“Every child needs nature. Not just the ones whose parents appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child.”-Richard Louv
We are living in a concrete world with restricted outdoor activities especially during these pandemic times. It has become even more important to find ways to let our children connect with nature in every possible way.
We have listed down a few of the nature-based creative activities that you can do with your children, bringing them closer to nature.
- Gardening: this is a fun activity to do with children and let things get messy. If you do not have access to an open space, then even planting small plants on your balcony or indoors can be very interesting for our children. Our children can help us water the plants. This will give us a good opportunity to teach them about why we need to take care of our plants and trees. It will be very beautiful to watch how a tiny seed grows into a plant. For this, we can sow different seeds in different pots with labels and let them witness the magic of nature. It will be also very fascinating for children to see how life sprouts out from the soaked lentils or legumes.
- Bird watching from the windows, balcony or, from a terrace or your garden can be a learning activity for our children. We can also encourage them by helping them identify birds with the help of books and online resources and apps. We can also ask them to observe a tree and note down the visitors on it.
- Recognizing Sounds of Nature: We must encourage our children to listen carefully to the different sounds of nature while we are at our homes or outdoors. This will keep our children alert and aware of their surroundings. We can ask them if they heard the call of a bird, or the sound of the rain or wind, barking of a dog, croaking of a frog, chirping of the cricket, etc. and they may also make a note of different sounds that they heard for a given period.
- Gazing at Clouds: Just like gazing at stars is a very involving and calming activity for all of us, finding different patterns in different cloud formations can be remarkably interesting, fun, and full of imagination for our children.
- Writing about Nature: We can encourage our children to write or narrate a story inspired by nature like the story of a tree, woods, animals, forests, mountains, rivers, or by us.
- Pretend plays with our children will keep them aware and active. For example, wriggle like a worm, flutter arms like a butterfly, with your hand on the ground walk like a spider, leap and jump like a frog, crawl like snakes, cuddle up like a hedgehog, put a basket on their back and let them be a snail or a tortoise, etc.
- Story time: Let story time bring some nature to our children. We can read stories and show them picture books about outdoor adventures, animals, woods, life under the water and, many more beautiful things that are waiting for them to explore.
- Connecting to Nature Through Music: We must encourage our children to learn music (vocal or an instrument). It is one of the most effective ways to connect to nature.
- Cooking with our children is an important activity that has several benefits. It helps in developing cognitive skills too. They learn about ingredients, measurement, temperatures, and the sequence of steps and time required to prepare anything, for example, something as simple as making curd with the magic of fermentation.
- Watching Nature Related Programs on TV: Last but not the least, we and our children can watch and learn about nature and its miracles online on or on our televisions easily at our homes. Wildlife and nature documentaries, live streaming of national parks and zoos, safaris on different online platforms. Channels like National Geography, Animal Planet, Discovery and Science has it all for us and, for our young explorers.
“Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.”- Thomas Berry.
Author: Prerna Sharma
Prerna Sharma is a Wildlife Biologist. Animal welfare and animal conservation make up her passion and identity.