Cricket Thermometer

A cricket is, more or less, active according to what the temperature is.  The warmer it is, the more a cricket will chirp, and if it is cooler it will chirp less.  You can count the chirps that take place in 15 seconds time.  If you take that number, add 10 and then divide this number by two this will give you an estimate of the temperature (degrees Celsius).

Mini Museum

When you are going out hiking, to the beach, or just about anywhere outside a great idea is to collect things to make a mini museum.  Take some small milk cartons and cut off the top spout. You then take all the cartons and organize them so they are all facing up and either tape or staple them together.   For small items, you can also use old egg cartons.  You can use this to collect and store interesting bugs, seeds, rocks, and other things that you find while you are out.  It is also a good place to put things while you are trying to figure out what they are, because the white colour of the milk cartons makes it easier to see small detail.

Attracting Butterflies to Your Yard

There are different plants that are excellent for attracting butterflies to come to your yard or balcony.  Trees that you can plant in your yard are species like Willow, Aspen, Birch, Cherry, and Oak.  Smaller shrubs and plants that will attract butterflies are things like blackberry, asters, alfalfa, clover, violets, hollyhock, milkweed, black-eyed Susan, lupines, sedum and marigolds.  When picking plants make sure that you choose ones that will grow well in the areas you choose to plant them. If you are going to put them in boxes, make sure that it will be okay.  Also, make sure what kind of sun or shade each plant prefers.  You can get some of these plants from local garden centers already grown, or you can also start in the spring and start the seeds yourself.

Some Simple Bird Feeder Ideas

Stellar Jay
If you want to make some easy bird feeders, it does not have to be complicated!  You can do something as simple as using string and threading peanuts (in the shell) and then hanging it from a tree.  This will attract Stellar Jays if you have any in your area.  You can also fill a mesh onion bag with suet or pan drippings and tie it to a tree or to the corner of your house.  Another thing that you can do is to take a pinecone and coat it with a mix of cornmeal and suet.

Making a Suet Cake
If you are feeling like trying something a little bit more time intensive, one idea is to make a suet cake.  It is not difficult but is something that you complete over time.  Put a foil dish (the type for pies) beside your stove with a cup of sunflower seeds and peanuts mixed together (make sure that you get plain seeds).  Every time that you have leftover pan drippings pour them into the foil dish and then add some seeds.  Once the pan is filled, you have a suet cake.  This can be refrigerated and stored for several months. You can put these out in the winter months for the birds that are still around your area.   
Remember to put the bird feeders in areas that have a lot of cover for the birds to hide in like bushes and trees.  Keep them far enough up and away so that they are not easy pretty for cats and other predators.  Once you have set out bird feeders and the birds know that they are there, they will continue to come back.

Pictures

This is a fun activity but you do need a minimum of two people.  The idea is that one person is the camera and one person is the photographer.  The person who is the camera sits down in an area and closes their eyes.  The person who is the photographer moves the person who is the camera until they are ready to “take the picture”.  When they have decided on the picture they want to take they “press the shutter button”.  This can either be a tap on the head or a poke in the ear. The person who is the camera then opens their eyes for a few seconds and looks at the beautiful “picture” that the photographer has chosen for them.  This is fun because you get to pick a special picture for the person who is the camera and there is an interesting element of surprise of what they are going to pick for you.

Planting plants

This is something that you can do even if you live in an apartment to try to bring a little bit of nature to your home.  With this activity, it really just depends on the scale in which you want to do it.  If you live in an apartment, you can have the plants in a windowsill or in flower boxes on your balcony if you have one.  Or you can plant them in your backyard if you have the room.  Encourage your child or children to grow seeds.  You can start them out in little cups in a windowsill and then you can move them into the larger containers or out into the backyard, as they get bigger.  The best choices are things like beans, marigolds and radishes.  If you feel like trying something a little harder and have a backyard, plant things like carrots, sunflowers or pumpkin.  This is a little more interesting because you can eat what you grow at the end of the season.

This can be interesting because you can get the children to monitor how fast the plant is growing, and make sure that they are taking care of it and watering it.  You can also put a scientific spin on it if you are growing them indoors where you can water one plant normally, give one plant food, and maybe water another one with something other than water (iced tea?) and see how the plant reacts.  This can show them about how it is important to get the right nutrition and vitamins that you need to grow.

