leslie alvis

ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES
7 Simple Nature Activities for Kids That Inspire a Love for the Outdoors
- June 1, 2023
Step into the captivating embrace of nature, where the beauty of the world unfolds in its purest form, and the wonders of the outdoors await. As parents, we have the power to ignite our children’s passion for the natural world and create lifelong bonds that will shape their relationship with the environment. Through simple yet enriching nature activities, we can embark on a journey of discovery alongside our children, weaving enduring threads of connection with nature.

Today, Ohio homeschooling mom of four, Leslie Alvis, is here sharing seven simple nature activities that we can use to unlock the boundless curiosity within our kids’ hearts, nurturing a deep love for the Earth and fostering profound bonds with the natural world. From the thrill of nature collecting to the mystery of deciphering animal tracks, from the excitement of scavenger hunts to the knowledge gained through field guides, these activities offer invaluable opportunities for learning and exploration. Join us as we delve into each of these activities (and more!), unraveling their potential to create lifelong bonds with nature and empower our children to become stewards of the earth.

Simple nature activities that inspire a love for the outdoors

Nature and children go together with a beautiful synergy. Filled with wonder and energy, they simply belong together. Nature never fails to awe, entertain, and inspire bright, curious minds. I believe that children need regular nature time as an essential part of a rich childhood.

Surrounded by nature’s beauty and rhythms, kids learn to appreciate and understand the natural world around them. Many times, all children need is time outside to be creative and make up their own nature activities. But if you’re needing a starting place, or just some fresh inspiration for getting your kids involved in nature, these simple outdoor nature activities are a great way to keep your kids engaged, learning, and enjoying nature!

7 simple nature activities for kids
1. Nature collecting
2. Finding animals tracks
3. Nature scavenger hunt
4. Using guidebooks & field guides to learn about nature
5. Sensory activities
6. Imaginary play
7. Nature sit spotting
These seven simple yet powerful nature activities can help us create lifelong bonds between our children and the great outdoors. From the thrill of nature collecting to the serenity of nature sit spotting, from the excitement of scavenger hunts to the enriching learning with field guides, each activity holds its own unique magic.

1. Nature collecting

Nature collecting never fails to interest and entertain kids. The idea is simple—take a basket or bucket, and get outside to see what you can gather from the natural world. Kids love collecting bits of nature—from rocks and sticks, leaves and nuts, to flowers and discarded insect exoskeletons (or even bleached animal bones!). Nature offers something for everyone.

The child who is drawn to beauty will find marvels wherever he or she looks. The child who delights in the unusual will find strange and wondrous things. So, when you take the time to slow down and intentionally look for nature specimens, your child can safely collect and study. It brings so much fun and wonder to a very basic walk.

A word about nature collection

There are places you can collect nature specimens, and there are places where you can’t. This activity works great, even just in your own backyard. But, it’s important to teach your kids that what may be appropriate in your backyard may not be okay in a public place—or even someone else’s yard.

Some areas, like nature preserves, are intended to be enjoyed without touching or taking any part of nature. In other places, like a public park, it might be okay to pick up fallen nuts or leaves, but not to pick flowers. And then you may have access to places, like private property or woods, where your child can gather all kinds of bits of nature with the owner’s permission.

Collect some, leave for others

Although learning the concept to only take what you need (and leaving plenty for others and for nature) can be a struggle, it’s a great lesson for kids to learn to be respectful of the natural world and the different situations in which they explore it. One of the ways we’ve taught this is by using a simple concept from a children’s book called If Everybody Did. This book helps kids understand that maybe it’s okay for one kid to pick a flower, but what if everybody did? The sketched illustration shows a flower garden picked bare. In that simple way, it helps teach kids to consider that something which may not be wrong could be damaging if everyone did it. We use that concept a lot when teaching our kids to be careful with gathering nature. But, when you have permission and know you’re not going to damage the plants or diminish the beauty, it’s so much fun to collect nature specimens.

Tips for nature collecting

Nature collecting is a wonderful activity that allows children to engage with their surroundings, explore different ecosystems, and develop a deep appreciation for the natural world. Encourage your child’s curiosity and let them take the lead. Allow them to explore and collect items that catch their attention, even if they seem insignificant to you. Every discovery holds value in fostering their connection to nature. Offer guidance and teach your child to identify different plants, rocks, or other objects they encounter. Introduce them to guidebooks or smartphone apps that can help identify species and provide interesting facts about them (see below for more on this).

What to do with your nature finds

Once you’ve collected a few nature finds, what do you do with them? I recommend setting up a dedicated space in your home where your child can display their collected treasures and show them off! It could be a shelf, a table, or a shadow box. Encourage them to arrange and label their items, fostering a sense of ownership and pride in their collection. Encourage your child to document their nature collection adventures through drawings, photographs, or a nature journal. This helps them not only remember their experiences but also provides an opportunity for reflection and creativity.

My kids love to find unusual odds and ends to bring back for their fairy houses. You can also press leaves and flowers for later crafts. Depending on your kids’ ages and interests, you can also use nature guidebooks to identify and learn about the plants you find (see resources below). You can even study them with a magnifying glass or under a microscope.

2. Finding animal tracks

Finding animal tracks is a great outdoor nature activity for kids of all ages. Even older kids enjoy the hunt for animal tracks! It’s fascinating to see what animals have been out in the woods, down by the water, or wearing paths across the meadow. I love to imagine what kinds of busyness was going on right in the same place I was standing, and the only sign of it is that simple track left behind.

Tips for finding animal tracks

Parks, nature reserves, or hiking trails are good options when looking for animal tracks. Look for areas near water sources or in quiet, undisturbed places where animal tracks are more likely to be visible. The best times to search for animal tracks are after a fresh snowfall or rainfall, when the ground is soft.

Before setting out, introduce your child to the concept of animal tracks. Explain how tracks are left behind by animals as they move, and how they can provide clues about the animal’s size, shape, and behavior.

Searching for tracks helps children to be observant and to understand the habits of different kinds of animals. Encourage your child to observe their surroundings closely. Look for tracks near water sources, along paths, or near trees. Point out other signs of animal activity, such as chewed plants, feathers, or droppings. Use the tracks as a starting point for discussing animal behavior and survival strategies. Talk about how different animals move, what they eat, and where they might live. Encourage your child to imagine the story behind the tracks they find.

For example, you can usually find raccoon tracks near water because raccoons like to wash their food and their paws. Many animals like to follow the same path day by day, perhaps headed to a water source or cutting across a grassy area.

How to preserve your finds

If your kids are really into finding and studying animal tracks, use a camera or a smartphone to capture images of the tracks you discover. If the conditions are suitable, make imprints of the tracks using plaster of paris or a similar material. Use the package directions to mix it up, pour it into your track(s), and let it harden. (Make sure it’s not going to rain soon!) When it has completely cured, gently lift it out of the track, brush off any dirt or light debris that may have stuck to it, and you’ll have a casting of that animal track to keep.

3. Nature scavenger hunt

A nature scavenger hunt is an easy and fun outdoor nature activity for kids. A scavenger hunt gives a readily attainable purpose and direction to outdoor time. Kids love having a list and being able to check items off it.

Whether you’re going on a hike and want to keep kids engaged, or just want to keep your little ones busy outside for a while, a printable scavenger hunt is a great activity. You don’t even have to find or make one yourself! One of our Creative Team moms recently created a bundle of the best FREE nature scavenger hunts for kids. Click over to her article to get an email with this great bundle of printables to enjoy with your kids.

Tips for nature scavenger hunts

Planning a nature scavenger hunt for kids can be a thrilling and engaging activity that encourages exploration and discovery. Start by selecting a theme for your nature scavenger hunt that aligns with your child’s age/interests, and your location. It could be focused on specific colors, types of plants/animals, or elements in your area. A theme adds an element of intrigue and purpose to the hunt. Our FREE nature scavenger hunt bundle includes 20+ themed printable scavenger hunts.

Define the boundaries of the scavenger hunt area to ensure your children stay safe. It could be your backyard, a nearby park, or a designated nature trail. Discuss the boundaries with them and make sure they understand where they can and cannot go. Create a sense of excitement and motivation by offering small incentives or rewards for completing the scavenger hunt. It could be a special treat, a small prize, or even a certificate of achievement. Celebrate their accomplishments and make it a memorable experience.

Your enthusiasm and excitement about the scavenger hunt will rub off on your children. Show genuine curiosity and interest in their findings, and celebrate each discovery along the way. Your positive energy will make the adventure even more enjoyable for them. By following these tips, you can create a captivating nature scavenger hunt that sparks your children’s curiosity, encourages exploration, and fosters a love for the natural world. It’s an opportunity for them to engage with their surroundings, learn about the environment, and create lasting memories.

4. Exploring nature with guidebooks and field guides

Exploring nature with guidebooks and field guides can be a fantastic way to enhance your child’s outdoor experiences and deepen their knowledge about the natural world. Nature guidebooks and field guides are some of our favorite resources when we’re enjoying nature activities of all kinds. We’re constantly encountering flowers, trees, birds, insects, and so much more. Although we know many of the common ones in our area, we often find things we can’t identify.

Tips for using guidebooks and field guides with kids

Be sure to choose age-appropriate guides for your kids. Select guidebooks and field guides that are suitable for your child’s age and reading level. Look for guides with clear and concise information, engaging visuals, and easy-to-understand descriptions. Consider guides that are specifically designed for children or have a beginner-friendly approach. Take some time to read through the guides beforehand so that you are familiar with the content and layout. This will allow you to guide your child effectively and help answer their questions as they explore nature.

Begin your explorations with plants and animals that are commonly found in your local area. This makes it easier to identify and connect with the species you encounter. As your child’s interest grows, you can expand your exploration to other regions and habitats. Encourage your child to actively participate in using the guidebook. Let them take the lead in identifying and describing the species you encounter. Ask open-ended questions to stimulate their curiosity and engage them in the process.

Favorite nature guidebooks and field guides

Early on in our outdoor adventuring, I started encouraging my kids to use nature guides to help us learn more about the wonderful outdoors together. Here are some of our favorite nature guidebooks to help you with your own nature exploration!

Birds:
Flowers and Trees:
Creatures:
5. Nature sensory play

Nature is the ultimate sensory experience. Wherever you are, whatever the weather, whatever ages your children are, nature provides a feast for the senses. All you need for this activity is a few minutes in the great outdoors! Providing nature sensory play experiences for kids can be a wonderful way to engage their senses, spark their imagination, and deepen their connection with the natural world.

Tips for nature sensory play experiences

First, find a peaceful place where you can settle down and be surrounded by nature. It could be a local park, a forest, your own backyard, or an open meadow. Then sit down and get everyone comfortable and quiet. Explain that you’re going to use your senses to explore nature. Encourage hands-on exploration and full-body sensory experiences. Allow your child to freely touch, feel, and interact with the natural materials. Let them dig their hands into the soil, splash in puddles, or play with leaves. Sensory play in nature encourages a tactile connection and stimulates their senses in a way that indoor play cannot replicate.

Go beyond touch and incorporate activities that engage all the senses (see below for ideas on each of the senses). This multi-sensory experience deepens their engagement and enriches their understanding of the natural world. Sensory play in nature stimulates cognitive skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity. It enhances their ability to make connections, observe patterns, and explore cause-and-effect relationships. Sensory experiences outdoors also foster a deep connection with the natural world. It helps children develop an appreciation for the environment, encourages a sense of stewardship, and nurtures a lifelong love for nature.

The beauty of this nature activity is how simple it is, and yet how even young kids can take it with them. Once you help open their senses to noticing the natural world around them, they will live richer and fuller lives, appreciating the beauty that surrounds them.

Using all your senses

Sight

Look around you. Have the kids make a list of every natural thing they see. Trees, grass, rocks, clouds, birds—everything counts! You can write these down if you want to, or just list them out loud together. Once you’ve noticed all the obvious things, keep looking. What about that ant crawling across your big toe? That tiny flower peeking out from under the clover leaves? The bird nest almost hidden in the tree branches above?

Or, maybe you could go on a color scavenger hunt, searching for objects of different colors in nature. Observe the vibrant hues of flowers, leaves, or insects. Look for patterns in tree bark or animal markings. Use binoculars or magnifying glasses to observe details from a distance. The more you look, the more you see! Nature becomes more exciting the longer you focus on it.

Touch

Encourage your kids to touch things around them, noting the different temperatures and textures nature offers. From the rough bark of a maple tree to the silky smoothness of a blade of grass, the world around us is full of everyday nature that becomes extraordinary when you stop to consider it. Allow your kids to play with mud, sand, or clay, and explore its malleability and consistency. Let kids use their hands to explore the temperature and texture of water in a stream or puddle. Find objects with varying textures, such as rough bark, soft moss, or smooth pebbles.

Hearing

Close your eyes for this one. Lie down on your back and simply focus for a bit on how nature surrounds you, even when you can’t see it. What do you hear? (It’s perfectly fine if you have sounds of traffic and people, too. Very few of us can often get to a place where we can hear nothing but nature!)

Listen for the wind rushing through the leaves, the bee buzzing at the flowers, the birds calling, or water rushing. Identify different bird calls and try to mimic them. Play a “Sound Guessing Game” where you close your eyes and listen to identify the source of various sounds. Nature’s song fills our ears when we stop to listen.

Smell

This is also a great one to do with the eyes closed! Start concentrating on the scents all around you. Talk about them and have the kids see if they can guess what they are. The aroma of cut grass, the perfume of a flower, the damp dirt of the woods or the rich smell of fallen leaves—all of these smells fill our senses with the delight of nature. Smell herbs or leaves and try to guess their identity. Find flowers with different fragrances and compare their scents. Look for areas with distinct natural smells, such as a pine forest or a seaside.

6. Imaginary nature play

Engaging in imaginary nature play allows children to unleash their creativity, explore their imagination, and deepen their connection with the natural world. By providing the space, materials, and support, parents can nurture their child’s imagination and help them build a deep connection with nature.

Tips for encouraging imaginary nature play

Start by providing your child with open-ended materials to play with. Offer a variety of natural materials, such as sticks, leaves, rocks, and flowers, that can be used as props for imaginative play. These materials can transform into anything their imagination desires, from magic wands to fairy houses or animal habitats. Prompt your child to create stories or narratives around their imaginary play. Encourage them to describe the characters, settings, and adventures they envision. This helps develop their language skills and fosters creativity.

Join in the imaginary play as a playmate or facilitator. Take on different roles, engage in dialogue, and let your child take the lead. This strengthens the parent-child bond and encourages collaborative play. Help your child develop a sense of wonder and curiosity about nature. Point out interesting aspects of the environment, such as unusual tree formations, animal tracks, or unique plant species. This sparks their imagination and provides inspiration for their imaginary play.

Nature fairy houses

Creating fairy houses, fairy dolls, and flower/leaf crafts are my all-time favorite imagination-heavy nature activities for kids. Growing up, I often headed out to the woods and built tiny houses out of natural materials. I loved furnishing them and playing with my imaginary characters in them.

I taught my oldest daughter how to get started making fairy houses when she was just a toddler. Now all three of my girls will spend hours with some sticks and nuts and flowers, creating imaginary worlds at the base of a tree. They will transform flowers into dolls and weave leaves into baskets. Flat stones become furniture, and nuts become bowls and food. There is no limit to what you can create with a few natural materials and imagination.

