Tag Archives: Learning About Nature

Fun Ways to Spend Quality Time with your Children both Indoors and Outdoors this Easter

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Sometimes we are all guilty of spending too much time on technology, and now that the weather is improving we should all be putting down our TV remotes and phones and getting outside! (I know that you’re thinking about doing that now, as you read this blog post on a piece of tech, but please bare with me as I have some great activities you’ll want to be inspired by I’m sure!)

So where to begin! If you’re not naturally adventurous for the great outdoors it can seem a bit overwhelming! So how about we just start small! I have come up with a range of things to suit everyone, outdoorsy types and not so much! All you need to do is choose one of these to do each day during the school break or even at the Easter weekend and voila you have some outdoor fun, nature related or outdoor activity to enjoy!

Here are my 15 “Things We Can Do” of Fun Ideas to do Indoors and Outdoors… Weather Dependent!

🥚 Use Nature in a Painting – Use sticks or leaves to paint with!

🥚 Spot a Bird of Prey – Look up and see what is flying above your head!

🥚 Find Some Minibeasts and Draw Them from Memory – Bugs can be colourful and interesting!

🥚 Take a Walk in 4 Different Types of Weather – No matter what the weather it can be fun to take a walk!

🥚 Go For a Walk and Find Some Puddles to Jump in – Who doesn’t like jumping in a puddle! Wear wellies!

🥚 Have a Musical Morning, Listening or Playing – Music can help you relax!

🥚 Do Some Finger Painting – Draw the trunk of a tree and make the leaves with your fingers!

🥚 Play Eye-Spy on a Family Walk – Eye Spy is great for a range of ages!

🥚 Do a Jigsaw on a Rainy Day – Jigsaws can be a fun family activity on a rainy day or a board game!

🥚 Build a Den or Fort Together – Who doesn’t love building a den! Cushions and Throws work well!

🥚 Draw and then Colour in something you’ve seen in Nature on your Walk, a Rainbow, Tree, Flower etc

🥚 Design your own Dream Car or Dream House (for older children to imagine)

🥚 Create Post for a Loved One and Walk to a Post Box to Send it – Draw a Picture or Write a Letter

🥚 Have an Afternoon of MESS with Messy Play or Fun with Paint or Food items – Paint and Rice Crispies…

🥚 Read More! Read as a Family, decide on what your Favourite Book is and why – Books help you learn!

🥚 Nature Hunter Gatherers – Collect some things from in your local area to look at when you get home such as leaves and pinecones, things that have fallen from trees and bushes. Don’t deliberately destroy nature though! Fallen Leaves are great, discover what tree they come from by looking at the shape!

The image above is from when my son and I did a day of Nature Hunter Gatherers. It was a lovely warm day and we spent six hours outside having fun, games and walking. This activity is great for learning about where things come from such as pinecones and feathers. Make sure you do this on a dry day. We took a long walk through our village and picked up things that we found on the ground. Leave them somewhere cool and dry for a few days to dry out and make sure there are no creatures living in them before you handle them again!

I highly recommend getting some coloured trays like these, they were only £3 for a pack of 3 from
The Works. Perfect for both Art and Craft and collecting things too!

✩✩✩

Picking Up Litter

If your children are a little older than mine you might want to pop gloves on when you go on your walk, take a plastic bag with you, and do a litter picking up hour in your local village or town. This helps the environment and the animals and birds in your area from getting injured.

🥚 Easter Ideas 🥚

You could also do Easter themed Drawings, Colouring In and Games such as an Easter Egg Hunt in your house or garden this weekend.

Check out my previous Easter blog posts for Art and Craft ideas and Baking fun… Here…

Thank you for reading this blog post today! I hope that I have inspired you to do at least one of these activities with your own family. Let me know in the comments section or on my social media if you get up to anything fun in the next few weeks!

✩ Sabrina ✩

Introducing Children to Nature with Fun and Games

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There are many ways to introduce toddlers and young children to nature. No matter where you live there will always be something to see. So here are my top tips on how you can start showing off the nature where you live, to your children. It’s never too early to start learning!

And I am sure that David Attenborough would agree with me when I say that “You’re never too young or too old to learn about the world around you”.

By making things fun children are more likely to learn and remember the information you are portraying. You can still stay safe at home but enjoy nature around where you live by keeping to social distancing guidelines.

Here are my Top 5 things to do at Home but Outside! Be it in your Garden or if you don’t have one you could just go on a Walk around your village or town or park. It may be lockdown but that doesn’t stop you walking socially distanced from other families.

Children are more likely to learn and listen if you turn things into fun and a game. So why not make your own games up, or take a look at my ideas below.

1. Bird Spotting
2. Bug Finding
3. Pick a Creature – Try To Find It
4. What Is That I See? What Is Around My Home
5. Eye Spy Lockdown Edition

1. Bird Spotting is easy enough to do, take a notepad and pen with you and write everyone’s names at the top. Make columns down the page and write down every different sort of bird that you spot. The person who spots the most species of birds is the winner!

2. Bug Finding is great fun in a small space, depending on how old your children are you could just spot basic bugs and say things like “Beetle” or “Spider” or you can go into what type of bug you are looking at such as “Stag Beetle” etc. You could even ask little ones to draw what they saw on the walk from their memory when you get back home.

3. Pick a Creature is a great game to play with children who already know what certain animals are. Take a walk and get everyone to pick something, one person might count Crows, the other Cats, another Pigeons, but whatever it is they have to keep score of their creature until you get home.

4. What is that I see? Use your knowledge of things around where you live and discuss things with your children like the seasons, if there are evergreen trees, what colour the flowers are you can find, any buildings and their purpose etc.

5. Eye Spy Lockdown Edition is literally eye spy but your children are only allowed to pick one type of thing during your walk. You could say just birds, or just objects, whatever is best for your children’s age.

Books I Recommend

I recently invested in several books for my son who is two and a half. He is interested in matching things up lately so I thought books with pictures of things to spot when we go out for a walk are ideal. I also have a number of nature books I have collected over my lifetime, anything with large pictures and easy to see nature depicting scenes are engaging for most children.

“Usborne Minis” are Great little books ideal to carry with you on a walk, and they have a range so you could pick which is most relevant to you and where you live, for example Birds, Trees or Bugs. There are always National Trust books and also RSPB for birds. Another great book I own is the DK Pocket Nature Wildlife of Britain book, it’s a few years old now but has excellent photography and information about British wildlife.

Of course you can always use a search engine on your phone to find out what you’ve seen, but the joy of these sorts of books is being able to mark things off when you have spotted them. The Usborne Mini book set have stickers for you to place on a grid inside the book in order to tick them off. This is great because you also have to identify the sticker as well as the creature or tree for example. Simple but it’s still learning at its best.

Thank you for reading this post today, I hope I have inspired you to get out and about in your area with your children (or just your other half). I have many more lockdown friendly ideas coming up over the next few weeks, so please check back another time if you enjoyed this post.

Have a lovely week!

✩ Sabrina ✩