end of the summer term is a change for everyone: Reception for some, a new room for others, Year 1 for the oldest.
17. The "I can do it now" book (personal, social and emotional development)
Each child draws, or you photograph, three things they can do now that they couldn't at the start of the year: zip a coat, pour a drink, climb the frame. Read it back together before the holidays.
18. Playing schools (personal, social and emotional development, communication and language)
Set up a pretend classroom with a coat peg, a register, a lunch tray and a bell. Take turns being the teacher. Our guide to starting school readiness covers the skills Reception teachers will be glad to see.
19. Me then, me now (understanding the world)
A baby photo next to a photo from this week, and the question: what's changed? Check with families first, and offer a drawing instead of a photo for any child who doesn't have one. It links neatly to the past and present early learning goal.
20. The seaside story on the mat (physical development)
A calm end to a hot morning, indoors or in deep shade, using five poses from our Freedom Flow mat, all done on the floor. A crab scuttles over the rocks (crab). A fish swims in a rock pool (fish). A shark glides past out at sea (shark). A boat sails home (boat). Then everyone lies back on the warm sand at sunset (happy baby, pose 13).
How might a hot nursery day run?
Put the busy activities either side of the hottest hours. A day built from this list:
- Before 11am, outside: shadow tag, then which things make a shadow, then crab walks and starfish jumps.
- 11am to 3pm, in the shade or indoors: the water tray under a gazebo, the seaside café, writing in wet sand and the seaside story on the mat.
- After 3pm, outside again: the beanbag balance walk and beach ball catch, with hats back on and sunscreen topped up.
More ideas for the long school holiday that follows are in our summer holiday activities at home.
For the mat story, a cleared carpet or a shady patch of flat, dry ground works, never wet grass. If you'd like enough mats for a group, our page for nurseries and schools explains how settings order. At home, one children's yoga mat is plenty: it measures 183 x 61 cm, suits ages 3 to 8, and is long enough for you as well.
For the same approach in other weather, our outdoor activities for EYFS are sorted by rain, cold, wind and sun. The spring activities for EYFS come before this term, and physical development in the EYFS sets out, for parents, what all this running about is building.
What about children who find hot, busy days hard?
Some children wilt in the heat, and some find sports day noise too much. Neither is a problem to fix.
Keep a quiet, shady corner with water and a few books, and let any child go there without asking. For sports day, give a child who hates crowds a job: holding the flag, handing out stickers, or ringing the bell for the last race. If a child seems unwell in hot weather, follow the NHS advice on heat exhaustion: move them somewhere cool, give them a drink, cool their skin with water and stay with them, then tell their parents. Call NHS 111 for advice if cooling them down isn't working, and 999 if they're still unwell after 30 minutes of resting and cooling, or if they're confused, have a fit or lose consciousness.
Frequently asked questions
What are good summer topics for EYFS?
Four carry most summer terms: sun, shade and shadows; water; the seaside and holidays; and sports day and moving on to the next class. Each one mixes movement with maths, talk and the natural world, and the last one doubles as transition work. Minibeasts and growing are usually spring topics, but they run happily into June.
What summer activities are good for preschoolers at home?
Most of the twenty here work in a garden, a park or a yard: shadow tag, painting with water, sink or float in a washing-up bowl, and the beach ball. Keep the busy ones for the morning or late afternoon and the quiet ones for the middle of the day. Our summer holiday activities at home have more.
How hot is too hot to play outside at nursery?
The EYFS framework doesn't set a temperature. It expects access to outdoor play or, failing that, outdoor activities every day, unless something like unsafe weather rules it out. So settings judge it on the day. On hot days, follow the NHS: shade, particularly from 11am to 3pm, suitable clothing and at least SPF30. Keep drinking water on hand too, as the EYFS requires.
What should children wear for summer at nursery?
A sun hat, ideally a wide-brimmed one that shades the face, neck and ears, and a light top that covers the shoulders. The NHS says children should cover up with suitable clothing from March to October. Put sunscreen on the parts clothing misses, and send a named water bottle. Check your setting's sun policy for what they apply.