Just this morning, my daughter went to play with some friends, and when I asked her what they did, she replied that all four of them worked together to build an elaborate fairy house. Using materials found in nature, kids can put their imaginations to work and create a magical world out of sticks, stones, bark, and flowers. We’ve got an entire post about building fairy houses and gardens, so head over there for more details on this favorite nature activity.

7. Nature sit spot

Engaging in a nature sit spot with your child is a wonderful way to encourage mindfulness, observation skills, and a deeper connection with the natural world. The goal of this nature activity for kids is to observe and record the changes and growth of a nature area—and your own children—for an entire year. It’s a great way to help kids see the rhythms of the natural world right outside their windows.

Sometimes we get so busy with life that we miss the subtle changes of nature through the seasons, and only notice the super dramatic ones, like when the flowers bloom, the leaves fall, or the snow comes down. But intertwined throughout those major events in nature are dozens of minor shifts throughout the seasons.

In the same way, our children are growing right under our eyes. Sometimes it happens so slowly that we hardly realize it, but when we consistently photograph them in the same location over the course of a year, we see those changes recorded. As the seasons change, so do our children. This activity is a unique way to appreciate growth and changes, both in nature and in our families.

Tips for choosing a nature sit spot

To get started, get your kids outside and pick out a spot to observe throughout the seasons. Make it close to home so it’s easy to see and record. It could be your yard just outside your living room window, a tree you pass every day on the way to the bus stop, or a favorite area at a local park. Make it convenient so you’ll be sure to keep up with its changes throughout the year.

Ideally, your seasonal sit spot will include a deciduous tree that will provide a lot of interesting changes to observe throughout the year and maybe some perennial flowers that will come up out of nowhere, bloom, and die back in the fall. I mean, you could pick a big rock for your seasonal spot, but it might not show a lot of changes! You’d probably see the grass grow around it, some trees change in the background somewhere, and maybe you’d get snow on it eventually…but you get the point.

Try to pick somewhere that will be interesting to watch the seasons change. Even more importantly, pick someplace significant to your kids where they will enjoy watching the changes.

Photographing your nature spot

Once you’ve picked your spot for the year, take a picture of it with your kids in the frame somewhere. This does not have to be a photography project or a posed picture (but you could do that too – here’s how to do a seasonal spot photography project)! Just let them play in the dirt, climb the tree, or flop down in the grass. The point is just to record what your spot—and your kids—looked like at that moment in time.

It’s up to you how often you photograph your nature spot. Weekly might be too often to keep up with all year, but you could do it that often if you wanted to. I think monthly is a great goal! It’s pretty neat to look back over photos taken once a month in the same spot for an entire year. This year I’m photographing our favorite climbing tree on the edge of our property, and I can’t wait to see all the little changes throughout the year!

Tips for having a seasonal sit spot with kids

Explain to your child that the purpose of the sit spot is to observe and connect with nature. Encourage them to be present in the moment, open their senses, and pay attention to the details of their surroundings. Find a comfortable sitting position and invite your child to join you. Encourage them to sit quietly and still, allowing themselves to blend into the environment. Explain that this stillness helps wildlife feel more comfortable and encourages their natural behaviors.

Guide your child to observe their surroundings with all their senses. Encourage them to notice the sounds, smells, textures, and colors around them. Help them discover the beauty in the small details, like insects, birds, or patterns in tree bark. After spending some time observing, invite your child to share their thoughts, feelings, or any interesting discoveries they made during the sit spot. Encourage them to reflect on the interconnectedness of nature and their own place within it.

Start with shorter sit spot sessions, especially for younger children, and gradually increase the duration as they become more comfortable with the practice. This helps them develop patience and the ability to be present in the moment. Encourage your child to experience the sit spot in different weather conditions. Whether it’s sunny, rainy, or snowy, each weather presents unique opportunities for observation and connection with nature.

Incorporate the sit spot into your routine as a regular activity. Schedule specific times to revisit the sit spot with your child, whether it’s once a week or once a month. Consistency helps deepen their connection with nature and cultivates a sense of stewardship.

What are your favorite outdoor activities?
Have you tried any of the ones in this article?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. Follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Leslie’s RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
CAMP, Cooking, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, RECIPES
Camping Food Your Kids Will Love Eating & Making
- November 7, 2022
One of the best parts of camping is the time spent in nature as a family. And, of course, time spent outside makes kids hungry! Those three meals a day (plus dessert and snacks, of course!) roll around with frightening regularity when you’re feeding hungry, active children on camping trips. But don’t worry! Camping food can be easy, fun, and delicious. And meals can involve the whole family (yes, even the kids). Today, Leslie Alvis, Ohio homeschooling mom of four, is here to share with you some of her family’s favorite camping foods and easy recipes you can make with your kids, adding even more fun and memories to your camping experience.

Camping food ideas kids will love (beyond hot dogs)

Many people think that camping food for kids begins and ends with hot dogs. And although we consider a crispy hot dog cooked over an open fire a delicacy hard to beat, our family also has many other yummy campfire favorites.

Pretty much anything can be cooked over a campfire, with the proper tools and a little patience! Frying homemade donuts, baking bread, cooking steaks—you name it, you can cook it over an open fire. If you think about it, you’d have a hard time coming up with a food that can’t be cooked outside or wouldn’t taste better over an open campfire! You can cook things in a skillet, on a grate, on a camp stove, or in a foil packet directly on your campfire. With so many ways to cook, it can be overwhelming even to know where to begin.

Today, we’re focusing on easy camping meals and simple recipes that your kids will love helping with AND eating. The camping foods for kids below, include meals, snacks, and desserts. These recipes are our tried-and-true favorites and are destined to become the stuff of magical memories made by my kids over the campfire. I hope you’ll add a few of them to your camping menu on your next camping trip! Because the best camping food is made and enjoyed together, outside.

Cooking that involves the whole family

I’ve learned that if I try to do all the camping food on my own, I quickly start to feel stressed and overwhelemed. Everyone else is relaxing and enjoying themselves, while I’m busy trying to cook food over an open fire without burning it, balancing utensils on a nearby log, keeping things from falling in the dirt, and making sure no one gets burnt. Campfire cooking is a juggling act for sure.

But, one of the ways to make camping meals easier is to have help from the rest of the family! Many hands make light work, and if you include your whole family in the meal prep and cooking, it makes a huge difference.

Luckily, this doesn’t take a lot of prodding or begging for help on my part. Kids naturally love to help, and they love to try food that they’ve made themselves. Even if it’s a new food or one they don’t eat regularly, they’re much more likely to be excited about eating it if they’ve helped prepare it. It’s a win-win!

Safety first

Just like with any other kind of cooking, the most important thing is to make sure everyone is safe when you’re campfire cooking with kids. Make sure all your children understand the importance of being careful around a campfire and know what to do in case of an emergency. Remind them of some basic safety rules: no running near the fire, be careful of any hot pots or utensils, keep a respectful distance from the fire, and no waving the hot dog sticks in the air. (There are few sights more terrifying to me than several children waving flaming marshmallows on hot sticks around a campfire!)

It helps to have a strong visual boundary around your campfire, like a metal or rock fire ring. As adults, we have to remember that our kids are often unaware of potential dangers. Part of the beauty of cooking together is that you can teach them these things firsthand. Kids are more than capable of learning how to safely function around even potential dangers like a campfire.

Basic equipment for camping food

When you’re gathering equipment to cook camping food and assemble your camp kitchen, you want to keep your supplies and equipment as simple as possible. Everything we’re sharing today can be made with three key items: (1) a hot dog stick, (2) a cast iron Dutch oven, and (3) a hobo pie iron. These three pieces of equipment have become our go-to campfire cookware. Let’s take just a minute to look at these three items and all the possibilities they represent.

Cast iron Dutch oven:

From bread to soup and everything in between, the Dutch oven is a camping food workhorse. Make sure to get one with a lid and a handle, if possible. You can hang it from a tripod over the fire, set it on top of a grate, or nestle it among the coals. With a dutch oven, you can cook biscuits, then bacon, then scrambled eggs for breakfast – all in one pot. You can simmer soup in it for lunch, and then cook our delicious kielbasa, beans, and red potatoes dish in it for supper.

A cast iron dutch oven really makes any kind of cooking possible over an open fire! I’m still working on consistently not burning the biscuits…but one day, I’d really like to master them and move on to bread!

Hobo pie iron

Hobo pie irons are an incredibly fun way to cook camping food and make the perfect kid-friendly camping meal. They elevate any sandwich to an experience of crispy, melty goodness. They can also be used as mini skillets to reheat leftovers, cook hashbrowns, make pancakes, and much more.

If you have a large family, it’s nice to have a couple of pie irons in order to keep the hobo pies flowing. We currently just have one double pie iron for our family of six, and it makes for a slower meal experience, but it’s still doable. Sometimes our extended family makes hobo pies for large family gatherings, and it’s a bit of a hectic event, with multiple irons in the fire and assembly-line sandwich prep going on. But it’s always a ton of fun.

Hot dog stick

I feel like these go without saying. If you’re planning camping food, you’re going to want some sticks to roast hot dogs or marshmallows on at some point! They’re certainly the tool that’s easiest to improvise out in the wild. All you need are some straight sticks and a knife to sharpen a point at one end. A wooden skewer could work, but you’ll want something with a large handle that won’t burn. It’s nice to have these sturdy wood and metal ones that can balance your hot dogs better and cook multiple marshmallows at once.

Other equipment for camping food

There are so many different ways to cook when you’re camping. We like to bring a foldable cooking grate when we’re camping because it makes it a lot easier to cook over a fire. Some campgrounds provide a fire ring with a grate built in, but not all of them. Foldable grates are fairly compact when folded up, lightweight enough to carry around easily, but reasonably tough and sturdy.

Some thick hot mats or cooking mitts are also important for camping food, especially when you’re handling cast iron or if you’re letting your children help with hot items. It’s nice if they’re extra-durable because cookware can get REALLY hot over a fire.

You want to be sure to pack some sturdy cooking utensils, preferably ones with long handles for cooking over a campfire. You don’t need a bunch, but I always bring some cooking tongs, a spatula, and a couple wooden stirring spoons.

Lastly, tin foil is great to have on hand when camping over an open fire. Foil-wrapped meals can be customized to suit all tastes and make great healthy meal options. You can make your own aluminum foil packs for quick and easy meals with zero clean-up!

Breakfast hack for camping mornings

There’s nothing quite like waking up in the morning to singing birds and the relaxing sounds of nature all around. Slow mornings camping are one of my favorite things. But, we all know that mornings with kids just don’t stay slow for long! It’s inevitable that someone is asking for breakfast before you’re even out of your sleeping bags. Suddenly that vision of peacefully sipping your coffee around the campfire evaporates, and you’re scrambling to assemble breakfast ingredients before the water is even hot enough for coffee.

So, before we even discuss breakfast, here’s my best morning camping hack: pack a bag with a variety of granola bars, protein bars, breakfast biscuits, etc. While you’re getting the fire going and making that coffee, let the kids grab a snack from the bag. Mom and Dad get a few minutes to enjoy their coffee, and no one starves before the bacon is cooked. You can thank me later for that one.

Breakfast over the campfire

I really believe that simple is best when you’re camping. At home, I typically make most of our food from scratch and emphasize healthy meals. But, that requires plenty of ingredients, time, and dishes. If you’re able to juggle that all on a camping trip, I commend you! But, in order to make our camping food easy and fun, I often rely on more pre-made foods when we’re camping for ease and convenience.

For breakfast, one of our favorite meals is cinnamon rolls, sausage, and hash browns. These are all favorites for the kids to help with. (Other favorites include make-ahead breakfast burritos, but we’ll save that recipe for another day.)

Campfire cinnamon rolls

Cinnamon rolls are a great camping food for kids. Refrigerated cinnamon rolls are a great way to experiment with Dutch oven baking over a campfire and are one of my favorite easy breakfast ideas. When we’re camping with limited prep space and trying to keep ingredients as simple as possible, pre-made cinnamon rolls straight from the can make everything soooo much easier! Let your kids open the package and separate the cinnamon rolls into a greased Dutch oven. Give them a little space to rise and allow some room in between them to flip them.

Put the lid on the dutch oven and set it over a hot section of slow-burning coals on a grate or a tripod. You don’t want these over open flames or they will burn very quickly! We’ve found that the best way to not burn them at first is to check the bottoms often. Of course, they bake better if you keep the lid on. But, if you aren’t confident with your fire’s temperature, just keep an eye on them. When they are golden brown on the bottom, use a spatula to flip each one over. Then watch the bottoms again.

Learning to cook over the fire by trial and error

If your fire has a pretty nice spread of coals, they will probably take about the same amount to brown the second time. This whole process usually takes about 10-15 minutes. Every fire is different, and the kind of wood you are using affects how hot it is…which is why campfire cooking is such a trial-and-error thing.

Remove them from the fire and let your kids spread the icing on them (remember, cast iron holds heat for a long time, so you may want to set the cinnamon rolls on a plate first if you’re concerned about small hands brushing the hot pan) and enjoy! Even when we’ve burnt the bottoms a little, these little treats have been a huge hit around our campfire.

Camping breakfast sausages and hash browns

While the cinnamon rolls are cooking, pull out the hot dog sticks and the hobo pie irons. If your kids are old enough to handle a hot dog stick safely, let them cook their own sausage links just like a hot dog. This is such a fun activity for little people.

Pro tip: buy precooked sausages! This easy food takes all the fear out of making sure the sausages are cooked enough. All the kids have to do is get the sausage heated through. And they can munch on them as soon as they are cool enough to eat.

Meanwhile, separate the halves of the hobo pie iron and let the kids lay the hash browns on them. Lay these across a grate or prop them between rocks to use them as mini skillets to cook the hash browns. Once again, minimal prep and fuss involved! You can remove them from the fire and let an older child flip them once one side is browned.

Let everyone help with camping food

I’ve discovered that letting our kids help with simple tasks like these has really increased their confidence and ability to work safely around a campfire. They know things are hot and take care not to burn themselves. Each time they try, they are a little more capable of flipping things, handling things with hot pads, and working safely around a fire.

Lunchtime around the campfire

Easy, adaptable, and delicious, hobo pies are our family’s favorite campfire meal! They require minimal cooking skills and very basic ingredients. Our favorites are sandwich hobo pies: the pizza sandwich (mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, and pizza sauce), the classic sandwich (all varieties of lunch meat, cheese, and condiments), and the dessert sandwich (any flavor of canned pie filling, topped off with marshmallows).

Once the flavors get melted together in a sealed pie iron over a campfire, the taste is unforgettable! Making an entire meal of hobo pies is entirely acceptable. So is eating the dessert pies for breakfast. But, we usually round out hobo sandwiches into a healthy meal by adding fresh veggies and fresh fruit, like grapes or apples.

Making hobo pies

Get your kids involved in the process of making hobo dinners and lunches by letting them help build their sandwiches. Set out the ingredients and let them create! Kids have so much fun layering on their chosen meats and cheeses for hot sandwiches or smearing a piece of bread with pie filling to create an amazing camp pie. Just remember to help them not fill their hobo pies TOO full (especially the fruit ones), or they will be hard to eat!

Cooking with pie irons with kids

After you assemble your sandwiches, cooking them is pretty simple. Preheat your pie iron over the fire, grease it lightly with butter or cooking spray, and then center your sandwich on the iron. Close the pie iron tightly and be sure to clip the little clasp on the handle closed, so the pie iron seals shut. We like to use a knife to trim off any bread crusts hanging off the edge before we start cooking them.