Nature Walk Rubbings

Take either a few yards of thin white fabric (make sure it is non stretchy) or paper, with some crayons, chalk or pencils (charcoal works very well for this and can be found at most stationary and art stores for relatively cheap).  You can go for a walk with your child and look for things that have an interesting texture (leaves, the bark on a tree).  If you can, it is easiest if you find things on the ground and take them back to a table.  Then create different textures on the paper or cloth to make different and interesting pictures or art.

Nature Scavenger Hunt

This is a simple activity that can either be very organized or with small groups of children (or even one) can be done spontaneously very easily.  All you have to do is make a list of different things that you will find in the forest and get the children to find them.  For young children some ideas of things to look for are cones from a tree, needles from a tree, moss, flowers, large rocks (can they find one as big as they are?), and different kinds of leaves.

Another idea is to pick your objects before hand and create a small bingo sheet.  Then, instead of having a scavenger hunt, you are playing nature bingo! You can see if they can find one line by themselves or even fill in the whole card.  Some ideas of what to put on the card would be a smooth leaf, animal footprints, birds, big leafy tree, needled tree, pinecone, rock, spider web, and flowers (these ideas would make a 9 by 9 card).  For the ocean, you can look for things such as driftwood, barnacles, seaweed (brown or green), kelp, fish, clamshells, hermit crabs, crabs, or moon snail egg casings.
You can also go on the internet and find nature bingo cards for different seasons and different areas online if you search for “nature bingo cards”.

Listening to Nature

When you go out, you can try this to get your children to be more aware of the sounds of nature around them.  The younger the child the shorter of a period this will work for.  Take your child or children out into the forest and get them to either lie or sit down on the ground.  Get them to be really quiet and listen to the sounds around them.  Get them to put up their hand when they think that they have heard something.  You can make this for all sounds or try to change it so that they only respond when they hear an animal noise or a wind noise.

Un Nature Hike

If you have the time, one fun thing to do is an un nature hike.  This is where you put interesting items that do not belong in nature out to find.  You can do this somewhere like your backyard or out on a hiking trail that you know where the items will not be disturbed.  A personal favorite is to tie a bikini around a tree.  You can use whatever objects you think would stick out.  This can be items such as shoes, backpacks, garden implements, or anything else that you can think of.  To make it easier for the children you can place markers that will show them where to stand or even put the markers on the object that they are supposed to be looking at.  The best thing for this is something like surveyors tape.  It is brightly colored and easy to tear and remove afterwards.  You can hang the items up in trees or on the ground.  Try to make sure that you hide them all over the place and not just at the same level.  This teaches children to look around them and not to just look in one place.

Micro Hike

For this, you want to create a small square area about 12 inches by 12 inches.  You can do this with some string or bits of wood if you have it.  You create the small area and then you can place it on the ground.  You can choose whether or not to put it on grass or hard ground but it might be more interesting if you put it on grass.  When you place it down get the child to look closely at what is there.  In grass, you will be able to see small bugs as well as the grass roots and the soil.  In this type of activity, it would be helpful to have some sort of magnifying glass.

Finding a Tree Your Age

If you go out in the forest, you will see young pine or other needled trees.  If you look closely, you will notice that the branches grow out in layers up the tree (around the tree all of the branches grow out of relatively the same place.  This indicates the growth for that year.   Make sure that you look closely at the bottom of the tree to make sure that there are no layers that you have missed because of branches that have come off.  Challenge the kids either to figure out the age of a small tree that they find or to try to find a tree their own age (or as close as they can get).

Sounds Map

Take some index cards and arrange them in a 3 by three grid on the ground.  Tell the child to pretend that they are in the middle of the cards (maybe draw a little picture of them).  Take them out into the forest, the beach or another area, sit them down and get them close their eyes.  Get them to record the sounds that they hear by drawing a small picture of it on the cards of where they think the noise came from.  Once they have finished ask them questions to get them to think about what they heard.  Ask them things such as: How many sounds did you hear? Which ones did you like best? Which ones have you never heard before?  Which ones did you not know what they were? Which ones did you know?

Animal Charades

When you are out in nature try and get the child or children to think about what types of animals are around them.  Get them to try to act out an animal and get the other people (or yourself) to guess what it is they are trying to be.  They can crawl around and growl to try to pretend to be a bear, chirp and pretend to fly, or even stand really still and pretend to eat grass.

