Make Homemade Ice Cream in a Bag

Okay, this isn’t really a nature activity, but it does involve a bit of science. Also, the supplies are simple; no ice cream machine is necessary, making this a somewhat portable activity. Kids and adults can make an individual serving of ice cream wherever they are. Bring along the few supplies and you can make ice cream after the kids participate in a summer sport, during an afternoon at summer camp, in the backyard, at the park, while camping, etc.

For each serving you will need
6 tablespoons of rock salt
Ice
One-gallon sealable plastic bag
One sandwich or quart-size sealable plastic bag
1 tablespoon of sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla
½ cup of milk
Spoon
For preteens and adults who’d prefer a bigger scoop of ice cream, you can double the recipe.

Add the rock salt to the gallon-size plastic bag. Fill halfway with ice.
Place the other ingredients in the smaller bag and seal.
Set the small bag inside the large bag.
Close the large bag and shake for approximately five minutes.
Eat the ice cream.

This is particularly fun to do when it is hot outside because shaking the bag of ice is very cooling. If you suspect that the kids with you will try tossing the bag, remind them that if they are too rough they could cause the milk to leak into the salt and ice and then they won’t have ice cream to eat.

And for the science piece … salt lowers the freezing point of water. When you are making ice cream, you need temperatures lower than 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which the salt helps create.

15 Minutes Outside

Whether you are at home or on vacation today, go for a walk with your child. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy walk – 15 minutes will do; and you don’t have to go anywhere ‘special’ for this walk. One of the goals of the walk is to remind yourself and your children that nature isn’t ‘out there’ – some place that takes effort to get to, a place that by some definition is ‘nature.’

Today, walk around the neighborhood and name ten wild things that you and your children can see, hear, feel, or smell. Yep, even if you are taking a 15 minute walk, notice ten things in nature – a crow flies overhead, the rough bark of the tree along the side of the road, crickets chirping, the smell of fresh cut grass, etc.

The time limit, layered onto the simple observation activity, forces you and your children to pay attention to your surroundings. Even if you were going for an hour-long walk, you wouldn’t be able to keep up the intensity of observation. Instead, you’d drift into conversations about schedules and other activities that you’ve done or will do.

After fifteen minutes, you’ll return home full of your experience in nature. Although there may be more trees in the forest, your children will have felt the bark, noticed the shape of the leaves, and seen the birds perching on the branches of the trees you walked past. Nature is everywhere.

Explore the Backyard

You and your kids will need a backyard for this activity. Even if you live in an apartment, chances are there is some small patch of trees and/or shrubs and maybe even a bit of grass. Don’t discount that patch of greenery.

Oftentimes, we overlook the things closest to us, and that includes nature. Granted a patch of grass shaded by a tree isn’t the same as local conservation land with paths leading you through acres of forests, fields, or wetlands, but you can still explore.

• Give kids a magnifying glass for getting an up close view of insects, seeds, soil, leaves, flower parts, etc.
• A collection jar with holes doesn’t cost a lot of money (check dollar stores) and gives kids the chance to hold onto insects, worms, and small frogs for a short period, giving them the opportunity to examine the creature. Keep the creatures out of direct sun and release them after ten-or-fifteen minutes.
• A white pillow case or piece of fabric will allow kids to set their discoveries – including crawling insects – on the ground while providing maximum contrast.
• Paper and crayons, markers, or watercolors encourages children to take a closer look at their discoveries as they create a journal entry or create a picture.
• A digital camera also encourages exploration, particularly if you challenge a child to take a certain number of photographs of their surroundings.
• With kids ages 8-or-9 and up, you might want to supply some “First” field guides that can help the children to identify the trees, flowers, or insects around them. Trying to identify aspects of nature is something like solving a mystery – can the children notice enough clues that will lead them to the correct conclusion.

Don’t worry if kids don’t stay “on task” by accomplishing some specific exploration. Get them outside with a hook, “Can we find any caterpillars in the garden?” and then watch them discover the things that most interest them.

Enjoy Summer While It's Still Here

The commercials for back-to-school clothing and supplies have already been playing on television for a couple of weeks. It seems too soon, but schedules will only get busier with school and extracurricular activities on the horizon. Create some memorable outdoor experiences with your kids.

