How to spend your days going #30DaysWild
When I had a baby, I was told that if I ever needed to calm my child, heading outside, or seeking water would do the trick, and I have found as I attempt to chaotically navigate raising a small human being, this maxim to be true.
Nature can be a fantastic resource to help us to entertain our children, encourage them to learn and to burn off some of that endless energy.
Despite us knowing that getting outside is both beneficial to our physical and mental health, research in 2018 found that British children spend an average of seven hours outside a week, with around a fifth of children not getting outside at all on a typical day. Increase of technology usage, fear for children’s safety and lack of access to green spaces are being blamed, with one in nine children not going to a park, beach, woods, or similar environment in over a year. But being a parent can be hard; its often busy and exhausting, and coming up with activities isn’t always easy. Below are a few different activities Jacca and i tried.
How we went #30DaysWild
Texture collection
We did this activity in the garden, but you could head to your nearest green space to do this too. We had a little wander around and looked at a variety of items that had different textures and gathered them into a collection. We looked at how things can be fluffy, rough, soft, hard, crumbly, holding them in our hands, smelling them, discussing the colours. This was a tactile activity which encouraged creativity and exploration.
Rockpooling
We are extremely lucky to live near the beach and rockpools are endless sources of curiosity for children of all ages. Rockpooling provides hours of fun, a way to explore different animals, understand what creatures live in different habitats, and you can also develop games – who can find a crab first? Who can find something red? How many snails can you count? Any animals and any rocks we lifted were placed back exactly as we found them.
Paint with outdoor tools
Jacca isn’t one for standard painting, I have to encourage him to keep going and not just pour the water all over the surface, so switching it up and ditching the paintbrush had the potential to be more interesting. We hunted in the garden for a good paintbrush-sized stick and then he grabbed a handful of long grass. We tied the grass to the stick using a reusable garden tie, winding it tightly so the grass wouldn’t move and then Jacca got painting. He used the grass, dipping it in and out of different colours and even used the stick to have a go. I found a feather to try too, and you could select other natural things as this would be a good way to explore using different items as tools.
Explore a pond
My parents have an amazing pond, years of nurture have made it an amazing wildlife spot and it always draws Jacca’s attention when we visit. Previous interest has mostly been about what he can throw into it, but as he gets older he is taking more interest in the creatures that live inside, especially the newts! We were fortunate enough to spy damselflies, dragonflies, and some frogs, including a little one who had to be moved – the perfect chance to see a young frog close up. And of course, one or two stones got chucked in for good measure.
Nature Stew
This is one of Jacca’s favourite games. I got him a large bowl, spoon and a small jug of water. I then encouraged him to explore the setting, and he collected different ‘ingredients’ to add to his stew – which he told me was for the badgers. He got mud, stones, bark, grass, leaves, flowers and added them to the bowl, before pouring in water and stirring it with the spoon to make a ‘stew’. This activity was tactile and sparked Jacca’s imagination, with him searching the garden for different items and commenting how they mixed in the water – mud and stones were the favourites.
Colour match
This was a fun activity that saw Jacca racing around the garden. We took an egg box and coloured in each section it with different colours that I thought he was likely to find in the garden at the time (I left one blank for white). I then challenged him to find an item in the garden that matched the colour and pop it in the box. He loved running around the garden, looking for things that matched the colours and then building a mini collection in the egg box. This was great for practicing colours, problem solving, observation skills and the box with the bits in had to come inside with us, be tipped out on the floor and explored in a differ manner inside.
Look for insects
I started handling invertebrates with Jacca when he was very small, wanting thim to learn to respect wildlife and also to try and avoid any fears. These days he is quite confident with invertebrates and enjoys looking for them in the garden and gently handling them with close supervision. This activity was great for his observation skills and concentration, as well as helping to encourage a love of bugs as we looked at the huge variety in creepy crawlies.
Join your local wildlife trust for a kids’ activity
We will be joining our local Wildlife Trust for an outing this month to get outside, have some fun and get closer to nature. Check out your local Wildlife Trust to see what they have going on; most branches do child-specific activities for young ages and upwards and it’s a great opportunity to socialise with other children of a similar age and have a good day out.
Make bird feeder
There are all sorts of variations on how to make a bird feeder, the most popular using a pinecone, however we decided to make one using an old plastic milk bottle we had. We cleaned it out and left it to dry before I cut a panel out, large enough for a small bird to get in and out. We hunted around for the perfect stick, one that would support birds to sit on and made a hole in the back of the bottle and threaded it through, so that birds can sit inside and feed comfortably. We filled it up with seed then tied some garden string around the top and hung it up. This was a fun activity that helped with gross motor skills, but it was also a good opportunity to discuss looking after our garden birds and why we need to care for nature.
Create a water feeder
As the weather heats up, providing water for wildlife is important. We grabbed a ceramic bowl from the shed, collected some stones to put inside. We put in one or two large ones, just places for animals to perch upon if they needed.
Wildflower scatter
We sectioned off another small part of the garden to dedicate to wildflowers this year and I asked Jacca to help me plant them. After I had prepped the soil, he helped me to open the packets, scatter the seeds, cover them with soil and water them. This all sounds simple, but that toddler heavy handedness definitely caused some chaos! Seeds were poured into large piles, some of them were drowned by over watering and the compost ended up in many places it wasn’t supposed to! But it was a good activity for exploring seed shapes and practicing fine motor skills - once he finally listened to my instructions! We will see what makes it when things start to bloom.
Sink or float?
This is an activity we have played on several occasions at the beach, by the river or at home in a bucket. It is always a hit because it involves throwing things into water and creating a splash. The rules are simple – you collect natural items from nearby the water source and throw them in the water and see if they sink or float. Stones, leaves, sticks, feathers – anything in your local surrounding can be used providing they are natural. Mud and sand are interesting to introduce as well because they ‘dissolve’ so this introduces a different element and can help with object permeance.
(c) Alexandra Pearce-Broomhead
(c) Alexandra Pearce-Broomhead
Alexandra Pearce-Broomhead
What else we've been up to
As you can see, we've been keeping ourselves busy. Below are some more activities that we did to go 'wild'
- Played Pooh sticks
- Weather watching
- Listen to birdsong
- Outdoor picnic
- Reading nature books
- Pebble collecting
- Creating a seaweed collection
- Climbing a tree
- Playing 'match the leaf - where you match leaves
- Playing in the mud (a firm fav)
- Looking for insects
- Puddle jumping
-Setting up a trail cam to see what wildlife gets up to at night
- Planting a sunflower seed (nothing like healthy competition)
- Litter picking
-Making seed bombs
As you can see we got up to a lot. We really enjoyed our time out in nature and will try to contine these until next June. Until then, Jacca and I hope your 30 Days Wild challenge has been as enjoyable as ours.
Alexandra is a writer, naturalist and mum who works from her home in Cornwall.