In an increasingly urbanised world where both adults and children alike are ‘always on’, connecting to nature is a brilliant way of letting the mind breathe.

Fostering a love of wildlife and the natural world early on in your child’s life can do wonders for their mental and physical health. Whether it’s a simple trip to the park to play spot-the-squirrel, or an excursion to a thriving nature reserve (with binoculars in tow), let’s discuss exactly what benefits the natural world can offer your children.

Loving Wildlife Means Loving The Environment

Let’s face it, planet earth is in a fragile state.Between global warming, pollution and the mass destruction of life-sustaining habitats, conservation has never been more vital. What better way to combat this than to inform and educate the next generation?

While it may be difficult to communicate these broader  concepts to younger minds, children have no problem understanding the beauty of nature and that their favourite animals must be protected. A family excursion out into the woods, for example, can offer endless amounts of fun whilst providing an opportunity to teach the little ones about the importance of habitat conservation.

Pond-dipping with an old glass jar can provide endless fascination for children of all ages. Explaining how each animal floating within the jar plays a key part in the food chain should prove both fascinating and easy to understand. Frogspawn should start to appear in the spring too, so why not plan a trip around its arrival?

Let’s not forget our feathered friends, either! An afternoon of bird-watching is as educational as it is relaxing. Better yet, they’re easily spotted in a myriad of environments, from wetland centres and meadows to your local suburban park.

Birds thrive in a variety of habitats, so a day spent admiring them from afar shouldn’t be too difficult to plan. Why not make a day of it? Once you’ve found your spot, hunker down, lay out the picnic blanket and encourage the kids to keep a list of all the different species they find. Of course, they’ll need the right equipment if they’re to spot ‘em all. RSPB offers a selection of binoculars perfect for the job. And buying from a wildlife charity such as this means your money is reinvested in important conservation work. Funding conservation whilst raising the next generation of conservationists — that’s a win-win!

You’re Encouraging A Healthy Lifestyle

The great outdoors is not only home to some fascinating creatures, but the natural landscape can (with a little imagination) become a playground all of its own. Whether it’s building dens or climbing trees, a love of wildlife is synonymous with a love of the natural world. Play in nature is far less structured and promotes creativity.

Let loose in nature, children can think more freely and approach play intuitively. Playtime in nature provides plenty of stimulation too. Many senses that are normally left dormant in the confines of their bedroom – sight, touch, and smell – are heightened outdoors. As such, spending even just a short time out in nature can reduce fatigue and stress.

Moreover, a study conducted by the Institute of Education concluded that spending time in nature can improve children’s confidence. The study examined 451 children who took part in various wildlife activities. Their findings showed that afterwards, 84% of children believed they were capable of doing new things when they tried, as well as reporting better relationships with both their teachers and classmates.

Summary: Don’t Delay, Get Out And Play!

It’s often easy to ignore the wildlife on our doorstep, but take the time to educate your children about the wonders of the natural world and you’ll be amazed by the results.

Whether they’re rock-pooling on pebble beaches or bird-spotting in the backwoods – we hope you’ll find some time to nurture within them a love for creatures both great and small. Let’s face it; the benefits are clear to see!

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Keeping up with family can be hard, especially when your plate already has so much on it. Making time for your immediate family can be difficult enough, but finding time to encourage and communicate with your extended family can be even more challenging.

Still, you’ll find several benefits in helping your children keep in contact with their extended family as well as spend more time with you. In the United States, the average size of a family is 3.15 people. By forging stronger bonds with your immediate family and fostering relationships with your extended family, you set your child up to have an excellent support system and lasting connections.

Connecting With Immediate Family

Depending on your child’s age and emotions, you may find it challenging to connect with them on a personal level. Even if you have nothing in common with your children, you can find ways to spend time with them and teach them the value of family, especially in times when life might be complex or uncertain.

1. Tell Stories

While bedtime stories might be great, you won’t find a replacement for stories rooted in truth. Stories about your family can be passed down through generations and kept forever, even after you’re gone. Tell important stories to your children often, and they’ll do the same for their own families in the future.

Kids of all ages love to hear historical tales, and they will undoubtedly be interested in what your family did decades before they were born. It’s a little taste of the past that they can pass on to friends and family.

2. Ask About School

Especially during tumultuous times when in-person learning isn’t always an option, your child may need some extra help to stay attentive in school and on top of their learning. Making sure they’re engaged in both schoolwork and homework can help them be more successful. Do your part as a parent to help them remain excited about the content their teacher presents to them.