Then, cook the hobo pie until it is lightly browned on each side and the center is nicely melted. You have to pay attention to the heat of your fire to get it right—but it’s not hard. It works best to cook them slowly over a moderate fire or section of coals. When they’re finished, be sure to have a plate or clean surface ready to flip them on to (not styrofoam or plastic, because it will melt!) so they can cool before everyone dives in!

Snack time: kid-friendly trail mix

Whether you’re spending your day hiking, swimming, or just hanging around the campfire, the kids are sure to be ready for a snack before too long. Before you head out on your camping trip, have your kids help you put together this super easy, kid-approved trail mix to add to your stash of camping food! This is the easy way to make camping snacks ahead of time.

My favorite part about trail mix is that it’s totally adaptable to your kids’ tastes and preferences. Even picky eaters can customize their trail mix to their exact likings. You can even just open your pantry cupboards and add whatever you find. The idea is to add enough nuts for protein, some dried fruit for nutrition, and some sweets, just for fun.

Kids’ trail mix recipe:
- 1 cup dried cranberries
- 1 cup raisins
- 1 cup honey-roasted peanuts
- 1 cup cashews
- 1 cup peanut butter chips
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 1 cup M&M’s
- 1 cup mini marshmallows
- 2 cups Cheerios
Mix together and store in an airtight container, or divide into snack-size bags for individual portions to stash in backpacks.

More kid-friendly camping snack ideas
- Tortilla chips and salsa
- Beef jerky
- Granola bars
- Fig cookies
- Cheese, sausage, crackers
- Fresh fruit
- Pre-cut veggies
- Mixed nuts
Camping supper idea: kielbasa, beans, and red potatoes

After a full day of outdoor adventures, everyone is always starving for dinner! Make-ahead meals and foil-pack meals are great for camping. But, my favorite camping supper is this one-pot meal because it’s so quick and easy to throw together, and then you can relax while it simmers over the campfire. In my opinion, it’s the perfect camping food. It requires a minimum of refrigerated ingredients and can feed large groups of people, which makes it perfect for camping, too. The yummy sausage-like meat is always a favorite of kids everywhere.

Memorable camping food

This was the meal I packed for our family’s first-ever camping trip, when our oldest was a toddler, so it’s a personal favorite. We were traveling home from somewhere and planning to stop over for a night in a campground in the Appalachian Mountains. I stashed a couple of cans of beans and a bag of potatoes in the back of the car somewhere and a package of kielbasa in our cooler. We arrived at our campsite in the middle of nowhere right at suppertime, with the ominous rumbling of thunder across the mountains.

Somehow, in the midst of gathering firewood, building a fire, and trying to set up our borrowed tent, we also managed to chop the potatoes and meat and get this meal cooked over the campfire. We burrowed into our tent with our pot of kielbasa just as the storm broke loose. It was a long day and this meal hit the spot. It has remained a favorite meal for our family over the years, and one I often rely on when traveling or camping because it’s so easy. Sometimes a great camping meal will bring back memories and make you smile.

Kielbasa, beans, and red potatoes recipe

Ingredients:
- 1 package (1 lb) Polish kielbasa
- 6 large red potatoes (or feel free to swap out a few for sweet potatoes)
- 2 cans of green beans
- 2 cloves garlic
- Salt, pepper, and seasoned salt (I use the Bearded Butchers Blend Original seasoning. It’s a local favorite, made right up the road from our home, but its great flavor and clean ingredients have made it popular everywhere!)
Instructions:

Mince garlic and saute in 1 T. butter or olive oil in a Dutch oven. Wash and cut potatoes into medium-sized cubes, then add to Dutch oven. Slice kielbasa and stir in. Add green beans and salt/pepper to taste. Saute for approximately 5 minutes, then add a cup of water and put the lid on the Dutch oven. Let simmer on the hot coals until the potatoes are tender. You want to make sure to keep just enough liquid in the pan to keep everything from sticking to the bottom, but not too much (this isn’t a soup). When it’s finished cooking, there shouldn’t be excess liquid in the pot.

Add some biscuits to any meal

Freshly cooked biscuits go perfectly with any good camping meal (and are sometimes the best part of the meal!). If you’re ambitious, you can make biscuits from scratch. Sometimes I mix my dry ingredients together before we leave to create my own “just add milk” biscuit mix. Other times, it’s WAY easier just to use canned biscuit dough! The good news is that both options taste great!

You can bake biscuits in the Dutch oven the same way you do the cinnamon rolls—check them often and flip them when the bottoms are browned. If you only have one Dutch oven, it’s a good idea (and probably easiest) to bake the biscuits before you do the Kielbasa, Beans, and Red Potatoes. Just wrap them in a towel to keep them warm until supper is ready…if they last that long!

Camping dessert: s’mores buffet

Let’s be honest – you just can’t beat s’mores for a favorite campfire dessert for every age! S’mores are the classic camping food for kids. This easy crowd-pleaser is the quintessential campfire dessert. But, in case you’ve gotten a little tired of the classic version, or if you’re just looking for an extra-fun variation, try a s’mores buffet!

Mix and match to try all kinds of new flavor combinations, and be sure to add your own favorites, too!

The base:
- Classic graham crackers
- Chocolate graham crackers
- Round chocolate cookies
- Round mint chocolate cookies
- Oreos
- Fudge stripe cookies
The middle:
- Basic marshmallows
- Square marshmallows
- Flavored marshmallows
The toppings:
- Milk chocolate bars
- Reese’s Thins
- Peanut butter
- Sprinkles
- Mini chocolate chips
Mom hacks for s’more fun
- Set all your ingredients out on a tray, so they’re easy to access! Every parent knows how quickly s’more-making gets out of control once the marshmallows start melting.
- Even if your kids can toast their own marshmallows, keep at least one adult with both hands-free until all the kids’ smores are made. That way, someone is available to help when a kid’s marshmallow is slipping off their stick or catches on fire.
- Always have a wet cloth or a bucket of warm soapy water handy before you start making smores with kids! It makes all the stickiness just So. Much. Easier.
- Don’t give in to the temptation to buy the giant “campfire” marshmallows. I know they look amazing and fun. But they’re just too big to fit into a s’more, and the mess that ensues is EPIC. Ask me how I know…
- If you want to make s’more even more fun, put your marshmallow and toppings inside ice cream cones, wrap them in foil, and cook slowly over the campfire for a warm, melty delicious treat. Great option for little kids that aren’t ready to cook over the fire on their own.
Camping meals made simple

And there you have it! One full day of fun, easy campfire meals that you can make with your kids and that they will love! Some of our family’s best camping memories are centered around simple meals like these and the time spent cooking them together. I hope your family will enjoy them as much as we do!

What’s your family’s favorite camping food?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. Follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Leslie’s RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
CRAFTS, LESSONS, NATURE SCHOOL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, OUTDOORS INSIDE, SPRING
Dissecting Daffodils and Tulips with Kids
- June 2, 2022
Some of the first signs of spring are the colorful blossoms of tulips and daffodils. Without fail, those early pops of springtime color bring delight to our souls. As the tulips and daffodils bravely poke their leaves up through the soil, send out stems and buds, and then finally bloom, they remind us that winter will not last forever. And while they’re beautiful to admire and look at, they’re also a fun and hands-on way for kids to get outside learn about nature! Today, Leslie Alvis, Ohio homeschooling mom of four is going to show you how to dissect some of these beautiful spring flowers and examine them more closely with your children. She’s also got a couple of bonus activities to do with your tulips and daffodils, so be sure to read through the whole post!

Children learn by touching

I loved daffodils and tulips long before I had children. But their wonder and delight grew when I began to experience them with my kids. To a small child, whose outdoor world has been governed by cold and snow for so many months, daffodils and tulips bring sheer amazement. They’re so cheerful, so undaunted by the often frigid world around them.

Children learn so much by touching and feeling the natural world around them. Dissecting tulips and daffodils is particularly delightful because it allows kids to take apart and touch each part of the flowers. Other than common weeds like dandelions, I don’t usually let my kids tear flowers apart! So, this activity definitely felt special to them. It reminded me that the simple beauty of nature brings so much wonder and delight to a child. Learning experiences don’t have to be complicated. They can simply involve removing the delicate pieces of a flower and learning what those pieces are called.

Picking daffodils and tulips

If you choose to do a flower dissection, be sure your child has permission to pick the flowers. Asking before picking flowers has been a hard lesson for each of my children to learn. It usually comes up most during their preschool years. They’re just so overcome by the beauty of the flower, they find picking it irresistible!

Tulips, in particular, seem to just call them. This has always been a big deal because tulips are often a little sparse in our flowerbeds. Yet, at some point in their early years, every one of my children has systematically picked the handful we had. One of my offspring once even picked and dissected the only bud we had, just to see what it looked like inside. Childhood curiosity! This dissection activity satisfies that curiosity. It also deepens kids’ understanding and appreciation of daffodils and tulips.

This is also a great time to teach them that just because it’s okay to pick some flowers doesn’t mean it’s okay to pick all flowers! I try to remind my children of the old adage, “What if everybody did?” If everyone picked every daffodil or tulip they saw, there wouldn’t be any left for us to enjoy in nature.

If you don’t have permission to pick flowers (or don’t have access to flowers), you can usually find cut flowers to purchase at a grocery or flower store.

Daffodil and tulip dissection with kids

Daffodil or tulip dissection is one of the easiest and simplest nature experiments you can do with your kids! All you need is a couple flowers and a sheet of paper. You can also use this printable if you’d rather not make your own. We enjoyed laying out our own pages and labeling them ourselves. If you have a magnifying glass, be sure to keep that handy so your kids can examine each part more closely!

For our daffodil and tulip dissection, we simply separated the pieces of each flower and arranged them on a piece of paper. You can also cut the flower in half with a sharp knife, but my kids voted for taking it apart by hand. That way even the little one could participate.

My oldest daughter copied a chart showing the parts of the flowers, then the younger girls got to arrange their own flower pieces. This simple activity was so much fun! They all learned so much about the details of the flowers. It felt like playing, taking apart the petals and stems and other parts of the blossoms. After dissecting a daffodil, the girls couldn’t wait to try a tulip.

Identifying parts of a daffodil or tulip

For younger children, a simple breakdown of stem, leaves, and petals may be a deep enough look into the parts of the daffodils and tulips. For older kids, we’re also including a more in-depth at the parts of these flowers and their functions. If you’re looking for a little more information about the parts of a daffodil, check out this page.
- Stem: The stem is the tall, green stalk that carries water and nutrients from the earth up to the flower.
- Leaves: This is where photosynthesis happens—where the plant takes the sun’s energy and turns it into food for the plant!
- Spathe: The papery brown sheath that covered the bud before it opened.
- Ovary: Filled with ovules, or eggs, which later become seeds after the flower has been pollinated by bees or other insects.
- Pistil: This is the center part of the flower, including the style and the stigma at the top.
- Stamen: The six little stalks surrounding the pistil. The stalk part is called the filament and the pollen-covered tip is the anther.
- Petals: This is most visible and colorful part of the flower.
- Corona: The inside layer of petals on the daffodil, also called the crown or trumpet
Planting bulbs with kids

Daffodils and tulips are both bulb plants, meaning they grow from a bulb deep in the earth, rather than a seed. The bulb stores up energy for the plant and goes dormant over the winter. Daffodil and tulip bulbs are best planted in the fall, so they can emerge as the daylight strengthens and the earth thaws at the end of winter. A healthy bulb will multiply year by year—if you plant a single daffodil bulb, within a few years you should have several!

My mother-in-law likes to tell how she once assigned her children the job of planting some daffodil bulbs in her new flower bed. They carefully inserted a single bulb in each hole, neatly spaced around the flower garden. The next year, she had single daffodils blooming everywhere! But after several years, she had the beautiful clusters she had once dreamed of.

To turn this into a long-term science project, plant some daffodil or tulip bulbs with your child this fall. You can find them at home improvement or garden centers in the fall months. You can also order them from seed catalogs or even see if a friend or neighbor has some to share. Then plant them about twice as deep as the bulb is tall (probably about 2-3 inches deep). In the spring, you’ll have your own daffodils and tulips to enjoy!

Tulips and daffodils in the cold

As cold-hardy plants, tulips and daffodils are able to survive chilly and even briefly freezing weather. If you live in an area where spring comes in fits and starts, like we do, you’ve probably seen daffodils with their heads bowed down with frost or even tulips dusted with snow. Amazingly, once the temperatures warm and the sun comes out, these hardy plants usually bounce back like nothing ever happened! Although temperatures below 25 may kill the blooms, the plants themselves will survive and bloom again the next year.

Making spring flower bouquets with kids

If you can’t get enough of these beautiful spring flowers, here are some more activities involving daffodils and tulips. First of all, make flower arrangements! This is one of the easiest and most rewarding hands-on activities you could ever let your kids do. It builds artistic skills and deeply satisfies the love of beauty that’s built into every one of us. If you don’t have spring flowers to pick, maybe a neighbor or friend has a yard full of them. Many times people won’t mind letting children pick a few for a bouquet.

Flower picking instructions for kids

This is a great time to help children learn how to pick flowers intentionally. Have them think through these questions as they select and pick their flowers:
- How many flowers do I need for this arrangement?
- Which colors and shapes will look good in my arrangement?
- What varieties/colors are there most of?
- Which flowers can I pick without leaving a hole in the beauty of the mother plant?
- Are there other flowers or greenery to pick from to complement the flowers in my arrangement?
Teach your kids how to pick the flowers carefully, carefully breaking off or cutting the stem. If you have a vase in mind, show them the vase and how much stem length they’ll need for their arrangement. (For some reason it’s hard for kids to learn to leave enough stem with the flower. They seem to have their eye on the flower and break the stem just past the flower. It always takes a while to teach them to cut the stem with their flower!) But most of all, just let them have fun putting together beautiful flowers to display inside your home. Or have them make a bouquet to give to a friend or neighbor!

Dyeing daffodils with kids

Did you know daffodils can be turned different colors? This fun and simple experiment shows how their veins draw fluids up, through the stems, and out into the petals. Place a daffodil with white or light-colored petals into a glass of water and add food coloring. Better yet, try several daffodils in different colors of water. Set in a safe place and check back every day to watch the magic happen!

You should be able to see colors in the petals within 24 hours. My kids are fascinated with this–even our four-year-old loved checking in to see the colors changing. We’ve had issues with the flowers beginning to wilt and fade before the colors had time to make a really vibrant difference, though. So I’d recommend using the freshest blooms you can find and a strong food coloring solution for the best results.

In the meantime, since I failed to get a photo before our daffodils started getting all sad and wilted, my friend Ginny shared one of her amazing colored daffodils. Aren’t those lacy-colored veins just gorgeous?

Photo credit Ginny Yurich @1000hoursoutside

Spring flower fun for kids

Whether you dissect them, dye them, plant them, or just pick some for a bouquet, daffodils and tulips are some of spring’s greatest delights. So be sure to get out and find some to enjoy with your kids!

