One of the best ways to help your little ones develop a love for the outdoors is to build them a cubby, and by far the best sort of cubby is a tree house.

Just because it’s a sunny day during the school holidays doesn’t mean you can throw the kids outside and expect them to know what to do. Kids don’t get much opportunity to play freely in the great outdoors these days – they spend so much time on scheduled activities and screens that the outside world can be a little bit scary for them.

The key to helping them engage with nature is to help them find ways to use their imaginations. Once they get going, every stick will become a sword or a gun, every branch a secret lookout, and the sandpit transformed into a MasterChef kitchen.

Giving them their own secret hideout is the best way to get their imaginations soaring. Kids love to have their own place away from the adults, and if that place is among the treetops, it will foster benefits far beyond having the “coolest cubby in the neighbourhood”.

Physical activity

With the alarming rates of obesity and its knock-on health effects ricocheting throughout our society, it has never been more important to get our kids away from their digital devices and into the great outdoors.

A treehouse is a great way to encourage your kids to increase their physical activity through play. From climbing up and down ladders, pulling up supplies with the bucket-on-pulley, to fighting the invading hordes from next door, a treehouse will provide plenty of reasons for them to stay outside well past twilight.

Real life learning

If you involve your kids in the design and build process of creating the treehouse, there are some great learning opportunities available to them. From a hands-on lesson in teamwork; the physics and engineering involved in design and construction; keeping to a budget and to practical problem solving, building a treehouse is a great way for the whole family to work together.

On top of this, climbing trees exposes kids to assess and manage risk, a lesson they don’t get to practise much in today’s modern world.

Natural science

With help from a treehouse, kids will develop an understanding of the natural world, from the real world, not a documentary. The budding natural scientists will observe first hand phenomena like tree growth patterns, the effect of strong winds on a tree, the changing seasons, bird and animal life and weather patterns. Add binoculars, a rain gauge and a telescope to the treehouse and you’ll inspire your kids to observe and be absorbed by the natural world, far from the blinking screen inside the house.

Solitude

Finally, perhaps the greatest benefit is the most difficult to gauge. A treehouse gives children the chance to do nothing. From staring up at the clouds, to lying back and listening to the birds or simply letting their daydreams wash over them, a treehouse gives kids the opportunity for solitude.

And as Albert Einstein remarked, “the monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind”. Kids need these moments of stillness to process the world around them and their place in it. It’s how they become independent thinkers and free spirits.

Things to consider before you start

Not every garden has a tree with boughs large enough to accommodate a tree house. However, the sense of being surrounded by a leafy outlook could easily be achieved by a stilt house, perched high off the ground with the windows overlooking the garden. Another option is to have a structure adjacent to a tree, using the boughs for some support, and using posts dug into the ground for secondary support.

If you do have a suitable tree, consider hiring an arborist to confirm that the tree is strong and capable of supporting extra weight. You need to make sure that any boughs are strong and reliable and which ones are susceptible to rot. Those prone to rot will have to be removed, but it’s important to use proper methods to ensure that you don’t run the risk of damaging the tree. Ask your arborist for advice.

While a tree house perched high off the ground is the ultimate – for views and a sense of freedom, in reality it’s very difficult to build that high, and the safety concerns skyrocket, both in terms of wind factor, and risk of a fall – for both the builders and the children playing in it. Children’s treehouses are not usually more than three metres off the ground.

For the amateur builder simplicity is key – treehouses are already challenging enough to build, with the height factor coupled with the irregular nature of trees. Symmetry is impossible. Try to build with an element of flexibility in mind, and don’t aim for perfect unless you don’t mind finishing the house well after the kids are grown up.

Besides, for the next few summers the kids will be happy enough with a platform with a safety rail and a rope ladder, if that’s all you are able to manage – and something this simple will encourage their imaginations work a little bit harder.

Finally, the golden rule of building a treehouses is to not build too close to a neighbour’s house, and definitely don’t design the windows directly overlooking their garden. Check with your local council to confirm there are no regulations regarding the building of tree houses in your area, especially in regards to safety, height and overlooking.