Outdoor Kansas for Kids
About O.K. Kids
O.K. Kids Day
O.K. Kids events run from early spring to fall at state parks, city parks & recreation venues, and other sites throughout the state. Events are free; however, state park entry fees vary. Check with your local park for rates.
Across the state of Kansas each year, roughly 45 sites sign up as O.K. Kids events. O.K. Kids Days offer the opportunity for participants to experience the outdoor beauty of Kansas and to learn a little about its natural resources and wildlife.
Kids participate in outdoor games and activities ranging from fishing derbies and clinics to archery, horseshoes, volleyball, sack races, bird watching and birdhouse building, hiking, bike safety clinics, and outdoor cooking contests, to name a few popular events. At the end of the day, kids go home with a new T-shirt and prizes donated by program sponsors. All events are free and many include a hot dog lunch or other meal. It's a great way for families to spend time together outdoors without spending any money!
If your community doesn't currently host an O.K. Kids event, call us and learn how easy it is to start one up yourself. Local organizations and businesses will likely be eager to offer assistance, donate resources, and pull together to ensure that kids and families in your locale experience a memorable day outdoors. After experiencing one O.K. Kids Day, your community will want to make it a yearly tradition!
Why O.K. Kids?
There was a time when Kansas kids took the outdoors for granted. They just seemed to grow up outside. True, for many, that time was spent working on the family farm, but those country kids, as well as their small-town counterparts, still found time to chase frogs down by the ponds, wander along the creeks and rivers, and scare up rabbits along the fence rows.
They were no strangers to sunrises and sunsets, nor to the feel of wind, rain, or snow on their faces. Values learned from these times - responsibility, self-reliance, hard work, sharing - carried over into the lives they led.
Times are a lot different for kids today as we enter a new millennium. We've become an urbanized society with concrete, roads, and buildings replacing fields, creeks, and trees. Video games, television, and the internet keep kids indoors. Physical education activities are distant memories in many of our schools, and obesity and social problems walk hand-in-hand down their hallways.
O.K. Kids is an opportunity to give kids all across Kansas an alternative to their sedentary lifestyles, to show them a day of fun and excitement at the state's parks, lakes, marshes, and trails.
For many of them, it will be an introduction to the beauty and enjoyment of the outdoors, for others a reawakening or reinforcing of their outdoor interests. It's a chance to have fun and be part of a statewide outdoors happening. That's the "why" of O.K. Kids!