Have you ever dissected tulips or daffodils with your kids?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. Follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Leslie’s RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
CAMP, INFORMATION, LESSONS, NATURE SCHOOL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, TEENS
Wilderness Survival Skills for Teens and Tweens
- December 3, 2021
Getting kids outside to experience the wonders of nature isn’t limited to the early childhood years. In a world infused with technology and fast-paced demands, our teens and tweens need the great outdoors more than ever. However, by the time they’ve reached their teen years, our kids are often past the days of playing at the park for hours on end. So, how do we encourage them to continue to love nature, to explore its beauty, and appreciate its allure? Today, Leslie Alvis, Ohio homeschooling mom of four, shares some ideas for engaging your teens (and pre-teens) in the outdoors through the challenge of learning wilderness survival skills.

Survival skills are important

Anyone who spends much time out in nature knows that your situation can change in an instant. A storm can blow in, an injury can occur, an insect can sting, or an animal could attack. What started out as a simple hike can quickly become dangerous.

I’m not saying any of this to scare you or deter you from spending time outside. None of us really expect our kids (or ourselves) to be thrust into life-threatening situations in the wild–and maybe they never will be! But, as we raise our kids to love being outside, we should also be giving them the tools to face an emergency that could happen outside.

A level head, an emergency kit, and some basic wilderness survival skills will help them be prepared for the unexpected, both now and throughout their lives. And in the meantime, bushcraft skills are just a lot of fun. Sure, they’re useful in a survival situation. But they’re also a fun challenge for you and your teen to enjoy!

The need for survival skills

Many years ago, wilderness survival skills were necessary for life. It’s hard for us to wrap our 21st-century brains around, but children from past centuries had to acquire survival skills early. They needed to know how to build a fire, to create a shelter, to forage for food—and many of them survived because of those skills.

Today, although wilderness survival skills aren’t necessarily essential for everyday life, they are still good to know for emergency situations. In an emergency, previously acquired skills can mean the difference between life and death. Many of these skills can be useful in everyday situations as well. And wilderness survival skills provide an outdoors-based challenge for the developing minds and skills of our young adults. Plus, many of them are just fun to learn!

Building outdoors skills

My husband’s younger brother was still in his late teens when our two oldest kids were small. Too old to go outside and just play, this favorite uncle still enjoyed gathering up his little sisters and my kids to “play scouts.” They would pack up some supplies and tromp around in the woods, studying nature, playing survival games, and building forts. They all loved and benefited from the hours they spent doing this.

As kids get older, the way they “play” and spend time outside changes. Our son is thirteen now, and I’ve watched him make this same type of transition from purely imaginative nature play to constructive skill-building outside. Wilderness survival skills have given nature time a purpose and challenge as he’s grown up. It’s given him a reason to spend more time outside (and isn’t that what we all want for our kids, no matter what the age?).

Developing outdoor survival skills is a gradual process

For our kids, the development of these skills has happened gradually. As they aged and matured, they’d get access to an emergency kit and a pocketknife; they learned fort-building skills and fire safety. As our children express interest in these new challenges, we carefully and gradually introduce the tools and concepts for wilderness survival. There’s no magic age for this. In our family, it continues to vary based on interest and maturity. You know your kids best and can judge whether they’re ready or not.

At thirteen, our son is capable and independent with many of these skills. But, he’s not just picking them up right now. His training and experience started very early, working in the woods with his dad and grandpa, and playing with his uncle. He frequently reads woodsman and bushcraft books, and loves to head out to the woods to practice these skills.

As he and I have collaborated on the material for this article, I’ve honestly been amazed at his knowledge of and passion for all things bushcraft. He’s become very proficient in these skills due to practice, persistence, and merely spending time outside getting to know, understand and appreciate nature.

Growing maturity with wilderness survival skills

Each of the wilderness survival skills here will require some level of adult supervision and responsibility, at least initially. Again, as the parent, you know your own children, with their unique abilities and maturity levels. Only you can decide how these skills should look for them. You get to determine what they can handle (and how) based on your own comfort level.

For instance, in the beginning, our children are only allowed to use pocketknives with our permission and supervision. When they have demonstrated capability and maturity with a knife, they may be allowed to carry and use it as they see fit. If we find that they ever use this tool unwisely, we put it away until they grow up a little more. We learn from our mistakes, just as they do.

As parents, our children’s safety is our responsibility. But we also want to see them grow in wisdom and maturity. As they do, it’s amazing to see how a challenge like learning wilderness survival can help them develop and grow.

Wilderness survival skills for teens and tweens

If you’re interested in encouraging your teens (or pre-teen) to spend more time outside and learn some valuable lifelong skills in the process, we’re here to help. Here are some wilderness survival skills that perfect for teens and tweens.

Make a survival kit

Making a survival pack is a fun and simple way to begin developing wilderness survival skills. Even a younger child can create a survival kit for a family hike or for a solo adventure like building a fort in your own backyard. It’s a great way to help kids begin to be prepared for the unexpected in nature. A survival pack doesn’t have to be fancy—just a backpack or little pouch with some basic tools and provisions.

Items you can include in a survival kit:
- First aid kit (our kids have created their own)
- Non-perishable snacks
- Water
- Flashlight
- Emergency blanket or rain poncho
- Rope
- Compass
- Knife or multi-tool (depending on age and maturity)
- Fire-starting tool (also depending on age and maturity)
I’ve been amazed at what my older kids pull out of their packs sometimes. They’re better than I am about carrying first aid supplies on outings and hikes. I can’t count the times our son has used his survival kit to supply or create something useful when we’re outdoors. When we’re working at our homestead property, I often find him unloading a small cast iron skillet and canned goods from his pack, building a fire, and heating a snack for himself and his sisters. Our girls haven’t reached that stage of independence yet, but I love how thinking ahead helps them be helpful and prepared for different circumstances on our nature adventures.

Teaching survival skills to teens (and learning yourself)

Before we cover some key elements of wilderness survival, I’d like to mention that some bushcraft skills may sound intimidating. In particular, handling sharp tools and starting fires might be scary, especially if they are out of your own comfort zone! They sound even scarier when you consider your child doing them. I am in no way advocating turning your child loose with anything. All of these skills require a learning period, patient instruction, and some maturity. With time and practice, he or she can gain safety and competence.

If you’re not comfortable or knowledgeable about these skills, don’t let that stop you. You and your teen can learn together. Letting them see you learn something new is encouraging and shows them that learning a new skill can happen at any age. If you don’t know where (or how) to get started, don’t be afraid to ask for assistance! For instance, if your teen or tween is interested in learning more about safe knife handling, but you’re not comfortable teaching it, consider reaching out to a trusted adult for help. Somewhere in your circle of family and friends, you probably know someone who is a fisherman, a hunter, or a dedicated hiker.

People with hobbies like these often have a keen interest in wilderness survival skills. Many of them also love to share this knowledge, especially with the next generation. So, if you feel insufficient to teach/supervise any of these skills, look around for someone you trust to help you. And try learning right alongside your teen! You will never regret the time you spend together, discovering new skills and spending time in nature.

The Five C’s of wilderness survival

In Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival, author Dave Canterbury identifies the key elements of survival skills as the Five C’s. Here are the Five C’s of wilderness survival:
1. cutting tools
2. combustion
3. cover
4. containers
5. cordage
Other guides label them in different ways, but we think the Five C’s make a helpful and memorable presentation of these skills. So, with due credit to the author for his outline, we would like to share with you the first three key elements of wilderness survival.

1. Cutting tools

The first C of wilderness survival is a cutting tool. Once again, this is something that may initially require your supervision and participation with your child. But, a sturdy pocketknife, multi-tool, or hatchet is one of the top tools necessary in a wilderness survival situation.

A knife should be attached to you, worn on a belt, or in a secure pocket. This is the one thing you never want to be without in an emergency. With a knife or other cutting tool, you can create a fire starter, cut materials for fire and for shelter, and recreate almost any other tool you will need to survive. A knife can also be vital in emergency medical situations (cutting bandaging, removing clothing) and rescues (cutting away obstructions or creating other tools to work with).

In the meantime, gaining skill and competence with a pocketknife or hatchet is a fun challenge for any teen.

Cutting tool options

Because a knife is essential for so many areas of wilderness survival, it’s important to own a good one. The Field and Stream Total Knife Manual is a complete guide to any and every kind of knife, its pros and cons, with every style and brand known to this modern world. On our shortlist of most useful knives, though, are these suggestions:
- Pocketknife: Sturdy, simple, and compact, this knife has a strong blade that locks open, preventing it from accidentally closing on your hand. As a basic survival tool, this knife is adequate and effective for a number of tasks.
- Multi-tool: A step up from a basic pocketknife, the multi-tool provides a number of useful features in one tool. Although this brand is pricey, the quality and durability of their tools is proven. In our experience, they last forever and work for everything.
Learning knife safety early

We live in a rural area where many of our friends and family members carry a pocketknife or multi-tool at all times. A cutting tool is useful for so many tasks in our lifestyle. With that kind of mindset, our kids have asked for pocket knives pretty young.

When we think they can handle a knife without being a danger to themselves, we let them start using one for some basic whittling or cutting. They’ve had to learn basic safety rules:
- do not ever cut toward your body,
- do not move around with an open blade, and
- no using a knife with other kids close to you.
Only after we see them demonstrating responsibility and maturity with those guidelines do we consider letting them carry the knife or using it on their own.

2. Combustion: tools and skills to make a fire

Another key element of wilderness survival is fire. Although it might sound a little scary, the skills and tools to create fire are essential in emergency situations. They also come in handy in many everyday situations throughout life. With proper instruction and supervision, your teen or preteen can learn these skills safely and gain efficiency in fire starting.

Start with fire safety

Since we heat our home with wood, as well as burn a lot of outdoor fires, our kids have been exposed to fires and learned safety rules from toddlerhood. Early on, we teach them never to get near a fire, and never to mess with matches or lighters. But, as our son approached his preteen years, he was demonstrating carefulness, capability, and a lot of interest in fire starting. We’ve continued to emphasize fire safety, but allowed him greater responsibility in building and maintaining fires.

For him, the rules of fire safety are now more focused on choosing a smart location when building a fire, helping his little sisters be careful around the fire, and making sure it is properly contained. It’s also important to know and follow local burning regulations wherever you are. Wilderness survival skills always include being aware, smart, and ethical about your choices.

Fire starting skills

Building a fire in a sheltered area with dry kindling is a great way to start. But wilderness survival takes fire building much farther. If you’re ever in an emergency situation and need a fire, you might not have ideal conditions for starting it. Bushcraft skills teach you how to use the materials you have on hand to create fire for heat, protection, and cooking. It takes practice to learn to build fires with wet materials or without a lighter, but it can be done. And it’s a fun outdoor challenge for a teen to learn!

Choose a proper fire location

To build a safe and efficient fire, find a location that is sheltered from the wind. Scrape away all debris, down to the dirt, in a wide ring around the fire area. If possible, build a stone ring around your fire to help contain it. (Use dry stones, since wet rocks can explode if they’re heated too rapidly!) If there aren’t any stones available, try digging a depression into the dirt or building a small dirt wall around the fire. Practicing wilderness survival skills always includes showing carefulness for the environment surrounding you. This includes keeping the fire contained and controlled.

Fire starting materials

Look for small twigs, leaves, or dry grass for fire-starting material. If it has been raining or snowing, try to find an evergreen tree. In wild areas, the lower, dead limbs of evergreen trees haven’t been trimmed away. Sheltered by the overhanging branches, they provide the perfect source for dry fire materials in a wilderness survival situation. If you’re having a hard time finding dry starter material, you can use a knife to shave one end of a dry stick to carve a “feather stick” (pictured above) to help light your fire.

Starting the fire and choosing a firestarter

Ideally, your wilderness survival kit will contain some way to create a spark. A small lighter, waterproof matches, a magnifying glass, or a ferrocerium rod can all serve as fire starters. While some are easier to use and/or more reliable than others, part of the fun of developing survival skills is learning to start a fire with what you have on hand. I think the dramatic sparks from the ferrocerium rod (shown above) might be the most exciting way to try to start a fire!

Once you have a flame going, gradually add small bits of dry leaves and twigs. Feed the fire slowly with lightweight materials until the flame is steady and strong. Be careful not to smother the fire or let the wind blow it out! With some patience and wilderness survival skills, you can have a strong fire to provide warmth, light, and protection in almost any situation.

3. Cover: shelter in the wilderness

The third C of wilderness survival is cover. If you’re ever stranded in the woods, injured on a hike, or caught in a storm, you need to be able to take shelter. Survival may depend on you knowing the most efficient way to use the materials around you. This is a great challenge for teens and tweens! Survival skills add a whole new dimension to fort building.

First, look around for any natural cover. A cave, a crevice in a hillside, or a ravine can help provide shelter. But sometimes there isn’t a natural cover to be found. If you need to build a simple survival shelter, you can gather materials from around you and build this basic shelter. You need two stakes to drive into the ground, a ridge pole to run between them, and smaller branches to lean against them. The stakes determine the height of the shelter, and the ridgepole its width.

Shelter building basics and tools

A hatchet really comes in handy for creating the point on the stakes, plus a notch in the top for the ridge pole. You can use the flat edge of the hatch to drive the stakes in or use a rock. Once you have your stakes set and the ridge pole set, lean the smaller branches against the ridge pole as thickly as possible. If there are evergreen trees nearby, evergreen branches make an ideal cover against wind and rain. But part of wilderness survival is learning to use what you can find. In the spring and summer, green leafy branches will also work. In the fall and winter, gather armfuls of fallen leaves to fill in the gaps in the wall.

The thicker you pile the branches and leaves, the better shelter you will have. Even dried leaves provide surprisingly good protection from the elements. Being able to build a shelter is one more skill your teen will enjoy learning as he or she gains proficiency in wilderness survival skills!

Practicing wilderness survival skills

Although all these wilderness survival skills are helpful in an emergency situation, they’re also just a lot of fun to practice throughout life. The basics aren’t hard to learn, and there are many ways to continue to develop better bushcraft skills. From how to light a fire without man-made materials to creating a drinking container out of natural materials, survival skills can present endless new challenges and encourage your kids to spend more time outside.

So head outside with your teen, and see what skills you can learn together!

Is your teen interested in wilderness survival?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. Follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
Leslie’s RWMC posts:
ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, FARM, INFORMATION, URBAN NATURE
Animal Safety with Kids
- September 15, 2021
Kids and animals go together like peanut butter and jelly. There are so many amazing benefits of raising kids around animals, including teaching them about responsibility, empathy, compassion, patience, and love. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t safety concerns for both the child and the animal. Today, Leslie Alvis, Ohio homesteading mom of four (and daughter of vets) is here to address all your potential concerns regarding animal safety and children. In this post, Leslie addresses what the safety risks are around animals, how to teach children to handle and approach animals, how to choose the right pet for your family and take care of it, as well as issues regarding pet hygiene and allergies. This post is full of amazing info, so saddle up!

The bond between children and animals

I believe children are born with an interest in living, wiggling, breathing creatures. The animals that surround us are delightful and exciting. Children are drawn to them, many times fearlessly. I’ve watched my toddlers walk up to a huge cow and reach out their hands to a bovine head that’s as big as their whole body. I’ve watched them clutch tiny critters that could bite or scratch. The magnetism between children and animals seems to be almost universal. And there are a multitude of benefits included in letting our kids build relationships with animals.

As parents, though, safety concerns about our kids and animals sometimes loom large. Animals can be big. They can bite and kick and scratch, more unpredictably than a toddler. We all have heard horror stories of dogs hurting children. And animals aren’t really all that hygienic. They can trigger allergy problems, carry diseases, and spread parasites. Now that I think about it, there are a lot of ways an animal can potentially harm a child! So, how do we encourage our kids’ natural love for animals while helping them learn animal safety? We’re here to help.

