Creature Power! How Outdoor Play Helps Kids Explore and Discover Like Wild Kratts

For more than 10 years, Chris and Martin Kratt have invited kids on wild and fun creature adventures worldwide on Wild Kratts. But their interest in nature isn’t something they simply learned in a classroom as grown-ups — their passion for exploring animals and habitats started when they were young brothers playing outside!

Overthinking outdoor play can be easy. As a parent of four kids, I feel pressure to have the right outside toys, the perfect nature location, or the answers to my children’s (many) questions about animals and plants. But as the Kratt Brothers reminded me, young children learn by playing!

No fancy toys, national parks, or giant textbooks are needed to have fun (and even learn!) outside.

Just like the creatures around us, learning takes many shapes and sizes. All you need is a little time and a big imagination.

“We started out with interest in animals as kids growing up in New Jersey with our own backyard adventures,” Martin said. “We would go in the back woods, and there was a fallen tree that we called Squirrel Highway. We'd just play on it and look for animals, like finding a box turtle or seeing a deer. That's how we started our adventures in learning about the natural world.”

Playing outside — without any big plans — sparks kids’ imaginations. (And it’s also really fun for kids and grown-ups!)

“Going outside is fun. Whether you're swinging on a vine or you have the excitement of seeing a big bullfrog croaking, that excitement leads to learning,” Martin said.

You don’t have to hike to the woods to explore, either!

“Nature and creatures are all around us. Even in the middle of the city, we've got pigeons! And they actually have pretty incredible creature powers,” Martin said. (Check out the Falcon City episode of “Wild Kratts!”)

Watching creatures outside in city parks can inspire kids to play pretend, too. Giving kids the freedom to watch the birds in the sky or spot bugs on the sidewalk can encourage them to pretend that they’re birds flying or bugs crawling.

Seemingly silly playtime can spark new questions — and lead to learning.

“Unstructured time for kids is really important because it drives a lot of creativity for kids,” Chris said. “It sparks their imagination, kind of like when we named that log Squirrel Highway and ran around on it as if we were squirrels, right along with the squirrels!”

Outdoor play can often lead to big questions from kids.

“When a kid goes out into nature, they really start asking themselves a lot of questions,” Martin said. “What's that? How does this work?”

If your kids pepper you with questions, don’t worry about having all the right answers.

Instead, embrace becoming explorers together.

Encourage your budding scientist to keep asking questions. Not knowing the answers to your kids’ questions is a chance to connect. Try saying, “Hey, let’s find out together!” the next time your child asks a nature question.

Whether you look up an answer online or try to figure it out on your own outside, this helps kids learn that when they have questions, they have the power to look for answers, too.

As Chris said, this “shows them that they have the power to do something. They can go find out right now!”

Want to get outside and wondering how to begin?

Take a cue from the Kratt Brothers and call outside play time an adventure. The next time you’re going on a walk, playing in a backyard, or visiting a park, say to your child, “Do you want to go on an adventure? Let’s explore!”

While the Kratt Brothers are global adventurers, they encourage grown-ups to start small with their young kids — who are pretty great observers when spotting the tiniest creatures among us.

And you can begin adventuring outside wherever you are! (Check out these simple ways to explore animal life with your kids.)

“You don't need to go to big, exotic places like Botswana or Madagascar,” Martin said. “There's so much to explore with little creatures: the bugs, the little frogs, the tadpoles. If you just sit in the woods and just look around, you'll discover, Whoa, there's a praying mantis right there! Or, there's this little bug! Or there's a snake just coiled up that you would've missed if you just walked by.”

When playing outside, it’s OK to toss your plans aside and just be in the moment.

(It’s even OK for kids to get a little bored!)

Encourage your kids to play pretend, ask questions, and have fun — these are building blocks to becoming lifelong creature adventurers like Chris and Martin Kratt.

As Martin says, “You never know what you're going to find!”

Join Chris and Martin Kratt in “Wild Kratts,” a series for children ages 4 to 8! In each episode, the Kratt Brothers travel to a different corner of the world to meet amazing new animals and learn about them and their habitats. It’s all wrapped up in engaging stories of laugh-out-loud adventure and mystery as the Kratt Brothers activate their creature power suits to rescue their animal friends!