Relook at Nature

Nature Activities

At this time of year I often find myself looking outside and just absorbing all the changes that happen everyday. The rich colours, the leaves falling, the abundance of berries, the birds in the sky heading south, the smell of logs burning. I love all of it.  

I thought with half term knocking on our door, that it might be good to put together a few nature orientated activities to do with children to help fill the days. I seem to be shuffling along on my dog walks and looking at all sorts of things on the ground so why not bring them inside and make something with them.

Identify Five Different Leaves & Draw Around Them

Go on a walk and pick up five different leaves. When you get home, try and identify what they are. We sometimes draw around the edge of them and then colour them in or you could cut them out as Autumn decorations.

 Build A Den

One of our all time favourites is den building. We have so many in the garden now, but it is great fun collecting branches and sticks and making something fun out of them. Storm Amy might have produced a few extra ones in your garden or some local walks. See who can make the biggest one and maybe have a picnic lunch in it to make it more exciting for your children.

 Design Your Self Portrait Using Material Found In The Garden

Now this does require a bit of imagination, but it is a really fun thing to do. Your children might thing of something totally off the wall as a pair or eyes, or stumble across something quite odd and decide to use it. It’s good to let them lead the way and see what they come up with.

 Listen For 3 Different Birds

This can obviously be done at anytime, but we have a book for the children and you press a button and it plays the sound that that particular bird makes. We then listen out for those birds on our walks. You could listen to the sounds online first and then keep an ear out on your walks. We have a lot of interesting birds around us like buzzards and kites.

 Leaf Piles

This is the activity that the children love the most and as you can imagine, we have A LOT of leaves flying around at this time of year. We try our best to gather as many as we possibly can and the children then hop of their bikes and ride as fast as they can into it. You could always run at it, but as our piles are a good 2m high it is so much fun and the children just disappear into it.