Always around animals

I’ve always been around animals. Both of my parents are veterinarians. They met in veterinary school and had pets before they had children. Many of my earliest memories involve animals—from pet mice to vet calls on Standardbred horse farms. I grew up in my dad’s veterinary clinic, helping mop floors, “assisting” him with exams and surgeries, and being exposed to all kinds of animals. We always had dogs and cats in our home, and often livestock outside as well. I was raised to love all animals and yet also to have a healthy respect for safety around animals. I knew very well that a dog could bite or a steer could drag me.

My husband also grew up with all kinds of pets. As newlyweds, we picked up our first puppy on our way home from our honeymoon. Animals have continued to play a bigger and bigger role in our family life as we are building our country homestead. We now have to think through animal safety from a parental perspective. How can we teach our own children to interact with animals safely? What are the guidelines we grew up with that have guided us through all kinds of animal relationships?

Kids and pets

Research proves that animals have a wonderful effect on children. I love how this article highlights the many benefits of having pets with kids. Animals do bring some safety risks, but there are so many incredible benefits and lots of ways to make the right choice for your family. If one kind of animal concerns you, there are literally dozens of other kinds of pets—from goldfish to horses, with every size and color and texture you can imagine.

Risks vs. benefits of animals

I look at kids’ safety with animals in a similar way to risky play, like tree climbing and swinging. Are there risks involved? Sure there are. But the benefits to my children are greater than the risks. Animals are used for therapy because their love and acceptance are invaluable to people of all ages, especially children. Caring for animals teaches children responsibility, gentleness, and so much more. In my mind and experience, the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Basic child safety tips around animals

With that said, I’d like to cover some basic animal safety with kids. Please understand that I am not a doctor or a veterinarian. You should always seek out the advice of your medical professional if you have any medical concerns for your child. But here are some common-sense, general guidelines to help you allow your children to be involved with animals while still being safe.

Probably the most major area of animal safety with kids is teaching them how to treat animals correctly. Unfortunately, animals can be unpredictable. They are limited in their intellect and may respond by instinct when they are annoyed or feeling threatened. Amazingly, many animals instinctively treat children with great patience and gentleness. However, especially if an animal has been provoked or mistreated (in the past as well as the present moment), you cannot guarantee that it won’t nip or scratch a child. But there are things you can teach your kids that will help them know how to interact with animals safely.

Treat animals gently

The first thing you need to do to ensure your child’s safety with animals is to teach your child to treat every animal with kindness and gentleness. All animals deserve to be respected as living creatures. They should be handled gently and spoken to with calm voices. And animals generally will respond to gentleness with gentleness. If your child can move slowly and speak softly, he/she will avoid many problems with animals.

Go soft and slow

Although this behavior doesn’t always come easily to kids, it is a good discipline for them to learn. We try to reinforce it with our little ones, especially with new pets or other people’s animals. Any time kids get excited, they tend to forget to move slowly and speak softly. I try to be watchful for this behavior, and for the animal’s response to it. “Look, sweetie, the dog is hiding because you’re being loud and it’s scaring him. He’s not used to you. Try to talk really softly and see if he comes out.” It’s a good learning experience for children to realize that their behavior has an impact on animals, and to see how an animal will respond to loving and gentle behavior.

Animals are different

Every individual animal is unique. It’s really important to teach kids to be respectful of how an animal responds to them. Maybe you have a dog in your home, and it’s used to your kids’ boisterous ways. (We do! Our dog is 100% accustomed to every bit of childish noise and behavior. They can shout and lie on top of him and brush his fur and he puts up with it all.)

But then you go to someone else’s home, and their dog is terrified of all the commotion. In that situation, it’s our job as parents to teach our children how to calm down and respect that animal. This is both important as a rule of kindness, as well as for animal safety. Any animal who is ill at ease is much more likely to snap at a child.

Different kinds of animals

Not all animals like to be treated the same or respond the same way to people. If you’re familiar with animals, you realize that a dog and cat are not created equal. A dog may love a vigorous tummy scratch, while a cat may hate it and scratch the person administering it. And there are even differences between the same types of animals – what doesn’t bother one dog may severely upset another. Just like people, animals are all unique and come with their own personalities, likes, and dislikes. This is a good lesson for kids to learn.

There are different guidelines for how to safely handle cats, birds, horses, and dogs. Not only their size, but also their temperament demands different treatment. If we want to teach our kids safety around animals, we have to teach them how to safely interact with different species.

Safety with other peoples’ pets

If you have a cat in your home, you’ve probably already taught your children how to be safe and gentle with their own pet. When you go to a friend’s house and they have a pet, take time to ask them how that animal likes to be treated. Ask them what their rules are for interacting safely with their pet. Make sure your child is listening and paying attention to this conversation.

Those guidelines will give your child an excellent place to begin getting comfortable with a new kind of animal, whether it’s a pet bird, a hamster, or a large animal. Following the owner’s instructions will also help keep your child safe around an unfamiliar animal.

We have extended family members who have horses, so I try to make sure my kids are learning from their aunt and grandma how to approach, pet, groom, and ride each horse. My parents own beef cattle, and at their farm, I remind my children to listen to Grandpa’s instructions around the cows. Another aunt has pet birds, large and small. She’s wonderful at letting the children interact with the members of her aviary, but I have to remind them to listen and be respectful that each bird behaves differently. One small parrot may let them pet or feed her, but the other will bite if they reach their fingers out to her. As long as they listen to their aunt’s instruction, both they and the birds are safe.

Safety with a new pet

When you’re getting a new pet, especially a kind of animal you haven’t had before, it may bring up some new safety concerns. How do we teach our kids how to be safe with an animal we don’t know much about? Thankfully, there are as many resources available as there are pets! When we got our son a bearded dragon, we knew nothing about lizards.

We turned to the library and the internet to help educate him. We checked out several books and found some YouTube channels for him to watch. Not only did he learn how to properly care for his new pet, but he also learned how to handle and interact with it safely.

Now we’re doing the same thing for our seven-year-old, who persistently begged for a parakeet for her birthday. Having knowledge about their unique pets makes them comfortable with their animals and they feel a strong sense of responsibility to handle their charge with care and safety.

Consider your pet’s history

If you are bringing a new pet into your home, you should make sure the animal has been treated well before coming into your family. If you’re buying a young animal from a breeder, ask if the pet has been socialized and is used to children. You can also ask them for pointers on helping your new pet and your kids adjust to each other.

Although rescuing animals is a wonderful mission, there are some safety concerns when you’re adopting a rescue animal into a family with small children. Many times rescue animals have been mistreated in the past and have triggers that a child can innocently set off. If you choose to adopt an animal from a shelter or rescue, talk to the workers about your family situation. They may be able to help match you with an animal whose temperament or history will work for a family with children. Depending on your children’s ages and maturity, they may also be ready for the challenges of caring for a previously mistreated animal.

Kid-friendly breeds

Some breeds of animals are just more tolerant and better for families with kids. Others can be more high-strung and irritable. When you’re looking for a pet, do some research about what breeds might best fit with your family. This article highlights some of the most family-friendly dog breeds.

From dogs to chickens to cows, there are major temperamental differences from breed to breed. I once raised a steer for a 4-H project who remained unmanageable his entire life. We learned later that his breed was known for being skittish and wild. He simply was the wrong breed for a kid to work with, and I never succeeded in gentling him. I’ve even learned that some chicken breeds are better for kids than others. You can do a google search for the best kid-friendly breeds of any animal you might be considering.

Respect an animals’ space

One of the animal safety rules my parents instilled in us was that you should never, EVER get in a dog’s face. Even though I knew that very well, as a little girl, one time I started messing with my beloved pet dog, getting right in her face, and she bit me. Although she was a trusted, tolerant pet, she had had enough. I was pushing her buttons, and she let me know it. I wasn’t very old, but that lesson has stayed with me throughout my entire life. Stay out of an animal’s face, and respect its space. Even a very tolerant pet may snap at a child if it’s had enough foolish behavior.

And along those same lines, never tease an animal. Sometimes kids don’t realize that an animal cannot understand teasing. Not only is it cruel, but it could be dangerous. An animal who is being teased and tormented is very likely to forget its training and instinctively respond to unkindness with irritation.

Safety with strange animals

There’s a world of difference between a pet you’re familiar with and a strange dog you meet walking down the road. It’s really important to teach children to maintain a cautious, respectful distance. Never, ever, run towards an animal you don’t know! Approach slowly and with caution. If the animal is with its owner, always ask the owner if you may pet it before reaching out to the animal.

Dogs roaming free without an owner probably scare me more than any other kind of animal. My parents always taught us that if a strange dog came running up to you, you should try to “make like a tree.” Stand still, holding your arms perfectly still by your sides. Don’t scream or run away. As a kid, I never had to use this advice, but as an adult, I still remember it. Your best defense against an aggressive dog is to show no fear and remain calm.

Safety tips when approaching strange dogs with kids

Most of my experiences with strange dogs have come in my years as a mom, when a barking dog has run out aggressively as I walk with my kids, a stroller, and our own dog. In these circumstances, I’ve found myself turning into Mama Bear. I don’t become a tree—I go on the offense. My children are always scattered up and down the street on bikes, and usually, I have one in the stroller. I know our huge dog (who’s a big baby normally) would fight a dog if it attacked us, and I’m terrified of my kids being caught in the middle of a dogfight, or getting harassed by an aggressive dog. With invisible fences, it can be very hard to know how close a dog will get to you when they come charging. And it’s oftentimes not for the faint of heart.

In this situation, I find myself yelling at the strange dog in the fiercest tones I can muster, “GO HOME! NO! GO HOME!” It actually works. If I can find and grab a stick quickly, I wave that, also. Although I’ve been nipped at a couple times, none of the kids have ever gotten hurt and our dog always acts perplexed at the stupidity of an animal that would come charging out to attack us. Oftentimes, the loud noise, yelling and barking attract the attention of the homeowner, who will let the dog in.

Hygiene and animal safety

As a mom, one big concern I have about my kids’ safety with animals is hygiene. Let’s face it—animals can be filthy. They can carry some nasty stuff. And my kids aren’t always the cleanest, either! But teaching them some basic hygiene goes a really long way.

A good hand-washing will eliminate those harmful bacteria and parasites. My parents drilled this into me my whole growing-up years: WASH YOUR HANDS. If you’ve been petting the dog, wash your hands. When you’re coming in from the barn, wash your hands. After you’ve changed your pet’s water, wash your hands. It’s so basic, but it really solves a lot of problems.

Kid hygiene

Now, I know my kids forget stuff. And this hand-washing thing worries me when they’re handling animals. It was one thing when most of our animals were outdoors animals. It seemed easier to have them wash as they came inside, or before meals. But, this took a whole new level of importance when my son got his bearded dragon. Anyone who reads anything about bearded dragons (or other lizards) will come across the dreaded word “salmonella.” That freaked me out! Fortunately, in all his own research, my son learned the great importance of hand-washing, both for his own health and his lizard’s. So he took charge of the hand sanitizing and carefully supervised every hand that touched his pet, before and after.

Hand washing for the win

Hand-washing reached a pinnacle of significance when we adopted some kittens this spring. We found them in my dad’s hay barn and their parents were feral cats. The kittens were too little to deworm or vaccinate yet. And we were holding and feeding those kittens all the time. So, I instilled in my children a great horror of the diseases they could bring upon themselves if they forgot to wash their hands after handling the kittens.

I must have done a thorough job of terrifying them because they religiously washed their hands (and still do). And no one caught anything dreadful from the kittens, who have now been appropriately dewormed and vaccinated. That eases my mind quite a lot. I still consider hand washing important, but at least I know we’ve eliminated some of the health problems our cats could pass on to our kids.

Pet hygiene

That brings me to the other side of this hygiene topic: pet hygiene. If you are bringing pets into your home, it’s really important that you cover some basic disease/parasite prevention measures. Your vet will help you know what to do and when, but most pets need regular vaccinations and deworming.

A good flea/tick prevention medication is also important for not only your pet’s health, but to protect your children from being exposed to fleas and ticks from your pet. Thankfully, all these products are readily available and do so much to keep your pet healthy and free from diseases. In turn, your pet is a safer companion for your kids.

One more thing I’d like to address is that very few viruses pass between humans and animals. If your dog is throwing up, or your cat’s eyes are runny, you need to care for the pet’s health—but you don’t usually need to worry about your children catching what the animal has. Proper vaccination and deworming, along with good hygiene practices, will eliminate most of the things you can catch from a house pet.

Along with hand-washing, other important hygiene habits would include not kissing your pets on the mouth, not letting them drink from your cup or the toilet, and keeping their litter box/bathroom area clean.

What about animal allergies?

Unfortunately, sometimes allergies are a major animal safety concern with kids. Many parents think their children can’t have pets because they have allergies. This is definitely an obstacle, but it may be possible to overcome! Not all pet dander is created equal. A child who cannot tolerate cat hair may be perfectly fine with a dog. Many kids with allergies can still live with a non-shedding animal, such as the dogs described in this list. A bird might not work for a child with dust allergies, but maybe an outdoor rabbit or even a tank of goldfish would be okay.

Talk to your child’s doctor if you have concerns about allergies, and see if they can help you come up with some kind of animal companion for your child.

Animals are amazing

Pets enrich our children’s lives in so many ways, and it’s worth the extra work on our part to safely give them the companionship, responsibility, and unconditional love of an animal friend. If we can educate our children on the proper way to handle and interact with animals, we can open the doors for a lifetime of happy and healthy relationships with pets.

How have you handled safety concerns with animals and your kids?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. You can follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
Leslie’s RWMC posts:
ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, FARM, GOOD FOR NATURE, INFORMATION, URBAN NATURE
Raising Chickens with Kids
- May 25, 2021
Have you ever dreamed of raising your own chickens, but weren’t sure how to get started? Do you want to know if chickens are the right pet for you? Are you wondering if chickens are safe to raise around kids? Today, Leslie Alvis, our resident crazy chicken lady, Creative Team member, and homeschooling and homesteading mom of four is sharing her love of chickens with you. Leslie grew up raising chickens, had a long chicken drought during college and early motherhood years, but has started up a backyard flock again with her own children. This makes her the perfect person to share, tips, essentials, and all the ins and outs of raising chickens with kids.

The beginnings of a chicken mama

I was seven or eight years old when the first chicken arrived in my life. My parents were both veterinarians and our farm was often the rehoming site for a variety of animals. Pecky, a stately Light Brahma Rooster, came to us because his elderly owner couldn’t keep up with his antics. I fell in love.

I loved his silky feathers, his majestic red comb and dangling wattles, his audacious crow, his feathered feet. It wasn’t long before I decided he needed a family, and so it began. We bought some hens from the little lady who sold eggs just down the road. Soon I was showing chickens in 4-H and selling eggs.

My little flock grew quickly and I loved every member of it. All my chickens had names and personalities. They roamed our barn and yard, providing us with multi-colored and multi-sized eggs and endless entertainment. At one point, my mom clipped an article from a local titled, “Chickens: Better than Television,” and stuck it on the refrigerator. It was true for our family. The chickens were my responsibility, but they entertained us all.

