Family Fun

The natural world can inspire all of us to get a bit creative! Have fun watching the whole family express themselves by making some art with nature.

Head outside and gather some natural objects to use alongside your other materials and tools. While you look, let the scenery stimulate your imagination. Once you’re happy with your collection, it’s time to create!

You could:

• Make a colourful collage
• Print the shapes of leaves or pebbles with paint.
• Build a made-up creature from pine cones, petals and twigs.
• Create a picture of your home using the things you’ve found.
• Draw pictures of everyone’s favourite flowers.

When you’ve finished, you can put what you’ve made on display for everyone to see. They make great talking points when visitors come round and they’re a wonderful reminder of the time you’ve spent together. 

Give your family green fingers by growing together in the garden. It’s a fun, educational and rewarding way to spend time together outside. It’s also brilliant for boosting biodiversity and supporting the environment where you live. Hurrah!  

Here are some things you could try.

• Grow a sunflower: The cheerful sight of a big yellow sunflower never ceases to raise a smile. Pot up your seeds inside and wait until they’re established before putting them outdoors. Don’t forget to write your names on your pots so you can see whose flower grows the tallest!
• Plant a rainbow: Head to your local garden centre and pick out the most colourful flowers you can find. At home you can have fun arranging them in different patterns and deciding where they’ll go. They’ll brighten the place up, and our moods with them.  
• Scatter wildflower seeds: Help your neighbourhood become a happy place for pollinators and other friendly creatures by spreading some native wildflower seeds. Pick a patch of garden you don’t mind leaving alone and scatter your seeds gently across the soil. Everyone can have a turn at watering them, tending to them and trying to identify what comes up. 

‘Green exercises’ like walking, running or cycling outdoors can be utterly rejuvenating for our minds and bodies. They can help clear our heads of worries and make us feel much better about ourselves. When we do them together, we also get a boost from being in each others’ company.

What you do with the family, and when, will be guided by the nature you have nearby. It’s helpful to know that any time you spend being physically active in the fresh air is well worth your while. Even a five minute outdoor stroll can help calm anxious or overactive brains.

You could:

• Ramble in the woods – have fun exploring trails among the trees.
• Take the dog for a wander – along a towpath, across a common, or on a tree-lined track.
• Walk along a coastal path – end the day building sandcastles on the beach, or with a paddle in the sea.
• Cycle around a country park – pack some binoculars, and a picnic for an extra treat.
• Go kayaking or canoeing on a calm lake – enjoy being out on the water.
• Run around a field – see who can reach the big tree or closest corner first!

Whatever you choose, remember to pause and admire your surroundings every now and again. Talk to each other about what you can see. Someone might have spotted something in the landscape that you haven’t!

Before doing any of these, check if the weather and conditions are safe and wear appropriate clothing. 

The sight, excitement and unique songs of our native birds can bring us so much joy. Time can absolutely fly by watching hoppy sparrows, happy robins or wagtails warbling. Everyone has a favourite!  

Get the family feeling more connected to our feathered friends with some bird-friendly activities. You can do these in the park, your garden, or while on a walk.

• Play ‘Spot the birdie’ – see who can count the most birds and get extra points if you can name them.
• Tune into the bird songs you hear – have fun trying to repeat their melodies.
• Take some pencils and paper outside and draw the birds you see – colour them in however you like.

Got access to a garden or shared green space? Work together to help provide birds with the things they need to thrive.

• Build (or buy) a birdhouse – to give winged visitors a place to rest. 
• Fill a bird feeder with tasty treats – pop it near a window where everyone can watch the species that come and go.

Remember: cats can be dangerous to our local birds, so always try to set bird-attracting things up safely. That means out of reach of quick claws.

Picnics are always a real treat. The pleasure that comes from packing up your family’s favourite foods, flinging a blanket on the ground, and settling down for a marvellous meal together in nature just can’t be denied. Let’s not forget the mood-boosting benefits of fresh air too.

Part of the fun can be picking a place to go – nature gives us so much choice!

• Will it be a woodland where we can get away from it all?
• An open field where we can stretch out and gaze up at the sky?
• A quiet beach where we can listen to the gentle sounds of the waves?
• A familiar local park?
• Your own back garden?

Picnics can be big, well-planned and take us to new places. Or, we can have them on a whim – in the garden on a summer evening.

• While we enjoy eating the food we’ve brought with us, we can feast our eyes on our relaxing green surroundings.
• As we observe plants, clouds and creatures together, we’ll help take our minds off those day-to-day stresses that can build up.

