The summer holidays can be a great time for fun, outdoor family activities – with sunshine, drier weather and no school to think about.
The great news for us, as parents, is that there are so many nature-based learning activities that don’t require much, if any preparation in advance. I’ve collated lots of ideas here in this blog post, which are suitable for children across a wide age range and perfect for time-stretched parents.
1. Follow the Pollinators
Challenge: How can you make an area of your garden more appealing for pollinators? Which plants attract them? Could you plant those seeds and leave the area to grow wild?
Watch bees, butterflies and hoverflies visit flowers
Ask: Which flowers are busiest? Which colours do they like best?
Optional: chart visits or make a flower ‘menu’. Be a citizen scientist and track your finds in online apps
Good for: visual learners and children who love patterns or counting
2. Make a Mini Water Cycle/explore rainfall
Challenge 2: Cut the top off a 2-litre plastic bottle bound for the bin, invert it as a funnel and mark a centimetre scale: your zero-cost rain gauge can be compared with Met Office data online
Use a clear plastic bag, water and a sunny window or branch
Watch condensation, evaporation and precipitation over time
Frame as a ‘cloud catcher’
Good for: quiet time indoors or on rainy days
Challenge 1: Create a diagram of the water cycle
3. Floating Seed Explorers
- Collect seeds (sycamore, dandelion, ash) and test how they move—blow, drop, float
- Ask: Which ones fly furthest? Why?
- Add cardboard ‘wings’ to see if you can improve a seed’s design
- Great for movement-based learners and tinkerers
- Challenge 1: Using circles of string or hoops, create a Venn diagram, to sort the seeds into types. Explore in books other ways in which seeds can be transported, eg. sticking to animal fur or spines. Why is it important for seeds to be distributed away from the parent plant?
- Challenge 2: Gather sycamore “helicopter” seeds on a walk, race them from shoulder height and then fold paper prototypes to optimise spin without using plastic
4. Snail Trails, Bug Hunts and Habitats
- Lay a piece of cardboard down outside, overnight, held in place by a stone
- Check for worms, beetles or slugs in the morning
- take photos to ID with an app
- Sensory tip: let children wear gloves or use tweezers if they’re touch-sensitive
- Challenge 1: Discuss how the cardboard imitates features of the natural environment for these creatures. Build a bug hotel from disused bricks, bamboo off-cuts and fallen twigs, tucking it into a quiet corner, so solitary bees and ladybirds have a plastic-free, chemical-free summer home
- Challenge 2: Layer damp soil and sand inside a clean glass jar rescued from the recycling, add a couple of worms you found under a log, wrap in card to keep them dark and peek every few days at their tunnel network before releasing them
- Challenge 3: If you’re at the coast, lift one rock in a rock-pool, gently note what’s underneath, replace the rock exactly and discuss tide-pool survival tricks
5. Sun Shadow Tracking
- Use chalk or stones to track the shadow of a stick across the day
- Ask: What shape does the shadow make? When is it the longest or shortest?
- Add toy animals to turn it into a shadow play
- Good for: time- or routine-anchored learners
- Challenge: Start the day by planting a stick in the ground and chalking where its shadow falls each hour; by sunset you’ve built a human-sized sundial and discovered how Earth’s spin makes time
10 more science-based activities for our nature-curious children:
- Turn a greasy pizza box into a solar oven by lining it with clean foil from yesterday’s roast potatoes; use the Sun’s free energy to melt chocolate on digestives and talk about the greenhouse effect
- Set a twenty-minute “BioBlitz” timer in the garden or local park and list every living thing you can see, hear or smell—phones stay on airplane mode until you upload finds to iNaturalist later so you keep the moment nature-focused
- Whizz wilted red-cabbage leaves in a jar of water, soak strips of scrap paper and let them dry: you’ve made your own vegan, plastic-free pH indicator
- On a clear August night, spread an old picnic blanket, lie back and count Perseid meteors; no equipment, no light pollution—just naked-eye astronomy and the odd thermos of cocoa
- Fill a jar with water, add salt a spoon at a time until an egg floats, then test sugar instead—everything can be rinsed down the sink
- Create a “sound map”: sit still for five minutes, drawing arrows from a dot (you) to each birdsong, bee buzz and bicycle bell you hear; compare morning and dusk to notice wildlife rhythms
- Use leftover cyanotype or Sun Print paper (both non-toxic) to create botanic shadow art—exposure takes minutes and rinses off with rain-collected water
- Challenge everyone to design the best one-metre-of-materials cushion to protect a raw egg dropped from stepladder height; compost biodegradable padding and cook the intact eggs after the contest
- Dip a piece of recycled wire (or an old coat-hanger) in washing-up liquid, shine a phone torch through the bubble film and film the rainbow swirls—thin-film physics, zero mess
- Shake milk, sugar and vanilla in a well-sealed sandwich bag, nest it inside a larger bag of ice and salt from the freezer drawer, then compost the paper carton and enjoy your hand-churned ice-cream
Nature- curious children will often ask further questions, which can naturally steer the next mini-experiment. This child-led approach of curiosity first, explanation after, will be more likely to encourage future interest and learning.
Safety first: Supervise heat, sharp edges, or collecting wildlife; always return living things gently to where you found them.
Additional sites for free UK resources, printable ID sheets and challenges:
The Wildlife Trusts
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org
Royal Astronomical Society
STEM Learning
