Now's the time to take advantage of the better weather by planning your activities with the children in your care around natural play and being outside. Stroll out on a nature walk, try pond dipping, spend more time at the park, have a dig in the garden, and bring home bits of Mother Nature to use in arts and crafts creations. Environmental awareness starts young, and like the mighty oak, we all have small beginnings!
Look at the trees, leaves and flower buds bursting into life. Children may enjoy keeping a record of their findings and tracing the shapes of leaves, to identify from a guidebook.
Leave no stone unturned when children want to find out about minibeasts such as worms, slugs and woodlice. Lead their thinking on from worms to birds, and look for birds' nests. Children can also collect suitable stones to line paths or form miniature rockeries, perhaps for their dinosaurs or small-world people to live in. Smooth, rounded stones are good for painting with enamel or writing names and designs on with glittery felt-tips.
You can't beat good old mud-pie making for a pastime that will satisfy children of all ages, whether by a puddle in the garden or with a picnic next to a babbling brook (keep a close eye on the children at all times, and bring lots of wet wipes for muddy hands).
Arrange a pond dipping or bug hunting session, again under close supervision and with the children kitted out for wet play or grassy, bushy areas. Use a child's fishing net to skim the water of a pond and carefully examine the contents. It may contain 'water boatmen' skimming insects, snails, waterweed, leaves, tadpoles or tiddlers. On dry land, swish a butterfly net (often these can be borrowed in nature reserves) across wildflower meadows, and hold what you catch temporarily in a clear plastic tumbler with net over the top held in place with a rubber band. A magnifying glass is useful for examining butterflies, crawling bugs and flying insects, as well as seeds and flowers.
Whether or not the children are fans of Winnie the Pooh, they'll enjoy playing Pooh Sticks. Find a suitable pedestrian bridge over steadily flowing water, preferably one where the children can see through the sides.
Establish which direction the water is flowing and drop sticks over the parapet so they will race under the bridge. After dropping their sticks, the children can run over to the other side to see whose stick appears first.
Even when the time you can spend outdoors is limited, you can bring the outdoors in for a sense of nature. The youngest chidren will enjoy playing with buckets and spades in a big heap of silver sand on a tarpaulin on the kitchen floor, equipped with shells, stones and plastic fish. As an alternative you could use a heap of damp sawdust or safe sterilised seed compost from the garden centre, with blocks of wood and builders' vehicles, toy animals, rocks, twigs and leaves.
Nature provides us with free materials and inspiration for arts and crafts activities, such as the following.
Flower pressing
It is illegal to pick wildflowers in the countryside, and it's unacceptable to pick cultivated flowers in a park, but, with permission, garden flowers and petals can be picked for pressing.
Handle flowers carefully so they arrive home in good condition. On a shelf, lay out a folded newspaper and lay a piece of blotting or kitchen paper on it. Place each flower carefully on the blotting paper, with no petal touching another. Cover with more blotting paper, and then a fold of paper weighed down under a heavy book or brick. If you have more flowers, repeat the process to make a 'sandwich', always ending with the book or brick.
Leave it to sit for at least a week until the moisture has been pressed from the petals. Then glue the pressed flowers on to paper to create a scene, a bookmark or a greeting card. Allow to dry, and then cover carefully with a piece of clear sticky-back plastic or waxed paper, trimming the edges to fit the card.
Butterfly prints
Even the youngest children can make a butterfly. Fold a piece of thick paper in half and cut out a simple butterfly wing shape into the fold. Open out to show the whole shape. Dab thick paint in two or three colours on one half of the butterfly. Fold the other half back on top and press gently to spread the colour. Open out to show a symmetrical pattern. When the paint is dry, older children may like to add the butterfly's body, with a head and antennae, cut from black paper and glued down the centre.
Apple blossom time
Collect fallen twiggy sticks from the garden or on a walk in the park. At home, lightly crumple small squares of white tissue paper and glue them on to the twigs to look like apple blossoms. With a pink felt-tip pen, mark the centre of the blossom. Older children can cut fine leaves from green tissue and glue them around the blossoms. Display in a vase.
Dyed sand patterns
Add a few drops of food colouring to a small amount of water. Let the children add dry sand and stir until evenly mixed. Allow the sand mixture to dry thoroughly. Make small amounts of several different colours. Older children can draw a pattern on thick paper or card, to be coloured in with sand. Younger children might fill in circles or squares in different colours, or divide up the page with lines to form the appropriate number of sections to match the colours of the sand. Brush glue carefully within the lines, one colour at a time, and sprinkle different colours of sand on over the glue. Use a dry paintbrush to brush excess sand off the page. Don't pick it up until it's dry!
Paper daffodils
Cut a circle of flower petals from card. Using a clean recycled egg box (for health reasons, discard those with any sign of egg dried on), cut out the cup shape and glue to the centre of the petals. Paint yellow, inside and out. Crumple a piece of orange tissue paper and glue it inside the centre of the flower. Use as a table decoration at teatime.
A piece of the sky
Did you know you could hold the sky in your hand? Stick a mirror tile to a thin piece of wood that is a little larger than the tile. If the edge is sharp, tape around the edges. Show the children how to hold the mirror board in front of them to reflect the sky, and walk around. If children are old enough, with a bit of guidance, they can go for a walk under trees and follow the clouds.
DOs AND DON'Ts
* Do check whether children have allergies before letting them touch materials.
* Do discourage picking up materials before checking that it's all right with an adult.
* Do take a basket with you to hold your findings until you get home.
* Do keep your eyes open for leaves of interesting shapes and colours.
* Don't break twigs off trees; pick them up from the ground.
* Don't collect masses more materials than you can use - someone else may need them for their activities.
* Do have fun!