• Have the kids eat breakfast outside. Outside can be the front stoop, a porch, a patch of grass beneath a tree. Breakfast can be simple – muffins and juice, Canadian bacon between a couple of waffles. Bring a thermos of coffee for yourself.
• Take a walk around the neighborhood … when it is raining.
• Collect leaves or flowers and press them between the pages of a dictionary.
• Go to a farmer’s market. Give each child one dollar to make a purchase of something for dinner.
• Count the number of birds that visits your feeder over five or ten minutes.
• Have a picnic lunch or supper in the backyard, at the park, at the beach, at the local forest.
• Read a bedtime story outside by flashlight as the day’s light fades.
• Lie on blankets and watch the stars come out.

Outdoor time doesn’t have to involve elaborate experiences but simple moments when everyone is present in the activity.

Super Simple Sun Prints

You don’t need to hunt down that special blue sun print paper to entertain your kids with this art project. This technique even allows you to skip developing the print under water. Chances are you have the supplies at home – ordinary construction paper and something to hold lightweight objects in place.

Materials for Crafts
You need construction paper that hasn’t already been exposed to the sun (by sitting on a tabletop, etc.).

You’ll also need different objects with interesting shapes. This project is a great way to get kids to focus on the shape or silhouette of an object. For preteens, they may recognize this concept as positive and negative space. (Learn what that means and get a couple of art project ideas at Positive and Negative Space Art Projects and Positive and Negative Space Cut Paper Designs.) This is an inexpensive project, so kids can experiment and discover the silhouettes that various objects will leave behind.

For lightweight objects that might blow away, you’ll need pebbles or pins
that will allow you to hold those items in place.

A sunny day

How to Make a Sun Print
You’ll need to work in an area that will get sunlight for two or three hours. Work on a flat surface – short grass is okay.
Set down the paper.

Place the item or items on the paper. If the items will blow away (as leaves will), weigh them down with small pebbles or use map pins or push pins to tack the item to the paper. Make certain that the pebble or pin is on the object and that it’s not sitting full on the paper or it will create its own shape.

Leave the items in the sun. Check after two hours by lifting the items just a bit. The dye in the paper is protected by the object. The paper that wasn’t covered will fade in the sun.

Ta dah! You’ve created a sun print of an object. Experiment with items that have a variety of shapes.

Backyard Nature Fun

Whether your child loves collecting rocks or looking at insects, you don't have to travel far to encourage their interest in nature. By looking at the nature in their backyard, kids learn that nature is all around them and that it isn't limited to rainforests and polar bears that they can watch on television.

Below are links to explorations, games, and craft projects that kids can do in their own backyard, some on their own and other activities with at least one other child (or adult).

Play This Magic Square Nature Collection Game
Go Bug Collecting for Outdoor Fun
Make a Stone Cairn
Nature Memory Games
Backyard Games that Get Kids Playing in Nature
Activities for Kids Who Collect Rocks
How to Discover What Worms Need to Survive

Backyard Summer Fun

Although summer brings family vacations and camp experiences for some children, kids may best enjoy the simplicity of spending time in their own backyard. Whether kids are getting together with siblings, neighbors, or friends and relatives who are over the house for a play date or a party, there are an endless number of ways kids can have fun right at home.

Cool Summer Fun with Icy Kids' Activities

Backyard Games for Active Kids

Games Played with Sticks for Indoor and Outdoor Fun

How Kids Can Invent Fun Games to Play Outdoors

How to Make Bubble Blowers

Water Balloon Games

Backyard Camping for Kids and Families

Take a Look at Nature through a Magnifying Glass

Chances are that somewhere around the house you have those inexpensive plastic magnifying glasses that are geared to kids. You might even have a slightly nicer magnifying glass (i.e. a magnifying glass that cost more than fifty cents) in a drawer for those times you need to take a closer look at something tiny.

Unless your child would throw a magnifying glass at a tree or a sibling, consider giving your child a slightly nicer magnifying glass.
By ‘slightly nicer’ I mean a magnifying glass that costs a couple of bucks but that gives your child a better view of what they are looking at.

Those inexpensive plastic lenses scratch and become fairly useless after a short time.) Don’t spend so much money that you’ll be upset if a lens gets dropped or banged about even if your child is trying to be careful.

After you have the magnifying glass, you need to show your child how to use it. Most children hold the lens against their eye as if it were a monocle. The proper use it to hold the magnifying glass close to the object you wish to magnify. Your child’s eye should be at least six-to-eight inches away from the lens, more is okay.

Now, encourage your child to look at a leaf, noticing the veins and the cells. Then turn the leaf over and get a clearer view of the stomata, through which the tree takes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. Don’t worry about knowing the names of the things your child is looking at; all you want to start giving them is a view of things that are often overlooked.