Raising chickens with kids

After years of living in a town where we weren’t allowed to raise chickens, we now live in the country and my children are helping me build a flock again. We started with 11 chicks last spring, and just added 13 more. My daughter gleefully announced recently that right now we have three separate flocks: the grown hens, the adolescent chicks, and the newly hatched Ameraucana chicks I couldn’t leave the feed store without last week.

I’m a firm believer in the benefits of kids raising kids with animals. Taking care of animals helps children learn responsibility, gentleness, and the importance of looking after other living things. They learn empathy and compassion. They also get to experience the joy of friendship with those animals. So, although my older kids have their own pets they’re responsible for and I’m the person primarily responsible for the chickens, I make sure all my kids are involved in our chicken raising adventure.

The joys of chickens

If you’re looking for a pet that’s both productive and personable, you really don’t need to look any farther than a chicken. These feathered friends are relatively simple to care for, make enjoyable pets, and a good laying hen will reward you with up to 300 eggs a year! They’re also pets that children of every age will enjoy.

Our children (ranging in ages 3-13) all help me with different parts of the chickens’ care on a daily basis. While they may grumble sometimes about chasing the chickens out of the neighbors’ yard again or running out to lock up the coop at dark, they truly enjoy these quirky birds. Everyone loves how the hens come running when we bring them food scraps. We’re mesmerized by the soft fluff of the baby chicks. And the daily wonder of finding fresh brown, green, and blue eggs never wears off.

A family affair

Our teenage son might complain that chickens aren’t very smart, but he’s the first person to help me solve a problem with laying boxes or roosts or leaking waterers. And even our three year can march out in the yard and catch a chicken, which delights her endlessly. My husband recently asked if he had to start cheeping to get any attention around here. And if you come visit our house, consider yourself forewarned: at least one, and possibly several, of my children will surely thrust a chick in your face, and expect you to be as delighted with it as they are. A full-grown hen may quite possibly appear also. In the house. Just so you know. Welcome to our zoo.

Getting started raising chickens

If you’ve never raised livestock, getting started raising chickens might feel intimidating. Chickens aren’t terribly hard, but there are a few details to consider first. As with any pet, you need to make sure you can provide what chickens need.

The first thing you should do is make sure chickens are allowed where you live. Many towns and cities have allowances for small backyard flocks, but it’s always a good idea to check your local ordinances if you live in a suburban area.

Chickens also need some yard space, whether you intend to let them free-range around your yard, or keep them in an enclosure. You can also do a hybrid of the two: we have an enclosed run to keep the chickens contained when we’re not around. Usually, in the afternoons and evenings, we let them free-range around the yard. They carry a special affinity for the neighbor’s yard, however, so we have to keep an eye on them. When we finish building our homestead, they will have plenty of space to roam freely.

Coop details

Next, you need a secure, draft-free coop for your birds. A general guideline is to allow 2-3 square feet of coop space per chicken. You can buy really cute little coops for a small flock, like this one. If you or someone in your family is up for a bit of a project, check out these great chicken coop plans! My skilled carpenter husband built us a coop out of scrap and repurposed materials. We use a movable dog kennel for our run enclosure.

What you need for baby chicks

But before you get overwhelmed by coop details, take a deep breath. If you’re planning to start with baby chicks, all you need to get started is a deep cardboard box for a brooder. Baby chicks need a cozy, draft-free environment and not too much space to start off with. For the first two weeks of their life, baby chicks only need 6 square inches of space per chick. (But don’t put off the coop plans—these little chicks grow fast!)

In all honesty, we’ve kept baby chicks in roomy boxes in our laundry room, basement, garage…even in the living room. Yes, I’m really that crazy chicken lady. I always prefer to keep the tiny peeps close for a while. Besides, we all just want to hold those little fluffballs every chance we get.

Chicken brooder set up

Getting your brooder set up isn’t hard. Get a nice-sized, sturdy box or build your own, line it with newspaper and pine chips, and hang a heat lamp overhead. A red bulb for your heat lamp helps keep chicks from pecking at one another. The heat lamp should be 18-24 inches away from the chicks. Initially, the ideal brooder temperature is between 90-95 degrees (think body temperature–a mother hen spends most of her time keeping her chicks at her own body temperature).

I always count on the chicks to let me know where it needs to be: when they are cold, they huddle together directly under the heat source. If they’re too hot, they pant and try to get away from it. I watch them very carefully the first few hours after adjusting the heat lamp, to make sure they are comfortable. Although chicks are surprisingly tough and resilient, the wrong temperatures can cause stress and illness. I also arrange the brooder so there is a warm side and a cool side, keeping the food and water on the cooler side.

Additional chicken accessories

If you’re raising chickens, you’ll also need a chick feeder, a waterer, and chick starter feed, which has a higher protein level than adult chicken feed, along with other essential nutrients for healthy chicks. Although you can purchase everything online, I highly recommend using your local farm or garden supply store as much as possible. Not only are you supporting a local business, but you are also tapping into a valuable resource.

A local feed store has knowledgeable employees who can often answer questions for you, as well as competitive prices on everything you need. You’re going to need a regular supply of feed. And if you should ever need medication or supplement for your chickens, you’ll already know right where to find it.

Getting your chicks

Now comes one of the most fun parts of raising chickens: getting your chicks! Once again, you can order chicks online from a hatchery, but you usually have to order at least 25 chicks so they can keep each other warm during shipping. And in my mind, nothing beats picking out those chicks in person. For years, we passed by the chicks at our local feed store on our way to the dog food aisle. We looked longingly into each brooder and told our children, “Someday we’ll live in a place where we can have chickens.”

Last year, just a couple of weeks after moving to our country home, we marched our whole family into the feed store and hand-picked our chicks. It was addictively fun. So fun, in fact, that we couldn’t wait to do it again this year. We talked about it for months, even as we enjoyed raising our bigger chickens. There’s just nothing like getting baby chicks.

Chicken breeds

What breed of chicken you choose really depends on what you’re looking for. Do you want lots of eggs? Brown eggs? Blue and green ones? All pullets (young females), or straight run (a random mixture of males and females)? Docile chickens? Just bantam chickens who look cute? The options are endless, even at a feed store.

If you look in a hatchery catalog, there are more breeds than you can ever imagine. This article has quite a bit of helpful information about the best laying hens, while this one highlights some of the most kid-friendly chicken breeds. And if you’re interested in different breeds based on the different colors of eggs they might lay, check out this article.

How to pick your chicks

When picking out chicks, we’ve used several different criteria. First, my husband’s vote was that he wanted to see lots of variety in our flock. So we’ve picked several different feather colors. I wanted different shades of eggs, so I picked out brown, green, and blue egg-laying chickens. I also selected some breeds because of their reputation as docile and family-friendly birds.

So our entire family trooped around the chick display, saying, “We want some of those, and a couple of those, and a couple of those…” And we love what we’ve ended up with. Our current laying flock has 3 Ameraucanas, 1 Black Australorp, 2 Light Brahmas, and 3 Rhode Island Reds (we actually got the Reds by accident—they were mixed in with some other chicks. I wouldn’t have necessarily picked them, but they are excellent layers and have also become great pets). This year we picked up some Barred Rocks, ISA Browns, more Ameraucanas, and some bantams for the pure fun of their personalities and plumage.

Caring for your chicks

After you get your chicks set up in their brooder, they need what any other animal needs: freshwater, food, and clean bedding. Chicks are messy little critters who love to scratch around. They will kick food and chips into their water, so I try to hang waterers when I can, or at least set the waterer up on a wooden block so it’s slightly elevated. You want to make sure they can still reach it, though! The kids love helping me make sure the chicks have plenty of food.

If your chicks are cheeping loudly, they are probably hungry, thirsty, or too hot or cold. Noisy chicks need attention. The conversational chirping of contented chicks is very different from the yelping cheeps of uncomfortable ones. I can tell as soon as I walk into the room if my chicks are uncomfortable or upset.

Chick maintenance

Sadly, once in a while a baby chick will get sick or simply fail to thrive. Many times, if you are vigilant in checking your chicks often for problems such as lethargy or pasty vents, you can address these issues and resolve them, saving your chick. This article helps outline basic chick problems and how you can identify and treat them.

Every day or two, I get a couple of helpers and we clean out the whole brooder. The kids hold the chicks (I mean, I can put them in a small box if I need to. But the kids love helping by holding the chicks!) while I take everything out of the brooder, roll up the soiled bedding into the papers on the bottom, and put out fresh papers and chips. This is also a good time to clean the waterer thoroughly with soap and water to prevent bacteria build-up.

Growing chicks

After a couple of weeks, those tiny fluffballs get a surprising amount of feathers. It doesn’t take long for chicks to hit what we call the “ugly” stage. They get a little gawky and awkward, no longer cute balls of fuzz but far from the lovely plumage of adult birds. At this stage, I put my son in charge of some exercise equipment for the chicks. They love to hop and perch. You can use a dowel rod or even just a straight stick for a roost, and a small cardboard box gives them something to jump on.

Your chicks are also old enough to start feeding some small treats now. Chickens love all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and even table scraps. However, there are a few foods are bad or even toxic to chickens, so be sure to check a list like this one before you start feeding them everything from your fridge!

When you start feeding your chicks treats, make sure you also include a bit of chick grit in their food. Chickens need grit (crushed up bits of rock) to help them digest their food by grinding it up in their crop. Chick starter feed is very digestible, so I don’t add grit until they start foraging for food or getting supplemental treats. Free-range chickens usually find the bits of rock they need for grit in their natural foraging, but I like to toss a bit of grit in their food to just be sure they have what they need.

Chicken treats

Our favorite part of feeding treats to the chickens is how much they love it—and consequently, how much they love us. When we step out the back door and call, “Here, chick-chick-chick!” the hens come running from every corner of the yard to see what we have for them. They’ll come up and eat out of our hands and follow us around looking for handouts.

In fact, the other day my daughter was holding a chicken under one arm and eating a cookie (don’t judge! We do try to keep the livestock and the eating separate!), and her siblings say the chicken was taking bites out of one side of her cookie while she ate off the other. I didn’t see it, but I fully believe it. We have more than one hen who will sneak up and take a bite off an unattended plate when we eat outside.

Transitioning chicks outside

I like to start transitioning 4-week-old chicks to outdoor life a little at a time on warm days. They still don’t have enough feathers or mass to maintain their body temperature in cool or windy conditions, but they can handle short visits to the great outdoors. We keep them close to us at first. Usually, the kids sit in the grass and let the chicks peck around in the space between two kids’ outstretched legs. When the chicks start hopping away too quickly, we move them to a portable pet enclosure where they have some freedom.

At first, even just a few minutes outside will wear them out completely. But soon they’re able to spend hours outside when our unpredictable Ohio spring weather permits. We give them a windbreak, their food and water, and watch them carefully. Sometimes one child just gets assigned to chick-watching detail, making sure they are handling the outdoor experience okay and aren’t acting chilled.

Outdoor chickens

When all the chicks are fully feathered, they are ready to live outside the brooder. You should begin that transition a few weeks before by moving the heat lamp up an inch each week or reducing your brooder temperature by about 5 degrees. This helps them adjust to living without an extra heat source. I’ve noticed that even my biggest chicks love to bask right under the heat lamp whenever they get a chance, even after they no longer need the extra warmth. (Currently I have some standard-sized chicks in with my smaller bantams, so I’ve had to keep the heat lamp available for the little ones. My kids have accused the big chicks of roosting so close to the heat lamp that they’re going to fry their combs!) Moving that heat lamp away slowly toughens them up for outdoor life.

Life in the coop

Now you’re ready for the next step in chicken raising: moving your chicks to the coop. The coop should be secure against predators and draft-free, bedded down with a generous layer of chips and straw. They need a roost to sleep on and some sort of nesting box. And, of course, a supply of feed and water. If your feeder is outside, make sure it sits out of the rain, or you’ll end up with moldy feed very soon!

Even if you plan to let your chickens free-range, you should keep them locked up in the coop/run area for several days so they learn where their home is. Then start letting them loose for short periods of time, keeping an eye on them to make sure they don’t wander too far. Chickens are generally herd animals who stay together and somewhat close to home. They will instinctively go into their coop to roost at dark.

Chicken herding

But when you want to put your chickens up and it ISN’T dark, it takes a little training! Although it sounds impossible, herding chickens into the coop is doable, if you work with them.

First, get your kids involved! This activity requires some helpers. Next, train your chickens to come when you call. Do this at random intervals throughout the day, and make sure there are always treats involved. The children or I walk out the door and yell, “Here, chick-chick-chick!” whenever we have a bread crust or apple peels or any kind of scraps for the chickens. This teaches them to come running when we call. (As a side note, the dog has learned it’s beneficial to get in on the action when we call the chickens, too. He doesn’t want to miss out on anything good!)

When you want to herd the chickens to the coop, have one person walk toward it, calling the chickens and tossing treats. Have a couple of others walk behind the flock, gently herding them in the right direction. As you practice this, the chickens WILL learn the ropes. They might revolt from time to time, but as a general rule, they’ll go into their coop without too much trouble.

The kids will learn their tricks and how to best herd them along, too. I can send my 6 and 9-year-old girls out to put away the hens at any time of day, and they can do it by themselves. We always put our flock away when we’re leaving, both to protect them against predators and to keep them from roaming into the neighbors’ yard.

A word about roosters

A rooster is a fun addition to a flock. They are full of personality and help protect the hens, but they can also have the potential to be aggressive. We had a rooster with our original flock, and we loved him. He was funny, beautiful, and took excellent care of his hens—but he also became aggressive with our little girls. We worked so hard to try to train him not to be mean, but eventually, we had to rehome him to a family with no small children.

Over the years I’ve had both nice and mean roosters. You can’t write off all roosters because of an experience with a mean one, but you also can’t guarantee that a rooster will be nice, even with lots of love. If you get a male with your flock (and sometimes you will get one even if your chicks are all supposed to be females), just be prepared that you may have to deal with an aggressive one. But don’t assume the worst–treat him with love and respect, and hope he’ll respond well! We currently have two suspected roosters mixed in with our young pullets, and we’re loving them up all we can. We’re all hoping for some nice fellows this year.

How to handle chicken predators

One of the harder parts of raising chickens is the sad reality of predators. Unfortunately, chickens are an easy mark for any number of predators. Even in suburban areas, you may have to watch out for hawks, owls, and even dogs. Out in the country, we also have to worry about raccoons, foxes, and coyotes.

The best way to protect your birds is to make sure their coop is secure from top to bottom. Latch them in every night at dusk to protect again nocturnal invaders. Make sure their fenced area is as secure as you can make it, with sturdy walls and some sort of mesh or wire covering.

But if you let your chickens free-range, you have to realize that they may be exposed to predators. Quite unexpectedly, we had a red-tailed hawk swoop right up to the back edge of our yard and kill a hen last year. It was a heartbreaking experience for all of us. Although it was something of a freak event that we couldn’t have expected or prevented, it also reminded us of the importance of caring well for these somewhat helpless creatures. Our chickens depend on us to look after them and keep them safe–that’s part of the responsibility of pet/livestock ownership.

Sometimes illness or accident will still strike our animals, but I’m trying to teach my children to be good caretakers of our animal friends. We do our best to provide them with a safe, healthy home. In return, they provide us with endless entertainment, fun, and a wonderful supply of delicious eggs.

Have you ever considered raising chickens?
Let us know if you have any questions about chickens and kids.

