Ask your parents or your friends to join you…
and enjoy your time together!

1) Put one foot quietly in front of the other and slowly or crawl. How close can you get to a bird without making a sound?

2) Observe birds and imitate their movements. How do different birds move?

3) Walk out your front door. How many shades of green can you see?

4) How many different spiders can you find in your home or garden. How many different kinds of webs can you find? Draw your own web.

5) Look for animal signs: tracks, poop, feathers, matted down patches of grass, nibbled plants, scratches in tree bark…

6) Make a crayon rubbing of a leaf or the bark of a tree.

7) Gather up a variety of interesting rocks. Spray with water to make the colours stand out. Investigate why rocks have colours. Tap them together and make rock music!

8) Start a nature journal or an art book.

9) Set out seeds for birds in a bird feeder and watch to see who comes!

10) Make wind chimes out of materials you find on the ground (a stick and shells, for instance).

11) Collect the smells along your path. Can you catch a smell? Borrow different things (like pond water, earth, a flower) to put in jars. Close your eyes - can you tell what you’re smelling?

12) Slither like a snake, or flap your arms like a bird!

13) Snoop around flowers and plants to see what insects you can find.

14) Roll over a log to discover what’s under it

15) Collect a bunch of different fallen leaves in a bag. Then empty out the bag and try to match the leaves. Can you figure out what type of tree they fell from?

16) Think about how people stay warm in winter, then investigate how animals do it.

17) Try to identify some trees from their bark and/or shape.

18) Look for soils of different textures and colours.

19) Lie down and look at the clouds. Can you see any shapes you recognise.

20) Keep phenology records (dates of bird sightings, first blooms, trees turning colour, etc.)

21) Take a hike through your neighbourhood or backyard and try to find something that is one of the colours of the rainbow. Look hard to find something that matches all the colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo (a purple blue), and Violet.

22) Learn the calls of three common birds in your neighbourhood. You can even check out audio tapes from the library (or download them from the web) to help you learn the names and calls of the birds. Dazzle your friends when you name a bird by its sound without seeing it. Try to find the bird to check your answer.

23) Walk through your neighbourhood or nearby park and write down all the different things you can smell, such as fresh cut grass, moist soil, flowers, and rain. Can you smell different things at different times of the day? When do you smell the most things? Do you think the types of smells change during other seasons?

24) Plant a tree or some flowers which will help attract birds or butterflies.

25) How many different plants and trees are there in your home and garden?