Take a close look at flowers and notice the spotted patterns on the petals of some flowers; these help direct insects toward the pollen and nectar the plant offers. Encourage your child to look at blades of grass, found feathers, crystals in rocks. Once you offer your child a more effective magnifying glass and show them how to use it it won’t matter whether your child is two or ten, they will move about the yard or wherever they are exploring this newly discovered territory of the tiny.

Check out other ways kids can Become an Animal Detective.

Nature on the Edge

Finding animals in nature is not like walking around the zoo. When kids visit the wildlife sanctuary where I work and they ask what animals they will see, I usually start off by telling them that large animals like deer and coyote aren’t often active at ten in the morning, nor would they tolerate the large and noisy group of children stomping through their home.

However, if they pay attention, they will see lots of insects, see and hear birds, and see (and perhaps hear) frogs. Quite often we get to see red and gray squirrels as well as chipmunks. On occasion, deer (usually yearlings or mothers with fawns) hang out alongside the trails. Sometimes a mother turkey (once with eleven poults) will claim the fields along the most traveled trail for her territory.

Sometimes, it is a matter of looking carefully. Children will often see snakes that I just walked by. My movements probably cause the snake to move, so those children behind me get to see its response. I once saw a ribbon snake clinging to the side of a yellow birch, sunning. I wouldn’t have expected to catch a snake there, I’m glad that it caught my eye.

Where I live, the backyard doesn’t go back ten feet before turning into an edge habitat - tangles of shrubs and weeds, rocks and fill. Beyond that is the neighbor’s backyard from the next street over. A narrow wooded area runs between the backyards from the two streets.

Here I have watched gray squirrels, rabbits, and a groundhog. Last year I was highly surprised to watch a long-tailed weasel dash from my front yard across the street. Earlier this spring I watched a hawk land on a branch and stare at the scruffy edge at the end of the lawn. Within minutes, the hawk swooped and returned to the branch with a shrew. This past weekend I saw a deer meandering in the woods.

What I’m saying, is that you have to be willing to see what you see. You can’t expect a certain animal to appear when you want it to. Whether you live in an urban, suburban, or rural area, take the time to look out the window throughout the day. If you and your children are outside, you may disturb the animals, so this is an odd case where you need to be indoors to see what is outdoors. Look outside before the sun is up, when it first rises, mid-morning, afternoon, mid-afternoon, dusk, night. Don’t just glance outside, gaze.

You can encourage children to look out their bedroom window throughout the day. Set a journal beside the window so the child can record what they see and when they see it. This requires some patience, days and days could go by without spotting a squirrel. But, the day the child notices a hawk in the tree in the front yard, it will be worth the wait.

A Backyard of Baby Animals

Originally published June 12, 2009 at Suite101.com

I’m sitting at the dining room table, writing, or pretending to write because a gray squirrel has perched on the railing surrounding the deck behind my apartment. After a moment of vigorous grooming, it sprawls over the railing, four feet dangling. Flattened on this branch-substitute, a second gray squirrel meanders across the deck and down the stairs. Neither squirrel seems aware of the other.

Unlike the third squirrel to appear, this one walks along the railing until it notices squirrel number one (that also notices this railing invader) and with distinct “hey, I’m not here to cause any trouble,” body language, squirrel three backs up.

Only it doesn’t get far because a slightly larger gray squirrel is right behind it. It presses the smaller squirrel to the railing and immediately begins grooming it (with much enthusiastic chewing of fleas, lice, and whatever else). At this point, I want my camera, which I usually keep downstairs, but it’s upstairs charging for a weekend event. I risk crossing the room and getting the camera (the back door is wide open and I’m convinced the squirrels will hear the floorboards creak and head up the nearest tree). The squirrels are still grooming.

Squirrels two, three, and four bound off for a vigorous wrestling match in the poison ivy (their fur protects their skin from getting a rash). Squirrel number one is still draped over the railing, watching.

Three house sparrows drop onto the deck, all with the dull coloring of the female. One sparrow hunches into a ball and cheeps until another sparrow feeds it. A male house sparrow, with his brighter chestnut feathers, drops nearby into the grass. I realize that I’m looking at parents feeding their fledglings – juveniles old enough to fly short distances but still looking for a handout from mom and dad.

The gray squirrel, tired of perching on the rectangular branch that is my railing, jumps to the ground, causing the birds to take wing. Even in the small, shared backyard of an apartment, the spring’s bounty of baby animals is evident.

