Oh no it's another rainy day!
We have you sorted with a list of 10 fun activities for children of all ages to enjoy nature inside!
1) Use nature as your art inspiration! Collect habitat materials and get craft! See if you can create a picture using only natural materials and then fills your home beautiful artwork that brings the outdoors in.
2) Create a bug hotel.
3) Nature gardening. Pot some plants inside, anything from a peace-lily to improve air quality, cuttings from an outdoor plant, left over vegetables, or plant seeds to sit on the window sills. Handling plants and caring for them over time can be extremely beneficial to children. Plus, you can decorate the pots too.
4) Stargazing. Consider setting up a telescope by a window with some star maps and guides.
5) Bird watching. During the day task number 4 can build the nature of noticing nature in your child. Something that will stay with them forever. If you don't have many birds around, create a bird bath and a bird feeder for outside. You can also change it to flowers, which are also fascinating to watch.
6) Sensory bin. Odd pieces of nature can be really calming to feel. Pull out the sensory bin during down time and let their imagination do the rest.
7) Test their garden to table knowledge. Do your children know where their food comes from? Pull out whatever is in the pantry and see if they can link it to plants. This one might even have parents off for a quick google.
8) Create waste free gifts! This is one of our favourite activities. Creating cards to birthday and Christmas presents in advance can save you big $ and save our landfills later down the track.
9) Get goofy with nature charades. Think of a NZ native insect, bird, animal or plant and act or giveaway hints until others can guess it. You might need to encourage some research first.
10) Watch nature from the couch. Let's face it, if it's a rainy day there is a high chance snuggling up on the couch looks pretty good right now. Pop on a nature documentary and soak up how beautiful our world is.
If you need some extra activities - get in touch!