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. You can follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
Leslie’s RWMC posts: Owling with Kids, Homemade Apple Butter, Dealing with Poison Ivy, Mosquitoes & Ticks, Creating Nature Fairy Gardens, Eco-Friendly Bird Feeders, Getting Kids Outside During the School Year, Pond Nature Study, Maple Syrup with Kids, Cattle Farm Chores
ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, HIKE, INFORMATION, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, URBAN NATURE, WINTER
Owling with Kids
- March 2, 2021
Have you ever spotted an owl in the wild? Have you heard one calling through the woods at dusk? Owls are fascinating, yet elusive birds, made even more mysterious by their silent flight and their nocturnal habits. But, finding owls isn’t impossible—you just have to know where and when to look. Today, Leslie Alvis, Ohio homeschooling mom of four shares her family’s experiences owling with kids and some tips for your own owling adventures.

“When you go owling,
you don’t need words
or warm
or anything but hope.
That’s what Pa says.
The kind of hope
that flies
on silent wings
under a shining
Owl Moon.”

Owling inspiration

When I was growing up, my mom had a beautiful collection of illustrated nature books she read aloud to us. One was Owl Moon, a simple yet fascinating first-person story of a young girl going out owling with her father under a full moon in deep winter. They walk and watch and call until an owl replies. Eventually, they spot the majestic owl swooping above them in the bare tree branches. Owl Moon was one of the first books she bought for my own children, and it’s one of our favorites.

Owling with kids

The sweet story told in Owl Moon brings nature close. It always makes me want to go owling too, tromping in the snowy woods by moonlight. But, even though I grew up in the country, somehow I never realized until this past year that I can go owling with my kids—and so can you!

Owls are fascinating creatures. Day or night, their haunting calls are enough to make you stop in your tracks. There are actually many common owls throughout North America, as well as the rest of the world. And owling is a great nature activity you can do with your kids!

And although a full moon adds light, and snowy woods at night are lovely, you actually don’t need any of those things to go owling. You can go looking for owls anytime (day or night) wherever you live!

Our first owl encounter

Last February, wanting to return to our country roots to raise our children, my husband and I sold our house in town and moved our children to the country. One of our first experiences on our quiet country road was climbing out of our car at dusk and hearing a startlingly loud, haunting cry from the woods across the road. We all froze.

“Did you hear the owl?” my husband asked our kids, trying to hush everyone who was exclaiming over the weird noise. “That was an owl!” It certainly wasn’t like any owl sound I’d ever heard! Honestly, it was a little terrifying. But there it was—a low hooting off in the distance, followed by an answering cry nearby.

After convincing our five-year-old that it was safe to actually get out of the car (for weeks we had to talk her through the process every time we came home in the dark. She would cover her ears and race inside so she couldn’t hear the creepy owl chatter! But she finally got used to it and now loves to hear the owls call.), we went inside and looked up owl calls.

We learned that we had just heard a Barred Owl pair calling to each other. Sites like this one teach you to easily identify common North American owls by their calls. This little bit of knowledge fueled a desire to learn more about these amazing birds. We’ve been looking for owls, calling owls, and heading out on owling walks ever since.

What is owling?

Basically, owling is the practice of calling and searching for owls. Going owling with your kids is an easy and fun nature activity, and seeing (or hearing) one of these majestic birds is an experience they won’t soon forget! The first time anyone in our family actually spotted an owl, my husband and two-year-old were coming out of the woods at dusk when a Great Horned Owl flew across the path in front of them. Our toddler talked about seeing that owl for a long time!

By this point (a year later), we’ve all caught glimpses of these magnificent birds in the woods near our home. Just this morning my son saw one fly out of the pine trees just ahead of us on our walk. Last week we saw a huge pair of Great Horned Owls. The sight of them never ceases to amaze us all.

Where to go owling

While owls may be known for being elusive and hard to spot, they aren’t as rare as many people think. You simply have to learn where and when to look. You can find owls in many places, from forests and deserts to mountains and prairies. Owls love wooded areas, but many also live close to cities and suburban areas because of the ready food supply. They often live in trees (often conifers) and eat small rodents, so owls can be found almost anywhere those things exist—even in Central Park in New York City!

When to go owling

Owls become especially active during mating season in winter. The colder months are a great time to go owling because you are more likely to see or hear owls. Plus, the lack of foliage makes seeing the owls easier. During the summer months, we were afraid the resident owls in our area had moved away because we didn’t see or hear them for a long time. But, as fall drew on, we began to hear “our” owls again. We’ve even heard the parents calling back and forth with a juvenile offspring.

As I mentioned, most owls are nocturnal, which means they do much of their hunting and calling at night. However, it doesn’t have to be pitch black outside for you to go owling! We’ve spotted Barred Owls sitting on power lines near our home in the middle of the day. We’ve seen owls swooping from tree to tree in the woods, and often hear them calling, especially as winter days draw to a close.

Despite their close proximity, I’ve never yet been lucky enough to get a photo of one. That’s a testament to my lack of wildlife photography skills, not to the absence of owls. Maybe someday I’ll be able to capture a photograph of one of these beautiful birds.

Daytime owling

One day as we explored the woods, we noticed a commotion of birds in a stand of tall pine trees. Crows and other smaller birds were calling raucously and diving in and out of the trees. I had heard that smaller birds will sometimes “mob” owls in this fashion, so we headed that way to see if we could spot one. Sure enough, as we approached, a Barred Owl swooped out of the trees to go look for a quieter location!

It might have been the high point of our nature walk if our dog hadn’t flushed out a white-tailed deer just then. Our owl sighting dropped dramatically in importance as my son and I took off chasing the dog, who took off chasing the deer, howling all the way. At the end of that misadventure, I was just glad to have everyone, including the dog, all in one piece!

Owling at dusk

Owls do become noticeably more vocal as twilight approaches. The hour before sunset is a great time to go owling with kids if you don’t want to be out at night. It’s also a good time to try owling at local parks or trails, which may close at dark. Park rangers can be a great source of information about owls in their area. If you go to a public place wanting to find owls, ask around! There may be someone who knows just when and where to look.

How to look for owls

Searching for owls can be a bit tough and you have to have patience and good detective skills. Owls leave a couple of distinct signs of activity in the woods. If you know what to look for, you’ll have much better luck spotting one.

First of all, you can look for “whitewash” (owl excrement) on tree trunks. An owl’s excrement is chalky and white and can usually be found at the bottom of a tree that an owl is roosting in. You can also look at the base of trees for owl pellets, which are prized treasures for curious little ones. Owl pellets are small bits of indigestible hair, bone, etc. from an owl’s meal.

Finally, look for owl feathers lying on the ground. Owl feathers are large and are very soft. If you need help identifying the type of bird by a feather, check out the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Feather Altas – a free online tool to identify feathers.

We have been able to find owl trees in our woods by looking for these signs. Some common owls, like Barred Owls and Great Horned Owls, like conifer trees, in particular, so check those a bit closer. Check out this article for more information about where and how to find owls. It’s full of helpful tips for owling.

Owl pellets

Owl pellets are a sure sign that owls are in the area. As mentioned, an owl pellet is made from indigestible material left in the gizzard (such as teeth, bones, skulls, claws, and feathers) are too dangerous to pass through the rest of the owl’s digestive tract. To safely excrete this material, the owl’s gizzard compacts it into a tight pellet that the owl regurgitates.

It may sound gross, but dissecting an owl pellet is a really fun activity for kids, as they can see what the owl ate and sometimes find the bones and teeth of small animals. Although their diet largely depends on the species of owl, most owls like to eat insects, small mammals (like hares and rabbits), and other smaller birds. It is also common for owls to eat rodents, squirrels, bats, weasels, woodchucks, and even a domestic cat!

Owl nests

Did you know that owls do not build their own nests? Instead, they occupy nests left behind by other birds. Look for owl nests up high in the crooks and hollows of trees, any of the usual places you might spot a nest.

You can even build nesting boxes to attract owls to your own backyard! Screech Owls are considered the easiest owls in North America to attract with a nesting box. You can find directions for this simple DIY project here. We have plans to build a Screech Owl box for our homestead property, and maybe even add a barn owl box to the loft of our barn as we build it. Some of the wooded environment near our property is changing and threatening the natural habitat of the owls, so we want to encourage them to stay close by.

Spotting an owl

Hopefully, you get the chance to spot an owl on your owling adventure. They definitely look different than other birds and while they may be hard to spot, they will be easy to distinguish. Most owls have notably large eyes, a flat face, a large head, and a small, downturned hooked beak. They have very sharp talons with four toes and one is opposable (like the human thumb), which helps the owl grasp things like tree branches and food.

Although owls vary in color, size, and appearance, they have one interesting ability in common – they can turn their heads an astonishing 270 degrees due to more vertebrae than other birds.

And if you’re listening, you’ll notice that not all owls make that infamous “hoot” sound. Owls can actually make many different sounds – they can screech, hiss, and even growl! But despite the sound they make when they call, they make no sound when flying. This silent flight is due mainly to very broad wings and special flying feathers that limit noise when an owl flaps its wings.

Owling essentials

You don’t need anything special to go owling, but a pair of binoculars can be useful. Other than that, you just need some sharp eyes and ears, a sense of adventure, and your detective skills.

If you hope to call for owls, work out your plan ahead of time with your kids. Do you want them to walk into the woods silently, trying not to scare away the owls? At least in our family, that has to be clearly explained! Otherwise, the owls are going to be scared away by wild yelling long before we can see them. Are you going to designate one person to try hooting? Take turns?

I’ve learned that if you don’t have a clearly communicated plan, the owling walk will quickly become a hooting free-for-all! And although Barred Owls, in particular, will respond to imitation calls—even not very good ones—no owl is going to be fooled by 3 or 4 different pitches of hooo-hoooo-hoooing simultaneously.

Common owls

There are 19 species of owls are found in North America, including the following: barn owl, burrowing owl, eastern screech owl, great grey owl, spotted owl, and the long-eared owl, among many others. These owls not only live in wooded, rural areas, but also in suburban areas with trees. I’ve read that owls can be found commonly in cemeteries, since many cemeteries contain both large trees and also open areas where it’s easy for owls to spot their prey.

To learn more about owls in your area, check out this site about owling. It’s full of detailed information about owls all across North and Central America.

Make owling a family activity

Exploring the woods and hiking around while owling is such a fun and easy outdoor activity to do with kids. You don’t need any special gear or equipment to do a little owl hunting. Before you head out, just be sure to do a little research about what owls can be found in your area and when they are most active. Listen to an owl call and practice your “hoo’ing!” If you’re owling during the day, look for whitewashed tree bottoms, owl pellets, or feathers that could indicate an owl’s presence. If you find one (and it’s possible), try going back there during the night to see if the owl is active.

Finally, a word of caution: you may not always see an owl when you go owling. As the little girl says in Owl Moon,

“That’s how it is when you go owling.
Sometimes you see one, sometimes you don’t.”

Be prepared to enjoy whatever wildlife you do see—you’re bound to spot some beautiful birds, squirrels, animal tracks, and other fascinating bits of nature. So, make it an adventure, have fun, and enjoy the beautiful world out there!

Have you ever gone owling?
What did you see?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. You can follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
FALL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, RECIPES
Family Traditions: Making Open-Fire Apple Butter with Kids
- November 18, 2020
If this past year has taught us anything, it’s that family matters more than ever before and we should not take the time we spend together for granted. We’ve also learned that sometimes it’s nice to slow things down and it’s even nicer to do that outside, surrounded by those you love. Today, our Creative Team member and Ohio homeschooling mom of four, Leslie Alvis, shares her family’s tradition of making old-fashioned homemade open-fire apple butter. This is a time-honored tradition that’s been passed down generations, from great-grandparents to the grandkids. It’s a beautiful story of slowing things down, getting everyone involved, and spending quality time together. Grab a cup of tea and enjoy this one!

Good old-fashioned traditions

The skills of past generations were often passed along verbally and through hands-on experience. Children learned the wisdom of their parents and grandparents as they worked alongside them. Sometimes we call the ways of past generations “old fashioned” because they didn’t have the modern conveniences we use today. But often the slower ways tied people closer to each other and the rhythms of the earth. This fall our family had the opportunity to experience this firsthand as my husband’s grandparents taught us a new skill in an old-fashioned way: making apple butter over an open fire.

Apple butter tradition

Years ago, my husband’s grandparents would get together with a group of friends every fall to make apple butter. They peeled the apples by hand—five bushels of them. Then, they gathered together for a full day of cooking, stirring, and canning the delicious results. Several years back, Nanny and Grandpa acquired their own equipment and began teaching their grandchildren the tradition of open-fire apple butter making.

It’s been a few years since anyone organized the event and we all missed it. So, this fall we decided to make it happen. We wanted our children to enjoy this experience, spend time with their great-grandparents, and make these memories together. With practical wisdom, special traditions, and a lot of laughter, they taught us their way of making apple butter.

Old-fashioned apple butter

Making apple butter over an open fire is a slow process. Even if you precook your apples to soften them, it still takes lots of hours of stirring and cooking. Peeling bushels and bushels of apples takes a lot of time, too! We spent most of a Friday and Saturday on our apple butter project. But, an important part of the experience is the gift of spending time with friends and family, working and visiting together. We had four generations involved with our apple butter making this year.

In my mind, this is the heritage of doing things “the old-fashioned way.” It’s slowing down and spending time with your people, learning from each other, and helping each other. Plus, there really is something about the taste of food cooked long and slow over an open fire. No other apple butter tastes quite the same.

Kids helping make apple butter

Even though making apple butter involves a lot of sharp knives, hot fire, and boiling liquids, our children found plenty of ways to be involved. Even the little ones used apple peelers (with careful supervision) and helped us with the peeling process. Our bigger kids helped stir the apple butter. All of them helped add the cinnamon candies and cinnamon oil into the apple butter as it cooked. Our son is always ready to build and feed a fire, and our oldest daughter also joined the canning assembly line. We found ways to get them all involved.

All four of our kids were all outside with us all day, playing and helping and eating. One of their cousins was able to join us, and they also played in the woods and played board games near the fire. They especially loved getting to spend time with their great-grandparents, since Covid has limited our family activities this year. The time together was a gift, and I think the pandemic has reminded us of just how precious that gift is.

Peeling the apples

The process of making apple butter begins with peeling the apples the day before. We bought several bushels of “seconds” apples from an local Amish orchard. Nanny taught me to get several different varieties of apples to give our apple butter the best flavor. Several family members came over and helped us peel apples all afternoon. I found my children out peeling apples while I made supper, and they filled a half a bucket of apples by themselves. Then my sister-in-law and I picked up our paring knives again that evening and peeled until late into the night.

The apples can sit in covered pans or buckets in a cool place overnight. Nanny assured me that it wouldn’t harm the apple butter if they browned a little. A few of us took some apples home to pre-cook before putting the apples in the big copper kettle. This cuts down significantly on cooking and stirring time over the open fire. We worked off an old photocopied recipe with Nanny’s handwritten notes and instructions on it. She thinks perhaps this recipe is for a 30-gallon kettle, and we only had a 20 gallon one. We modified the ingredients based on the amount of apples we could fit into the kettle.

Weather challenges

Although the weather was beautiful and warm the day we peeled our apples, a stormy cold front blew in overnight. Saturday morning dawned gray, raw, and blustery. We tried to set up our cooking fire in our backyard and found that the wind made our project impossible. We had the apples all peeled–people invited–cinnamon rolls ready to eat. Somehow we had to save our apple butter making day.