Take Your Teddy Bear for a Walk

Chances are that your kids have indoor toys and outdoor toys. However, they can liven up their outdoor play by taking some of those indoor toys outside. This may actually encourage children to play outside, particularly if they thought that the only way they could play with certain items was to do so inside.

If your child likes playing dress up, then dressing up like a fairy or a knight takes on a whole new level when the child can bestow fairy magic to the flowers in the garden or the child can sneak among the trees and shrubs in search of dragons and evildoers.

Barbie may enjoy a boating expedition down a slow-moving stream. Invite stuffed animals to a picnic under the backyard tree instead of keeping them cooped up inside waiting for high tea. Action figures may encounter more action among grass and fallen branches than they’d ever come across in the land of carpeting and dining room chair legs.

Okay, building toys like K’nex or Lego probably won’t manage grass and dirt without a number of pieces going missing. However, if your child hasn’t played with a toy for months, see if taking it outside gives the item a second life.

Work jigsaw puzzles on a piece of plywood. Draw, color, paint, or work on activity books outside at a picnic table.

Taking indoor toys outside just might spark your children’s imaginations and creativity.

Seasonal Color Wheel

What are the colors of spring? Summer? Autumn? Winter? Each season offers a unique color palette. If an interior decorator selected colors for four rooms in the colors of each season, chances are that you’d have no difficulty telling what season was represented in each room. Once children become old enough to be aware that they’ve experienced a season in their past, they too would recognize the colors of the seasons.

You can do these activities during any season; you could even do them each month of the year. The activities go beyond simple color recognition to noticing the variations within colors. Try these as art projects, even if you don’t feel that you yourself are artistically inclined. Do the activities along with your children, students, scouts, or campers.

Color Match
Go to the hardware store and collect an assortment of paint chip samples (start with greens, browns, and grays). If you have the time and inclination, cut the strips apart into individual colors and toss them in a bag or envelope. Now, go outside with the kids and give everyone at least one of the paint samples and encourage them to explore the area looking for as close a match in nature as they can possibly find.

Players can switch to different colors if they can’t find what they are trying to match, or they can hold onto a color in the hopes of matching it elsewhere along their walk. Try this activity in natural settings as well as urban or suburban settings to contrast the colors of not just seasons but environments.

Color Wheel
This activity is a bit more complex because instead of matching colors the participants are creating color matches. Each player will need some paper and either colored pencils or watercolors. Although the manufacture is providing a range of colors, point out those colors can be mixed or layered to create other colors.

Take a plate and draw a circle on the paper. Divide the circle into six, eight, or twelve pie sections. Now, go outside and select a color distinctive of the season and color in one of the pie sections. Again, the yellow of forsythia might not be the yellow of the colored pencil, so encourage exploration and experimentation with the materials as participants practice mixing or layering colors.

Fill in each pie section with a different color. Notice how not all green leaves are the same color green and try to duplicate these different hues. Label the page with the season or the month. Try to repeat throughout the year, creating a color palette for each season.

Try either of these activities with preschoolers all the way up through adults. They give you an awareness of the variety of colors around you as well as bring clarity to the distinctive qualities of each time of the year.

The Lure of the Indoors

Last week I didn’t go outside as much as I could have. Yes, many of the mornings were dull and rainy but I could have taken a walk later in the day. I was coordinating a dance show and practicing for my performance but I still could have taken a short neighborhood walk. Instead, I spent much of my week glued to my computer watching the leaves on the trees and shrubs in the backyard opening a little bit more with each passing day.

People are always talking about how kids should spend more time outside and less time indoors watching television and playing computer games. However, how many adults who may exhort their children to go outdoors take their own suggestion?

I think we get caught up in thinking how outdoor activities and indoor activities are two separate animals. The outdoors is for gardening, walking, running around, playing sports, working on the car, fishing, etc. Yet, when was the last time you read a chapter from your book while sitting outside? Could kids take their homework outside or even (yes, the horror) bring their handheld electronic game outside?

Being outside doesn’t have to mean that we need to do anything outdoorsy. I have a deck with table and chairs literally on the other side of the wall where I am sitting now at a table typing. Granted, the door is open and the fresh air is coming inside, so why do I feel the need to sit on this side of that wall?

Read a storybook to your children while outside or encourage them to take their book outside and sprawl on a lawn chair instead of their bed. Persuade them to draw and paint; play with their cars or dolls; or give a new existence to a toy that’s become boring by playing with it outside. Yes, some pieces may get left outside and something will get rained on, but this also teaches children respect and responsibility for their belongings.

Challenge yourself and your children to do one thing this week that has no obligation to be done in the out of doors.