At the Royal Horticultural Show in Cardiff this weekend our Education and Youth Officer gave a talk about how we can reconnect children with nature in our gardens, allotments or local green spaces. We whizzed through an A – Z of fun and free activities you can do with young people that will connect both children and adults with the nature on their doorstep. Here they are for you to enjoy.
A – Acorn People – In autumn get out and gather seeds and nuts just a like squirrel would. With a bit of creativity and PVA glue you can transform nature’s litter into fantastic acorn people, a great way to get children thinking about the different sources of food available during the colder months.
B –Big Garden Birdwatch – Every year January is an important month for the RSPB we ask members and the wider public to spare one hour to survey the birds in their garden. We provide all the resources to help you ID your garden visitors and then use your results to build an important picture of garden bird populations across the UK. You can look out on the RSPB website for the dates of the 2014 bird watch. If you’re keen to get started sooner you could keep your own records throughout the year, there are lots of apps and websites you can use to keep track of the birds you have seen e.g. birdtrack. If you have lots of magpies visiting your garden there is an app and website called magpie mapper, a really simple way for all ages to record birds.
C- Caterpillar Magic – This is a simple but great way to witness a bit of nature’s magic first hand. Start by finding a caterpillar in the garden, carefully put it in a glass container with a lid and provide some plants for the hungry caterpillar (preferably the plant you found it on.) Check your caterpillar every day, keep it fed and take the lid off every now and again to give it some fresh air. Its then just a waiting game until eventually...they turn into a chrysalis and then a beautiful butterfly to be set free in your garden.
D- Dried flowers – Why just enjoy your plants in the spring and summer? Beautiful flowers can be enjoyed all year round. Pick them just before they start to look a bit sorry for themselves and hang them up in a well circulated area, try to separate each flower so they are not touching. Once they have dried you can use them for all sorts of crafts; make a mobile, make soap, map a photo frame or collages, make badges the list is endless.
E – Easy to grow plants – that are good for wildlife . Don’t set yourself up for too big of a challenge when gardening with children, stick to those plants that are easy to grow. I think the sunflower is the best you can grow, it’s simple, grows to giant size and is great for wildlife.
F- Food Glorious Food There’s nothing more satisfying than eating your own grown food and there’s no reason why children couldn’t grow their own food. Think creatively, plant basil and make your own pesto, use your fruit for a easy to bake fruit crumble or whizz up your spring veg into a delicious healthy soup. Even the fussiest eaters couldn’t resist something they had grown themselves!
G- Go bark rubbing – A classic, if you are lucky enough to have trees in your garden go bark rubbing, all it takes is some crayons, paper and energy you can make fantastic patterns, these can then be used for anything, gift wrap for Birthdays or Christmas, book covers for school or just a drawing to stick on the fridge.
H-Homes for nature – There is a wide range of designs available on the internet including bat boxes, nest boxes for birds, hogitats, frogitats and insect hotels. Collect together materials already in your garden, shed or home and upcycle them to create a wildlife friendly garden feature and shelter for your garden visitors.
I – invite birds into your garden – I have found the best way to invite people to my home is by offering them food! Birds are the same, providing a source of food and water is the best way to invite them into your garden. Making bird food can be easy and fun, making bird cake is a great hands on way to help children understand what our garden visitors eat. You can mix many ingredients together to make bird cakes including lard, seeds, nuts, fruit, cheese, digestive biscuits. Alternatively make an apple feeder by chopping an apple in half and pushing in sunflower seeds. If you’re really stuck for ingredients thread some string through a handful of cheerios and hang them up in a tree or on your washing line.
J- Junk re use things – Children are incredibly creative and modern day children have been brought up with the ideas of recycling. Save your tins to plant up seeds, turn your orange juice cartons into bird feeders, use household waste to make your own minibeast hotel!
K- Know your snails – Find out if your snails have a homing instinct – put some brightly water based paint on their shells, remove them from where you found them and then keep an eye out- will they return to the area you found them in? or have you discovered a way of keeping the snails off your lettuce?
L- Label it with Eco information Lots of people make labels for their garden, why not get children to do them. Think about adding some other information like the types of species you can expect to find on this plant, give your plant a nickname or write what you like about it.
