Outdoor science at home
How you can appreciate outdoor science and nature at home and around your neighbourhood? We hope you enjoy these ideas for fun family activities!
Go outdoors!
There’s nothing like a good walk to immerse you in nature. If appropriately dressed, there are very few occasions when you can’t get outside and experience something wonderful. Build a den, have a picnic, visit a nature reserve, climb a hill. Even if you’re not looking for it, nature will come and find you. And I know it’s a cliché but try and leave only footprints and take only photographs and memories away.
Make a diary
Take some notes of what you see and when. The name of this type of science is Phenology – keeping track of when things appear each year. Do the trees burst into leaf on the same day, week or even month each year? When did you spot the first brimstone butterfly each year, or first hear the call of the cuckoo? At what point do the leaves fall in autumn? The Woodland Trust has a calendar to tell you what to look out for at different times of year so you can record natural events yourself.
Make a weather station
Phenology is closely linked to the weather so maybe you could make a weather station to add to your research. A thermometer, rain gauge and an anemometer (wind speed) and weather vane would make a great project and allow you to start charting the changing seasons. The Met Office has some guidance on setting up your own weather station.
Get classy-fying
Classification is the science of grouping things based on their similarities and differences, and it’s what biologists have been doing for hundreds of years to make sense of the living world. Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) is seen as the father of taxonomy. The conventions he established remain in use today, even with the development of DNA sequencing and barcoding. You can start with an ID guide and work your way up. You’ll find some in our Explorer Backpacks. There are also lots of online and app-based tools, like Seek, to help you develop your own expertise.
Sense the natural world
To experience the natural world in full, we should try to use as many senses as possible. One of the most important scientific skills is observation but how many senses can you engage? Hone your observational skills when you are outdoors by making some quizzes for your friends and family. Can you get them to work out the odd one out in a selection of leaves or seeds? Play a simple game of ‘I spy’. Close your eyes for a minute and see how many different sounds you can hear and work out what might make them. How many paw prints can you see in the mud on a wet, frosty or snowy day?
Give wildlife a helping hand
You can you make something to help nature out when times are tough, while also increasing your chances of a visit from local wildlife. Butterfly feeders encourage our wonderful diversity of colourful butterflies to your neighbourhood. Bird feeders can be made from fat, nuts and seeds and provide additional nutrition to the birds when food supplies are low. However, we do however need to be mindful of the latest advice on bird feeding. Some mammals will go out of their way for peanuts, although they might wait until darkness. Dog food might prove irresistible for any carnivores. You might be able to work out who has been visiting by looking for evidence on the ground.
Read a nature book
Outdoor Learning Specialist Dan says there is no weather that would stop him going outdoors and being in nature. However, truly horrendous weather means it can be nicer to stay indoors, curl up somewhere warm and get stuck into a good book. There are many fantastic nature-themed books for children which can inspire connections to nature, a care for the environment and a desire to go outdoors.
Adapt your own home
Simple changes to your own back yard or garden can have massive benefits to our native animals. Hedgehog corridors are vital in allowing these nocturnal visitors a route through our urban neighbourhoods. The construction of even a small child friendly pond will entice aquatic and amphibian creatures into your world, while you could encourage the winged pollinators by sewing some wild flowers where you used to have just grass.
Outdoor Art
The outdoors is the perfect setting to get artsy, it doesn’t matter how mucky you get and the materials are all around you. Take inspiration from the likes of Andy Goldsworthy and use leaves as your colourful palate, sticks as your paint brush, stones and clay to form your sculpture or pick up a camera and capture the world around you in two dimensions.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
We need to reduce the amount of resources we use. Where possible, we should reuse things either for the same purpose or in another way, or then recycle as a second-last resort. Can you think of some innovative new ways to lower your impact on the natural world? Make journeys on foot or by bike where you can, limit the amount of packaging you go through, and reuse as many items as you can so that we’re not making more. One great way to help your garden at the same time is to build a compost bin, which not only provides a source of compost from any food waste you have, but it can also provide a great habitat for lots of detritivores – the very creatures that eat the scraps.
Grow something from seed
There are seeds all around us, from the fruit we eat to those that fall through the air or stick to us at certain times of year. Pick a few and see if you can get them to grow. You might need a few pots and some soil, and don’t forget to put them in a sunny place and water them. Do they all survive or are some more successful than others? How quickly do they grow and how are they different from each other? Some vegetables will even regrow from the scraps – try planting carrot tops and see what happens.
Be a citizen scientist
Citizen science is for everyone, not just the ‘experts’. There is a growing number of citizen science projects across the UK and they are designed to be as accessible as possible so anyone can get involved. As a citizen scientist, you might get involved in counting birds in your garden, identifying common butterflies, testing water quality or searching for eggcases on beaches. It’s really fun (I find it quite addictive!) and your data helps inform scientific research that can create positive change.