ENGLISH NATURE - Nature in the garden

Introduction
Virtual Tour
What to see and do this month
Fun for Kids
Parks and green spaces
Links

Fun for Kids

Most young children have an instinctive natural curiosity about the natural world around them. If this interest is encouraged and nurtured it can result in a lifelong awareness and respect for wildlife and the environment. Here are a few simple ways you can help children to enjoy and develop their interest in nature.

Your garden, if you have one, is one of the easiest way to introduce a child to the environment. Many children enjoy something as simple as helping adults with small gardening tasks, but others hate gardening! However, those that are not ‘natural’ gardeners might enjoy helping with jobs with a rewarding end result. Some may enjoy growing vegetables which they can harvest themselves. Radishes, cherry tomatoes or baby carrots are good choices, as these can be eaten with the minimum of preparation. Some flowers may also capture a child’s interest. Nasturtiums or sunflowers are easy and fun to grow, and both attract a variety of insects, opening up the possibility of finding out what insects come to these flowers and why. Sunflower heads can also be dried and used to feed birds such as greenfinches, goldfinches and tits.

If you have a fruit tree or bush, picking apples, pears, gooseberries or plums can be exciting for small children as well as introducing them to the concept of where our food comes from. If you have little outside space for growing fruit, a ‘pick-your-own’ fruit farm is an excellent place for a summer afternoon outing with children.

You could try something as simple as visiting your local park to collect conkers or autumn leaves, make a daisy chain, count the different birds you see, look out for butterflies or feed the ducks on the pond.

At home there are many small projects that children can be involved in that will encourage an interest in the natural world. Here are a few suggestions:

An outside light can be used to attract moths. Hang an old white sheet or cloth beneath the light for the moths to land on. Many moths are beautifully marked and coloured and there is the added excitement of staying up late!

Sink a clean jam jar into a hole in the lawn and leave it out over a warm dry night. This ‘pitfall’ trap will accumulate beetles, woodlice and many other minibeasts which can be examined and released the next morning.

If you have a hanging bird feeder children may enjoy counting the number of birds that visit it over a short period of time. This can be done from inside the house on a cold day if the feeder is positioned to be visible from a window. A simple identification book can generate added interest.

Children looking at moth on bug hunt, Paul Glendell/English Nature

Children love ladybirds and it is simple to make a hibernation home for them. A food tin, such as large baked bean tin, with the lid safely removed, can be washed and the outside painted. Then pack it tightly with large diameter drinking straws or ‘art straws’ cut to the depth of the tin. This can then be put outside in a sunny place at a height of about one metre; in the spring and summer solitary bees may use it for nesting, and in the winter ladybirds, spiders, earwigs and many other minibeasts may shelter in it.

If you suspect that hedgehogs or foxes are visiting your garden or allotment you can make a footprint trap for them. Place a layer of sand on a flat, bare piece of soil where you think the mammals may be entering your garden and smooth the sand well. Scatter a few peanuts on the ground round about and leave them overnight. The next morning you may be lucky enough to find the footprints of foxes, hedgehogs or even badgers in the sand. Use a book to identify these footprints.

As well as growing some of the plants already mentioned, planting an acorn or conker can be really exciting. These tree seeds are large enough for the even the smallest fingers to handle. Simply half fill a flowerpot with garden soil or compost, place the conker or acorn on the soil and top up the pot with more compost. Leave it in a safe place in the garden and examine from time to time.
Once the seed has germinated, it can be planted out in the garden.

A glass or plastic tank can also be used to make a ‘wormery’. Fill the tank with alternate layers of soil and sand, and add a few large earthworms from the garden. Place some dead tree leaves or small piles of grass mowings on the surface and keep the soil slightly damp. Over time the worms will drag the leaves and grass into their burrows, and their movements through the layers will slowly mix the sand and soil.

Children rarely have a fear of mice or voles, and a small mammal feeding table will enable them to see some of these creatures at close quarters. A small flat piece of wood can be secured to a downstairs windowsill, preferably where there are climbing plants or wall shrubs below. The plants enable the small mammals to climb up and get access to seeds and nuts which can be placed on the table. You could also place your mammal table directly underneath a bird window feeder with suckers that attach it to the glass. As the birds drop small fragments of seeds they will accumulate on the table below. Wood mice and sometimes other small mammals will visit at dusk and can be watched quietly from the window.

There are endless possibilities for the enjoyment of wildlife either from inside or outside the house, in the garden, the park, the allotment or wider countryside.