Free Museums: Way More Choice Than You'd Think And How To Really Watch Seeds Grow

Local Museum

Local museums are often free to enter and ask for only a donation, just pay as much as you feel able too. If there isn't one in your area you could try a trip to a larger town or city. Money Saving Expert has a great interactive list here of all the free museum’s and galleries in the UK (scroll down past the map of the UK for drop down area menus). There's a huge variety on offer from pumping stations and Victorian police cells, to modern art and dinosaurs.

Watch Seeds Grow

You will need:

• A clear glass or plastic cup
• A seed (sunflower or beans work really well)
• Thick absorbent paper or blotting paper
• Scissors
• Cotton wool
• Water

How to do it:

• Roll a tube with your paper, cutting it to shape so that it will fit inside the cup from the base to the rim all the way around, put it in place.
• Stuff the inside of the paper tube with loosely packed cotton wool.
• Place your seed in between the paper and the inside of the cup about 2/3rds of the way up, so that you can see it from the outside.
• Pour water into the cotton wool, so that the water level inside the cup is about 1/3^rd of the cup (don’t cover the seed), and all the paper and cotton wool stays damp.
• Put the cup somewhere dark and leave the seed to grow.
• You can check on the seed every few days to see how well it is growing as well as topping up the water. As the buds at the top develop into a small plant with leaves the plant will start to need light and it’s time to move the plant into a flowerpot.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today, Your Child Can Eat Jelly And Become An Arborist

Teddy Bear’s Picnic

Gather a few favourite teddies in your child’s back pack, a picnic blanket, plastic cups and saucers, a few cucumber sandwiches and some juice then head to the park for a teddy bear’s picnic... or the living room floor if it won’t stop raining!

Tearing up jelly - easier than it looks!

Combine it with a bit of baking by making individual fruity jellies for a picnic pudding:

• Small jelly moulds can be found cheaply in supermarkets and poundshops but if you haven't got any kids plastic cups work really well. 
• Simply make up the jelly - kids can help cutting it into cubes or stirring the hot water until the cubes dissolve. 
• Chop up a few pieves of fruit (not kiwi, papaya or pineapple or the jelly won't set) pop them in the bottom of each jelly mould/cup and then pour the jelly on top. 
• The jelly will take a few hours to set, so best to make it first thing or the night before.

Our super-cheap jelly moulds

 

How Old Are the Trees In Your Park?

You will need:                                                                                                           

• A fabric tape measure (or a paper one from Ikea)
• Some trees
• A notebook and pen

How to work it out:

• Take the tape measure and wrap it around the tree trunk of your chosen tree to measure the circumference.
• Because of the average rate of growth of your average British tree, the tree will be roughly as many years old as it is inches around the middle, or the number of centimetres divided by 2.5.
• Try measuring other trees to compare, put the tape measure at roughly the same height you measured the first tree at.
• Are all the trees in the park a similar age? Were the trees all planted at the same time, or were groups planted at different times?

We're Going On A Bug Hunt, Finding Fuel For The Sport Of Kings: Snail Racing

Bug Hunt

Get your wellies on and take your camera out with you to look for insects high and low. Extra points for spotting anything you can’t name straight away. Take a picture, and look it up in a library book on bugs or on UK Safari. Remember we'd love to see any photos you have! 

Is it a Grey Dagger Moth or a Brown-tail? We can't decide.

Email them to lfwstubbs@gmail.com. Great places to look are the underside of leaves and under fallen wood.

Take it further:

• What types of insects have you found? Are any of them rare or only found in your area?
• Collect the pictures or drawings you have made in a book and record the place and time of day you saw them.

How To Put On A Snail Race

Number 4 races to victory.

You will need:

• A plant pot
• Paintbrush
• Bright coloured non-toxic paint (Our DK kids science guide recommends enamel paint, but we're using washable poster paint)
• Flowerpot

How to set it up:

• Carefully collect snails from around the garden or local area – they can easily be found in damp places after rain and first thing in the morning. Pick them up gently by the shell.
• Paint numbers or names on the shells, be careful not to get any paint on the body of the snail and to hold the snail carefully.
• Stand the flowerpot up and put the snails in the bottom.
• Wait to see which snail makes it first over the edge of the flowerpot!