If they need help understanding the material at home, attempt to explain it yourself. If neither of you can find the answer, help your child make a list of questions to bring to their teacher the next day. You can offer your child the support they need during tough times and rapid changes in learning by simply asking questions and allowing them to express their fears and frustrations.

3. Answer Questions

When your child wants to know something, you should answer to the best of your ability. Giving them an honest answer to their question, no matter how tough it may be, can help them build trust in you and provide a model for honesty that they can emulate. It can also help them see you as a source of wisdom and someone they can go to with other, more intense questions or problems in the future.

While you might answer their questions, you should ask them questions, too. Conversing about their interests, favorite school subjects and friends can help children understand that you want to play an active role in their lives.

4. Talk About Emotions

Communication solves many problems. By encouraging your child to talk about their emotions from a young age, you can equip them to solve problems in the future better. Offering them the communicative vocabulary early on can prove effective as they grow and mature and enter into situations where they may have to utilize the problem-solving skills you taught them.

Through your open and honest conversations together, they will learn how to better communicate what they’re feeling and understand that their emotions matter and shouldn’t be bottled up. Get connected with your child and let them know that you can support them however they need you most.

5. Spend Time With Them

Carve out a chunk of time every week to spend as a family. You shouldn’t have any outside distractions, nor should you let anything distract you from this time or schedule any events that could upset the balance of your family ritual.

Whether it’s playing a video game your teenager likes, with them, reading a book aloud as a family, or watching a much-anticipated movie, you’re fostering bonds with your children. Your relationship with them will grow stronger as a result. You might also find something that you’re interested in by partaking in their interests!

Connecting With Extended Family

The pandemic may have affected how often your children see their extended family. If your family is spread out over several states or unreachable cities, you might have found it challenging to keep in contact with them during such an unpredictable time.

Now is the time to start planning to see loved ones again as long as it’s safe for everyone involved. Remember that it takes a village to raise a child. Keep your bonds strong with your extended family so your children have the chance to know them.

1. Choose A Contact Day

Pick one day out of the week to devote to contacting your loved ones. This process could be an exciting time for your children, too, if they love talking to their aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on.

On this day each week, reach out to family members via email or schedule a video call. Spending time with your children, even if it’s virtual, could mean the world to older family members who may not be able to see them grow in-person.

2. Plan A Vacation

While you may go on short vacations with your immediate family once in a while, when can you say you last went on a vacation with your extended family? You can stay connected to one another via a social media website or a shared calendar and pick what dates work best for you.

Creating a group with a news feed can also be beneficial to share your family’s accomplishments with others. Your family members can then comment on what your children may have achieved, and then you can read the comments to your child. Or, if they’re old enough, they can read them for themselves.

Knowing they have family in their corner cheering them on can give a child a significant surge of confidence when they try complex tasks in the future.

3. Take Pictures

Pictures are essential to capturing the memories and feelings of a special day. In uncertain times, you may not know when you’re going to see a family member again. While putting one another’s safety first, you should aim to capture moments in film.

You can create albums for your extended and immediate family so everyone, including your children, can remember the fun times you had when you were last together.

Spread Your Roots Wide For Better Branches

Family, including extended family, is a web that waits to catch you or your children when they fall. If your bonds are strong enough, that web won’t break, and you can enjoy knowing your loved ones will be there for your family through thick and thin.

By strengthening familial bonds, your child will have a more robust support system as they grow up. Until they can pick their chosen family in friends and other loved ones, your children’s extended and immediate family are their only authentic familial sources of support. It matters that they have a genuine, lasting connection that can withstand the test of time.

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As a society, we can often write off “playtime” as unimportant, or find ourselves thinking of education and play as two completely separate things. But for young children, play is a vital part of learning and development — providing a safe space for ideas to be expressed, creativity to flow, social skills to flourish, and problem-solving to be developed.

That’s why it is so important that children are allowed the opportunity to learn through play at home, especially at a difficult time like now when other social stimulations such as playdates or preschool are not an option. But how exactly can you help to educate your children through play as a parent?

To be honest, you’re probably doing it already. Lots of different types of play — whether it’s solitary play, play with siblings or a parent, pretend-play, or guided play — can teach children all sorts of valuable skills and lessons.

In the post below, we’ll be going over some of the great ways that you can encourage learning and educate children through play. Read on to find out more:

1. Encourage Creativity And Experimenting With Crafting

Planning some crafting activities is a great way to educate your children through guided play. You might wonder what your kids can learn from making greeting cards or pasta necklaces — after all, crafts with preschoolers tend to just be a lot of glitter and mess, right?!

Well, wrong. Arts and crafts activities can teach all sorts of useful, modern skills to little ones, whether it’s social skills such as sharing and communicating ideas, or critical thinking and problem-solving to work around a mistake.