M- Moth Trapping – Moth trapping is incredible, you need to buy or borrow all the equipment but it is well worth it. You will be amazed by the diversity of Lepidoptera visiting your garden while you sleep! Peak season is July and August when several hundred moths can be found every morning. The trap needs to be put out at dusk and left on overnight, come out at first light to find your catch, Identifying them at first can be daunting as moths are notoriously difficult to identify, however just seeing these fantastic creatures up close is always enough for me.
N-Natural Crowns Autumn leaves can be great for making natural crowns, using card, glue or sticky tape stick your natural litter to your crown and be a wild king or queen for a day.
O-Origami Plant Pots – These can be as complicated or as simple as you like, if you are an origami master start from scratch using one piece of paper, however if you are not an origami type simply cut four slits in a kitchen roll tube and fold them inwards to create a totally free up cycled plant pot.
P-Pebbles – Our cold blooded friends insects need bare open rocks to warm up so why not jazz up some pebbles, paint them with bright colours or even paint insects onto them. Makes your garden look great too.
Q-Quest – If you have a well loved garden visitor why not bring them to life by sending your children letters from their visitor. Letters from Harry the hedgehog can bring to life favourite species and motivate children to transform habitats for them – Harry might ask them to make a leaf pile, or plant wildlife friendly seeds, he might even ask them to leave food out for them. The children can reply to Harry showing him what they have done!
R-Rainbows Colours are all over the place, all year round. You can make your own sticky rainbow by sticking some double sided sticky tape onto card, then set your children on a mission to find every colour of the rainbow in nature.
S-Seed packets/seed swap – When your plants are producing seeds why not collect them and make your own seed packets? You could include all sorts of information like the species they support, how to look after them and where they grow best. Lots of places are now doing seed swaps where you can trade in some of your seeds for a new variety. You could even sell your seeds and donate the money to charity.
T-Trails – sensory/scent trails – Why do trails have to be visual? Set your children a trail using other senses e.g. find a plant that smells like mint, find a plant that feels soft or prickly, find a plant that smells like curry. This kind of trail is really fun and doesn’t require any of map reading skills.
U-Underwater Life – sink a pond and open your eyes. Sinking a pond is one of the best things you can do for wildlife in your garden, not only do species need a source of water to drink but they need water to be able to clean themselves. A pond doesn’t have to be major landscaping work you can simply dig a hole for a washing up bowl plant aquatic plants and let nature it do its stuff. Within weeks you will be finding pond life such as pond skaters, water beetles, pond snails and maybe even frogspawn. Once you discover these underwater species you will realise that you might have been looking at biodiversity in your garden with one eye closed.
V-Video Changes in your garden with a time lapse camera or nest box camera There are lots of video cameras available at the moment that do very smart things. Time lapse cameras can capture plants growing or birds feeding. Nest box cameras can give you a front row seat for spring, watching the eggs hatch and the chicks fledge.
W-Wormery Earthworms are hardworking gardeners, they are slimy, squirmy and kids love them. Why not set up a wormery? You can buy special wormery kits or make your own with a large plastic box. Kids will love feeding their worms with left over’s and then spreading your free compost to help their plants grow.
X- Xylophone make a natural xylophone, use a beater to explore the sounds of nature, is it hollow? Does it make a high pitched sound?
Y-Your Very Own Pet Dandelion A great way to appreciate what lots of people consider as a weed. First your children should find a dandelion then place some crocks at the base of their plant pot. Following this you should half-fill the pot with soil or compost. You will need to help them to dig up a dandelion - they must get most of the long taproot up with it, without which it will quickly die. (The taproot is the straight, tapering root growing vertically downwards and forming the centre from which subsidiary rootlets emerge.)Help your children to plant it in the pot, and firm it in with more soil or compost. Let them water it well, and then put it on a windowsill. Look at it regularly. They should see it grow buds, then the flowers will open, then they will die, and finally the seed clocks will form. Their dandelion should grow quite a few flowers. They can count how many it grows, then see if they can guess how many seeds it has produced - hundreds!
Z- Zzzzz sleep wild in your back garden. Sleeping out in your garden can be one of the best ways to connect children with nature. Listen out to the sounds of the night and try to identify who visits your garden at night, doing this in spring will provide you with the opportunity to wake up to nature’s very special dawn chorus.
To learn more about disconnection with nature and the challenge it poses for conservationists in the future why not read our Every Child Outdoors Wales document by clicking on this link.