Nature Loom

Take some twine or wool and string it back and forth between two small trees so that you have a good amount of string going back and forth.  Go for a walk with your children and get them to pick up items up off the ground (make a no picking rule).  You will want things like sticks and leaves and anything else that you can find.  Pinecones will work but they are difficult to put on the loom because they are small.  When you get back to the “loom”, you want to “weave” the objects in and out through the string.  Once you have filled up your “loom”, take a picture.  Remember to remove the loom afterwards.

Spatter Prints

You will need Metal wire screen, toothbrush, pins (to pin the leaf to the paper), some paints (tempura work best), and some paper.  Take the leaves and pin them to the paper you could also do something like double-sided tape them if you do not want to use pins but make sure that you can get the leaf off afterwards.  Place the screen over the leaf and paint across the leaf with the toothbrush.  Alternatively, you can make sure that all edges of the leaf are secured down and then run your thumb or other finger across the toothbrush to make it spray the paint.  Play around with over lapping the leaves and moving them around to make interesting designs.  At the end, you will have a beautiful picture.

Some other things to think about are the coloring.  In the spring, you might want to use more greens, pinks, and lighter colours that are more summery.  In the fall, you might want to use darker more autumn colours like browns, reds, oranges and yellows.

You also might want to try to including pieces of branch from trees with needles to see if you can get any interesting designs.

Wax crayon rub

Take a variety of leaves and lay the leaves down.  Take a piece of paper such as newsprint and rub crayon over top of it.  This will produce a rubbing of the leaf in which you will be able to see the veins in the leaves.  Make sure to tell the children not to rub too hard as it will damage the leaf and you will not get a very good impression.  You do not have to do the whole leaf.  If they want they can be creative and try to make up new leaves such as parts of cherry tree leaves mixed with maple tree leaves.  They can try to invent new types of trees (such as a tree that produces maple-flavored cherries or a tree that makes cherry syrup!)

Adopting a tree

Either nearby, in your yard, or in a place where you go walking encourage the child to find a tree that he or she likes and “adopt it”.  Get them to look things up like what type of tree it is, and how it grows.  Does it have leaves or needles? Does it lose them in the winter? Can you see new growth?  If the tree has seeds it might be possible to take one and try growing it at home and then either planting it in your yard or in the forest somewhere near where you got the seed.  Encourage the child over the years to pay attention to the tree and see how tall it grows and how big around it gets.

General Idea

The beach can be a very interesting place where there are many creatures that are visible and easy to get to.  It is fun and interesting to just go to the beach with a small net, some jars, a magnifying glass, and a species identification book.  Make sure that after you are done looking at the creatures to return them to the ocean. 

Night Activity

If you are at the ocean at night, you can show the kids bioluminescence.  This is the green glowing globs that you see in the water in the summer.  Creatures called dinoflagellates cause it.  These are a type of phytoplankton, which are little microscopic plants in the water.  This is caused by a chemical reaction that happens when the creatures are moved around.

Bull Kelp

Bull Kelp can grow up to 30 cm (12 inches) in one day.  If you are at the beach maybe try and figure out how tall your child is in daily bull kelp growth? Another fun thing to do with bull kelp is to break off the end and use it as a skipping rope.  One thing to make sure is that you are using bull kelp that is already detached.  The kelp that is not detached is a very important habitat for marine animals.

Making a Picture

This can be adapted to be done nearly anywhere.  Take four pieces of driftwood and make a “frame” sitting on the sand or another flat area.  Get the child to go around and pick up different items from the beach such as seaweed, shells, and other pieces of wood.  Get them to make a picture in the frame that they have created.  Once you are done you can use a camera to take a picture of what you have done.

Pond Skimming

Go to a pond and see what you can find.  Take either an old kitchen strainer or a small net and a bucket and go to the pond to try to find interesting animals that are in the pond.  See if you can recognize what you are looking at.  It is handy if you can take a magnifying glass with you.  There are also jars available that have magnifying lids that are helpful that you can get at kids toy stores.  Remember** if you go pond skimming it is illegal to catch frogs and tadpoles and remove them from the water body that you found.  This means that you can catch them and look at them but you CAN NOT TAKE THEM HOME.

Bird Watching

It is interesting to go to a marsh or wetland especially in the fall when the birds are migrating.  If you know of an area nearby you that is used by waterfowl it can be an interesting activity to go out to see if you can identify what kind of birds you can find.  There are many books out there that you can use to help you out.