Creative play like arts and crafts also give kids a chance to explore their ideas and express themselves creatively — allowing them a safe space to test stuff out without fear of judgment or repercussions. That’s how kids learn how to make mistakes, build up confidence, and establish their own identity with personal likes and dislikes — all incredibly important things to learn.

Of course, it can be hard to come up with a constant stream of crafting ideas without repeating yourself, so if you’re stuck for ideas, then you can always look at monthly subscription boxes for kids like the Sago Mini Box. Boxes like this are specifically designed for learning through play and child-led discovery — packed with make-and-play craft activities that kids will love.

2. Teach Them About Science & Nature In The Backyard

Playing in your backyard is the perfect way for preschoolers to learn while still having plenty of fun. Whatever the weather, small kids love being outdoors and exploring — especially at a time where we’re all a little cooped up and feeling restless.

Getting out in your garden is the ideal opportunity to blow those cobwebs away and introduce some interactive, touchy-feely fun activities, where your little person can learn all about local wildlife, plants, and weather. There are tons of fun and educational activities you can put on in your backyard, so it really depends on how brave (or squeamish) you are as a parent!

For example, creepy crawlies can be found everywhere, so why not have a sort of bug hunt around your backyard? How many different bugs can you find in the backyard together? Introducing your preschooler to minibeasts at a young age will help them to learn more about the natural world — including different bugs and their habitats under rocks or plants — as well as improving their vocabulary. You could ask them to describe the bugs they find, or even draw some of their favorite creepy crawlies once you’re back inside.

If bugs aren’t really your style, you could do some “gardening” together (of course, keeping it suitable for small children). You could try some weeding, or dish out watering cans for kids to water flower beds, or just have some fun digging holes together in the dirt!

3. Practice Problem-Solving & Teamwork Through Den-Building

Kids love dens; it’s a fact. And giving your children the opportunity to make their own den — whether it’s in the living room, garden, or garage — provides plenty of opportunities to practice problem-solving and teamwork!

Building a den is a super easy and exciting way for kids to learn through play. Think about the skills it develops: your child has to get creative and think logically to sort out things like the structure of their den and fix problems. How will it stay up? And what if something keeps falling down? What will they use as an access point or door?

Den-making may not seem like education to the untrained eye, but actually your child is testing out and applying all sorts of mathematical and engineering skills to work around problems.

It’s not just critical thinking that den-building encourages, either. Den-making with siblings (or you!) helps kids to work on their teamwork and cooperative skills as they work with someone else to construct their perfect den. Plus, they have to communicate their own thoughts and ideas to other people for this teamwork to work out properly! This can help with all sorts of things, like communication and language development.

As a parent, there are a few ways you can get involved and guide den-play. You can suggest appropriate materials and tools, such as old sheets, clothes pegs, and cardboard boxes. Or you could input some helpful suggestions and your own den-building tricks.

However, the important thing is to let your kids take the lead. This is their opportunity to make their own decisions, explore their own ideas and creativity, and boost their confidence.

4. Teach Them About Fun Food And Textures In The Kitchen

Whether you’re cooking dinner, baking a cake together, or carrying out daily chores like washing the dishes, you can have a lot of fun in the kitchen with your kids — plus, it’s a great way for parents to educate through play.

Encouraging your child to take a more active role in the kitchen will get them excited about food (especially if they get to make decisions!), more enthusiastic about trying out new dishes and flavors, and help them to become more comfortable with household chores (which is a handy skill to teach before they become terrible teenagers!).

There are all sorts of fun recipes you can try out with kids and make together, such as cookies or cupcakes, or pizzas and fajitas. Let your children choose a recipe or idea that they’re excited about — it will boost their confidence and help them to feel like they’re valued.

Whatever you choose, your kids will really see the benefits: smaller children like toddlers will have multi-sensory fun though touching, tasting, and smelling new ingredients and different foods. And older children will be able to practice their weighing and counting skills as you measure out ingredients together, as well as learning to follow a recipe.

It doesn’t just have to be cooking either; you could also involve your little ones in mealtime prep by giving them small tasks like washing vegetables in the sink or chopping fruit. While they’re doing that, you can talk about where these ingredients have come from — it’s a great opportunity to learn more about the food on our plates!

There are so many ways that you can educate your children through play as a parent. Try to strike a balance of providing kids with activities and ideas for guided play, as well as letting them loose with their own imaginations for pretend play; it’s healthy to have a mix, and all types of play will teach your children valuable skills. Most of all, remember to have fun!

*collaborative post

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