Fun Nature Hike Activity Ideas

I think exploring and studying nature is one of the easiest and best ways to expose my kids to science and we all enjoy the fresh air, exercise, and things that we see along the way.



We go hiking a lot and while my boys are usually just fine with meeting up some friends and going for a walk sometimes they need a little incentive to make the hike more fun.

Here are some of our favorite activity ideas:

1.  Give them a camera and have them take pictures of interesting things they find along the way!

Like this interesting mushroom my boys' found

2.  Collect leaves to make leaf skeletons (you can read how to here).



3.  Have them gather up interesting leaves, sticks. flowers, etc to make a sun powered picture- like these.



4.  Bring some materials home for an art project; like this spray paint canvas resist.



5.  Mix up a witch's brew combining nature fun and writing like we did here.


6.  We collected fall leaves one year and made these adorable little nature hedgehogs.



7.  Bring a sketch pad along and sketch some of the things you find along the trail. Long before we learned about nature journals Alec used to bring a drawing pad and pencil to draw a few things he found along the side of the trail.

8.  Learn how to nature journal-- We took this class one day at our nature center and learned all bout how to keep a scientific nature journal.  (There are also great books on this in the library).


9.  Start up a collection-- Each of my boys went through fazes when they were fascinated with different things; rocks, sticks, etc. and each stage they were allowed to bring home what they deemed as interesting things to add to their collections.

10.  Set up a nature museum!  Using their collections have them set up an actual nature museum complete with labels.

I hope I got you thinking of some fun nature ideas and if you need more make sure to check out:  Thimble and Twig's 24 Things for Kids to Do With Nature on a Woodland Walk.   She has lots of fun ideas!!

Are there any fun nature hiking activities you like to do?


Linking up with:

Oh My Heartsie Girls WW 650 x 635

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JENerally Informed




Comments

  1. Tamar SBJuly 4, 2018 at 9:05 AM

    So great! Love the hedgehogs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Claire JustineJuly 8, 2018 at 1:41 PM

    You all have create some great work here. The hedgehogs are so sweet. Thanks for linking up to The Wednesday Blog Hop.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Audrey SaubleJuly 12, 2018 at 7:12 PM

    That's an awesome list! I've got the photo paper to do the third project, but still need to pull it out and let the kids try it out.

    One we like doing is counting things: we counted all the types of flowers on a walk once, and another time, we counted the different types of fungi and lichen on a dead branch.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mother of 3July 13, 2018 at 7:14 AM

      Yeah I could see how something simple like that would be lots of fun!

      Delete

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