How to Geocache and What To Do With All The Twigs and Pebbles The Kids Came Home With

Geocaching

Geocaching is a great way to liven up a healthy walk, just go to geocaching.com and enter your postcode to find the location of hidden treasures world-wide. The idea is simple, small boxes of kid sized treats are hidden in hedgerows and trees all over the country, find one and you can write your name in the log-book inside, and log it on the geocache website. You won't need a phone and app to do it, just sign up to the website (for free) and you will be able to see the location of the cache as a co-ordinate.

Copy this co-ordinate into google maps (or your map provider of choice), who will find it for you. You can then ask google for directions to the cache from your house, or a local car park or bus stop. Using your local knowledge and the closest zoom on the area will give you a better idea if there are footpaths you can take instead of following the road. Write the instructions down or draw a map for your kids to follow.

Do watch the introductory videos on the website, they'll give you an idea of how large a box of treasures you are looking for and the best way to find them.

At the cache you'll usually find a small log book to write down your visit in, a pen and possibly some small pieces of treasure (along the sparkly hairband or shaped eraser lines), take something similar with you so if your kids want to take something that's in there you can replace in for the next person.

You will need:

• Wellies and waterproofs or sunhats and cream
• A map
• A pen
• Some treasure.

 Take it further:

• If you do have a swish phone the app is useful and can find caches nearby via GPS.
• Send older kids out to find a cache on their own.
• Drive or take the bus to a cache further away.
• Make and hide your own cache
• Take a picnic and take yourselves on a detour to a picnic area or park on the way.

And what to do with the delightful collection of gravel and dandelions the kids have come home with afterwards? Try nature printing.

You will need:

• Leaves, pebbles, pine cones, flowers, feathers or anything else interesting you've found on walks out and about.
• Paint on a large plate
• Paper

How to do it:

• Give each child a piece of paper and put the paint and their natural finds in reach
• Let them at it. Plants and pebbles can be used as paintbrushes or to print, a small amount of paint of the underside of a leaf pressed against the paper will leave a copy of the veins/skeleton of the leaf behind.

Some Days You Have To Wander and My Favourite Bit Of Science Ever

The Best Way To Find Something Exciting Is To Explore

Take a bus to the next district, town or village and ask at the Library or Tourist Information office for a local map, go somewhere you've never been before - a different park, library, garden, museum or family pub that you didn't know was there. Let your kids be your guide, buying tickets and reading the map.

Best Science Ever: Colour Changing Plants

You will need:

• A white or pale coloured flower with a reasonably long and thick stem - a carnation works well.
• A sharp knife
• 2 hi-ball glasses, or other tall thin containers
• Water
• Food colouring

How to do it:

• If your flower in shop bought, cut an inch or two off the bottom of the stem before you start.
• Fill both glasses 2/3rds full with water, then add a few drops of food colouring to one glass. Put them next to each other in a sunny spot, as close together as you can.
• Then cut the flower's stem in half lengthways from the bottom to about 2/3rds up the plant.
• Put the flower into the 2 glasses of water, one half of the stem in each.
• Leave for about 2 hours, then see what's happened.

Take it further:

• What happens if you add food colouring to the other glass?
• Can you use several glasses and flowers to make different colour combinations?
• Do some types of flower work better than others?
• Does anything else change how quickly it works?

When It's Sunny All You Need Is The Beach And A Bucket (Spade Optional)

Beach

Even from Coton In The Elms in Derbyshire, the furthest point in the UK from the coast, sea water is only 70 miles away. Where there is sea there is beaches, sand, ice cream and kiddy heaven. There are several inland beaches in the UK too, so you might well be closer to a minimum effort day's entertainment than you think.

As it happened, I took the kids to Weston-Super-Mare and there was a beach-view airshow today. Just as the kids were starting to get a little restless a Spitfire and a Mustang shot across the sea in front of the beach! They were delighted.

Sandcastles

You will need:

• Sand!
• Water
• A tub of some kind
• A scoop of some kind
• Shells and pebbles

Make it last longer:

• Add a moat, can you make it stay full of water?
• Make sand sculptures of each other.
• How much water makes perfect sand castle sand?