Outdoor Fall Activities You Can Still Enjoy Despite COVID

With winter closing in on us, it’s important to make sure we still enjoy the fall weather outdoors while we can! The temptation to hole up may already be strong, but we will have many months of sedentary activity already without adding the good weather of October and November. So why not get out for some educational activities outside this fall?

 Here’s some ideas to get you moving – safely and socially distanced!

Pick Your Own

As small business owners ourselves, we strongly encourage people to consider supporting other small business owners in these tough times. One of the easy ways that we can do that is to support some of the local farms that we have already known and loved in the past for pick-your-own activities. Hey, after all, it’s apple season, and Halloween is just around the corner!

Orchards like Carl Laidlaw Orchards and Albion Orchards are still allowing people to visit for apple or pumpkin picking, as long as families are following the proper social distancing requirements. And these are just a couple… there are many, many more farms in the Toronto area that are open for business. Please visit the websites of farms near you to learn about any restrictions they may have.

Get holiday decorations up early

As a parent, you may have already heard some disappointed commentary from your children about how “Halloween may be ruined” this year. Or Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, you name it.

It’s true that some of the more traditional holiday activities may have to change, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy them. Why not put a little bit more effort into decorating for the holidays than you usually do? You might find that it appeases children by making sure that one of their favourite holidays might be different this year, but most definitely not forgotten.

Inside or outside, kids can be a huge help decorating for the holidays (we highly recommend them for untangling and stringing lights below waist level) – and it’s great exercise for everybody. You can still tour around the neighbourhood to enjoy everyone else’s efforts too!

Take a little inspiration from Calvin & Hobbes

Calvin loves the great outdoors – it’s where his imagination gets to run wild. It seems a little simple to get back to nature in such a basic way, but some of the oldest and most solitary outdoor activities are still the best ones. Amazingly, they can be highly educational in an unexpected way.

 Go fishing, go hiking, rake the leaves and jump into the piles, find dark places to watch the stars, do a little extra biking, find some lonely outdoor places and play a little make believe.

As Bill Watterson said, it’s a magical world. We may as well enjoy it!