Remember, leave things exactly as you found them and always take your rubbish with you.

Fruit and veg picking is a delightful way to spend a day with the family. It’s a rewarding and educational activity that gets us hands-on with our food and reminds us where it really comes from!

There are lots of places that welcome people wanting to pick their own produce. It’s well worth looking up which local farms (including city farms), orchards and garden centres offer it. It’s a chance to support a nearby business and your wellbeing at the same time.

At the farm

• Grab a basket and take a stroll among the crops on offer. Depending on the season, you can find anything from strawberries, tomatoes, apples and plums to blackberries, gooseberries, potatoes and pumpkins.
• Have fun seeing who can fill their basket with the most variety, or who can pick the most interesting looking bit of fruit or veg.

At home

• Put everything you’ve picked on the table and enjoy the sense of accomplishment.
• Let everyone choose a favourite thing and turn it into a Show and Tell game – it’s a great opportunity to teach kids more about how food is grown.
• Enjoy making and eating a delicious meal together.

Camping is the original immersive experience. There’s nothing quite like it for getting the family into the great outdoors. From the feeling of grass beneath our feet, to the enlivening fresh air, camping can help us get away from it all and really reconnect with each other.

You could choose somewhere new, or your own back garden. As soon as you pitch up, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment from a good job well done.

Then, it’s time to discover all the fascinating things you can do in your new green surroundings. You could try…

• Cloud-watching – see what shapes, creatures and objects you can spot in the sky.
• Den-building – take a woodland walk and make a secret hideout from fallen branches.
• Bug-hunting – seek out some creepy-crawly neighbours.
• Campfire-making – taking care, cook up a feast over the fire (and don’t forget the marshmallows).

A camping trip is the perfect opportunity to help the family switch off from technology too. Swap your phone screens for a forest scene, check out spiders instead of the web and replace getting likes for riding bikes!

Get the whole family excited about being in the great outdoors with a curiosity-sparking nature treasure hunt! It’s a super enriching way to get everyone having fun, moving about and feeling the benefits of fresh air.

1. Choose your environment – you can have a treasure hunt almost anywhere. Will it be the woods, the seaside, the park, or your own garden?
2. Make a list of interesting things to find.
3. Head outdoors and start exploring – keep your eyes peeled for anything that’s interesting – you can always dish out bonus points for things that aren’t on the list.
4. Collect your treasures – patterned stones, colourful flowers, funny-shaped sticks, shiny shells and animal tracks. The things on your list don’t always have to be physical. Think about including sounds (like birdsong) and smells (like wild garlic, grass or bark), too.

Little ones can be shy about exploring the big world of nature. Sensory bins are a brilliant and safe way to introduce them to the great outdoors through play. Not only do they help children get hands-on, grownups can also have fun choosing what materials and objects to put in!

To make your own:

1. Find a good size box, tray or plastic-free container.
2. Fill it with natural things of different shapes, sizes and textures. Objects like pine cones, leaves, seashells, pebbles, grasses, seaweed, tree bark, dried fruit, twigs and flowers are perfect.
3. Let children explore at their own pace and watch their senses light up as they engage with every new object they find.

This totally tactile activity can have a big impact on young imaginations and spark a real curiosity about the natural world. It also gives us chances to learn and discover alongside each other. If questions come up, you can have fun hunting down the answers together.

Like humans, hedgehogs need safe places to rest, hibernate and raise their hoglets in. If you’ve got space in your garden to spare, creating a haven for our spiny friends is a fantastic way to use it.

It’s so satisfying to support a species like this, especially one that’s becoming rarer. As a bonus, you’ll bring even more nature to your door and might even get a glimpse of these cute nocturnal creatures.

Hedgehog homes can be made or bought, but making your garden welcoming is step number one. Here’s how:

• Provide plenty of ground coverage with lots of native bushy plants.
• Use twigs and logs to set up some wild, secluded spots for hedgehogs to hide in.
• Create some shelters using upside-down planters or crates, with dry leaves inside.
• Put out some hedgehog-friendly food and drink – water, worms and cat food are good. PLEASE avoid bread and especially milk, as our spiky friends are lactose intolerant! Their dinnertime is around dusk. 
• Leave small gaps in your boundary wall or create mini ramps. Hedgehogs love to travel between gardens, so this will help them get around easily. 

Pass all this onto your neighbours and, before you know it, you might be responsible for creating a Hedgehog Superhighway!