My husband and I walked across the road and down the farm lane to a small clearing at the edge of my dad’s pine woods. It was a little farther from our house, but the trees gave us just enough protection to start a fire and spend the day in relative shelter from the wind. We were still chilly, but it was bearable. We built a second fire to heat water over for hot chocolate and cooked soup over it for lunch.

Apple butter equipment

A copper kettle is essential for open fire apple butter making because it conducts heat so evenly and helps keep the apple butter from scorching. You can buy a copper kettle new, if you have several hundred dollars for it. They’re a pretty major investment. If you’re really interested in making apple butter this way, I’d recommend watching farm auctions or antique stores. Or go in together with some friends and begin your own apple butter tradition together!

Fire it up

We had a hard time getting the fire the right temperature at first. Too much flame and the apple butter will bubble right out of the pot. When it’s really bubbling, you also need to watch out for it popping out. It can burn if you stand too close!

The apple butter has to be stirred constantly with a long-handled paddle with holes drilled through it. Nanny and Grandpa bought theirs at Lehman’s Hardware, a local store that has made it big by specializing in old-fashioned equipment. You can find one online at http://www.lehmans.com. Again, buying one new is pretty expensive. If you know someone with rudimentary woodworking skills, you could probably get them to make you one for a fraction of the price.

Apple butter traditions

One of Grandpa’s traditions is for the children to toss a couple silver dollars into the kettle to help keep the butter from sticking to the bottom of the pan. (Nanny says they use two because only rich people can afford to throw more money than that into a pot.) After putting in the silver dollars, our kids raced off to get their own pennies to add to the kettle. At the end of the day they had some shiny clean copper pennies to remember the day by. They washed off Grandpa’s silver dollars and he slid them back in his pocket for next time.

After all the apples had cooked down and the mixture was smooth, we got to experience another one of Nanny and Grandpa’s unique apple butter traditions. Their recipe calls for cinnamon red hot candies to be stirred in for color and flavor. So the kids munched on candies while tossing them into the pot by the handful. I think that may have been their favorite part. (Also, I spared myself the angst of running from store to store, trying to find red hot candies at this time of year. I ordered these off Amazon.)

Finishing the apple butter

After the cinnamon candies comes the sugar. 15 lbs of it! (That’s about 1 lb per gallon of finished apple butter, so that’s not quite as alarming as it sounds!). We stirred it in gradually, then cooked it for a couple more hours.

The girls and my husband took turns stirring, and we drank coffee and hot chocolate while we waited. We also set up a sawhorse table for the finishing assembly line. When the apple butter is finished, it will appear “set up” when you dab a bit onto a glass dish and turn it from side to side. No water runs out from the edges and it holds its shape. At that point, you add cinnamon oil and stir for another half hour while preparing to can it.

Canning apple butter

Hot apple butter can be canned with the cold pack (or hot seal) method. We set up our assembly line and Nanny assigned us all our jobs before we moved the kettle off the fire. Then, as fast as we could, we ladled our apple butter into clean canning jars. One person ladled and the next wiped the rims. Another person pulled canning lids out of hot water and set them on top, and the last one screwed the rings on. I moved the hot jars off the table to keep the workspace open. You have to work quickly to can the mixture while it’s still hot. The apple butter will create a vacuum and seal itself in the jars as it cools.

Cleaning the kettle with biscuits

It was at this point, as we began filling jars, that I realized I had totally forgotten about another important tradition. Nanny had told me we needed to have hot biscuits ready to eat as soon as the canning was done. Hot biscuits are how we would clean out the copper kettle. I raced across the road to our home and whipped up the fastest batch of biscuits I’d ever made! Then, I set a timer on my phone and ran back to join the assembly line again while the biscuits baked.

Thankfully, the timing worked out. There was a tray of hot biscuits waiting when we were ready to scrape the last bit of apple butter out of the kettle. Everyone spooned apple butter onto their biscuits and we got to enjoy the fruits of all our labor. The kids broke off pieces of biscuit and wiped the kettle clean. It was a perfect way to end a long day of work on a chilly fall day. We all enjoyed the experience, the apple butter, and the memories we made together.

Passing down the traditions

Thank you for letting me share this experience of passing down our family’s tradition of making old-fashioned apple butter with you. The process and time spent together are so special to us and our family. I hope our apple butter days are a memory my children never forget and may even want to create with their grandchildren someday. Does your family have any special traditions or recipes they’ve passed down generations?

What old fashioned skills or traditions
have you learned from someone special to you?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens. You can follow along with their homesteading, homeschooling, and everyday adventures on her Instagram account.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, INFORMATION, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, SUMMER
Poison Ivy, Mosquitoes, and Ticks, Oh My!
- July 1, 2020
Poison ivy, mosquitoes, and ticks sure do make it less pleasant to spend time outside in the summer, but not impossible! Getting outside is always worth it and more important than ever for kids right now. This time of year, we get a ton of questions from concerned parents about how to keep these summertime pests and nuisances away. Spoiler alert – it’s not always possible. And in that case, how should you treat bites and rashes on kids when encounters with poison ivy, mosquitoes and ticks happen. Today, Leslie Alvis, Ohio mom of four, is here with all the information you need to know to prevent and treat poison ivy, mosquito, and tick bites. She shares her experience battling these pesky parts of nature and how her family handles their inevitable encounters.

The threat is real

Have you ever felt like outdoor threats are worse now than when you were a kid? If you do any research about ticks, poison ivy, or mosquitoes, you may decide it’s true! And you wouldn’t be wrong. Poison ivy is actually thriving in the increased carbon dioxide levels on the earth right now, making it more prolific and more potent. Thanks to the spread of the black-legged and dog ticks, Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever are on the rise across the United States. And mosquito-borne illnesses lurk behind the whining of mosquitoes, even in your backyard.

If you spend some time Googling any of these problems, you may decide the safest thing is just to keep your children indoors! But being outdoors holds many more benefits than risks. The memories and skills our children develop outside will last so much longer than the itch of poison ivy or mosquito bites. We just need to take extra measures to identify and prevent these threats. Today I’d like to share some tips and resources with you about poison ivy, mosquitoes, and ticks.

Summertime pests

I love being outside, always. I’m also passionate about getting my kids outside in every season, despite the obstacles. Every season has them. Here in Ohio, we face a triple scourge in the warm months—poison ivy, ticks, and mosquitoes. They threaten the safety and fun of our everyday adventures outside. But despite these pests, I want my children to experience the wonder of life outdoors. I want them to know how to forage for wild berries, to hear the echo of birdsong in the thick summer woods, to design and build a wilderness fort with their own hands, to clear a homestead from an overgrown patch of land. Sometimes, though, making these adventures a reality is hard. There are bugs, poisonous plants, and things that bite and itch and sting.

We’ve always spent a lot of time outside, but this year is especially outdoor-oriented for us. We just sold our house in town and are renting a house in the country while we build our own homestead just down the road. We are now living and working on the edge of a large, swampy woods that is swarming with poison ivy, ticks, and mosquitoes. Dealing with these problems, and doing my best to protect my children from them, is literally my everyday.

Poison ivy

Let’s start with poison ivy, because I’m pretty sure (despite all the turbulent worldwide events) 2020 is going down in my family’s history as “The Year of Endless Poison Ivy.” I’ve jokingly dubbed our homestead “Poison Ivy Acres.” I grew up in the country, hiking and playing in the woods, and I have never seen poison ivy like on our property.

Our poison ivy is vibrant, huge, and absolutely everywhere! It hangs overhead from the trees, snakes through the underbrush, and has aggressively infiltrated the meadow. It’s even coming up in my garden. If we step off the driveway, we’re in poison ivy. Sometimes up to my toddler’s armpits. Despite our constant efforts to kill it off, it’s the scourge of our summer. But we’re also determined not to let it ruin our lives, or keep us from working as a family on our dream.

Poison ivy identification

Poison ivy is a vined plant best identified by its groupings of three leaves, often with jagged edges. The old adage, “Leaves of three, let it be” helps with quick and easy ID. I recently learned the second line to that saying: “Vines with hair, beware.” Poison ivy is often found growing low to the ground on the edges of wooded and wild areas, but it also uses its hairy vines to climb trees. Poison ivy oils, found on not only the leaves but also the vines and the roots, contain a strong irritant called urushiol. These oils cause most people to break out in an itchy, blistery rash 24-48 hours after exposure to the skin.

The oils from poison ivy can remain active on surfaces for up to five years and be transferred to your skin from your clothes, your pets, your kids’ boots….the list goes on and on. Poison ivy is considered most potent in the spring and summer, when the new leaves come out, but you can contract a rash at any time of year from the stems and roots of the plant. It can also survive for YEARS on surfaces, so it’s possible to get a poison ivy rash in the middle of winter from a pair of boots sitting in your garage.

Although innocuous-looking, poison ivy is nasty, mean stuff. But can you deal with it? Yes, you certainly can!

Poison ivy prevention

The best way to avoid getting poison ivy is to keep the oils from coming in contact with your skin. Wear long pants and boots when you know you might be walking through poison ivy. Obviously, the best prevention would be to avoid any contact with the plants at all. Sometimes that’s possible. You’re walking along a nice trail through the forest, you notice some poison ivy leaves growing along the edge of the path, and you steer your whole family away from it. Simple enough.

But what about that unconcerned toddler sitting in the middle of a poison ivy patch? What about when your kids dash ahead to a stream and as you follow, you realize they’ve run blindly through three-leaved greenery? In shorts! What about when you’re working to clear and build a homestead that’s knee-deep in poison ivy? (That’s me! Plus my four children. And my husband. And our dog.)

Washing to prevent poison ivy

The first thing to do is wash the poison ivy oil off. If you can wash the exposed skin with soap and water within a reasonable amount of time–several hours for most people–chances are you won’t get a poison ivy reaction, or at least not much of one. Since our family can’t avoid exposure right now, washing is our primary defense.

Every time we step off the driveway or garden area on our homestead, everyone gets scrubbed from head to toe as soon as we get home. (Pro tip: use a shower, not a bath, so your children aren’t sitting in the oils you’re trying to wash off.) All the clothes go straight in the wash. On a perfect day, I’d wipe down boots and wash the dog, too, but let’s be honest…that doesn’t really happen. I’m sure some of the rashes we’ve gotten have come from second-hand exposure.

For washing off poison ivy oils, we typically use an old-fashioned laundry soap, Fels-Naptha. It’s cheap and effective. An all-natural option is a Poison Ivy/Oak bar like this. Some people have told me you should use a lye-based soap. The point is to get the oils off. This really works.

Despite spending long days working in an astonishing amount of poison ivy, we have had surprisingly few major reactions this year. Yes, we keep getting little patches here and there. But, as long as we wash well, we avoid the worst of it. (My older kids sometimes skip washing after a quick excursion through the woods. They definitely regret it later!)

Explaining poison ivy to kids

Side note about explaining to kids the way the oils spread and why it’s so important to wash all over. I was having a hard time getting this concept across to my littles, until I saw my oldest daughter playing in charcoal from an old burn pile. Her hands, her arms, and her face were all covered in black soot. And she had no idea she had smeared it all over herself. So, I showed her in the mirror, and explained that poison ivy oils spread by touch in exactly the same way. It finally made sense to her why you have do more than just wash your hands to get rid of poison ivy.

On-the-spot poison ivy remedies

What about when you can’t get to soap and water right away? You’re out hiking and hours from getting your kids in the shower and someone just rolled in poison ivy. Don’t panic—there are a couple of ways to counteract those oils. Jewelweed is a natural antidote to poison ivy and often grows in shady areas nearby. If you don’t mind a little herbal therapy, just pick some jewelweed leaves, crush them in your hands, and rub the exposed area of skin with the gooey leaves. It counteracts the oils naturally.

If you’re not quite into something that green and juicy, alcohol-based hand sanitizer will also help cut the oils and clean the skin. We use both of these options when we know we won’t be able to wash with soap and water soon.

Poison ivy treatment

Kids tend to get into poison ivy more than adults. They also have a different idea about how to “scrub up” after poison ivy exposure. Often you will have someone with some red, itchy patches a couple of days after a wilderness adventure. Poison ivy is miserable, but it is treatable.

Calagel is a favorite over-the-counter remedy for the itching of poison ivy reactions. Jewelweed salve is a natural alternative and seems effective as well. We’ve also been using these poison ivy pills. They really do seem to help. When worst comes to worst, an antihistamine (like Benadryl) will help relieve the misery. The rash usually clears up within several days without needing medical attention, but you can always call your doctor if you’re worried about a severe poison ivy reaction.

Ticks

Ugly, small, and persistent, ticks are an insect that carry a variety of diseases. They transmit illness by burrowing their heads under the skin of their victims and staying there for a long period of time. Tick-borne diseases are nothing to take lightly. As someone with a close relative who contracted Lyme Disease from a tick bite and remained diagnosed for months, I’ve seen firsthand the effects of Lyme Disease. It really terrifies me. But I have to remember the facts. Tick bites are often preventable and many times harmless. And tick-borne illnesses, when caught promptly, are treatable!

Different kinds of ticks live in different areas of the country and carry various diseases. You can learn more about identifying ticks here. They are most commonly found in tall grasses and thick woods, but can appear anywhere. We found one on our two-year-old this morning as she was getting in the car to go to church. I think it came from the dog…but I really have no clue.

Tick Prevention

Preventing tick bites is fairly straightforward. If you know you’ll be in an area with lots of tick activity, dress appropriately and use an insect repellent rated for ticks. Dress yourself and your children in long pants, tucked into your socks, and tall boots. Tuck in shirts. All these measures give ticks fewer places to bite. They climb until they find exposed skin, so it also gives you more time to notice them and harmlessly brush the tick off your clothing.

But let’s be real—are you really going to get your offspring in long pants and tall boots for a hike on a 90-degree summer day? Sometimes that just won’t happen. So that’s where insect repellent comes in! Spray your clothes, not just your exposed skin, to help discourage ticks. If you aren’t sure what kind of repellent to use, try this helpful tool here. For a plant-based DEET free option that works great on kids and pets, try TickWise from 3 Moms Organics (get 10% your order with the code RUNWILD10).

Tick bites

Sometimes a sneaky tick will circumvent your best attempts to keep it away. Or maybe your area, like our homestead, just has a lot of ticks. When you’ve been in the woods or tall grass, it’s best to check yourself, your children, and your pets for ticks immediately afterward. Check especially the areas around sock lines, waistbands, and hairlines. If you find and remove a tick promptly, you can often avoid any kind of reaction or illness.

Tick removal

If you do find a tick on any member of your family, don’t panic! Get some tweezers, grasp close to the skin’s surface, and firmly pull the tick straight out. You want to make sure you get the entire tick and don’t leave the head embedded under the skin. I know, it’s freaky. Whether it’s on a child or a pet, my heart jumps into my throat every time one of my kids shouts, “I found a tick!” It’s happened several times lately because our homestead seems to have a lot of tick activity. I just can’t get used to it.

But, I have learned to successfully remove the whole tick, and so far we have avoided any kind of worrisome reactions. (If you put the tick in a bag and stick it in the freezer, you’ll have it on hand for testing if your child develops any kind of illness or reaction. This seems especially important if you are in an area not widely known for having tick-related illnesses. An tick-borne illness can be harder to get diagnosed, and having that tick available to show your doctor can be really helpful.)

When tick bites turn bad

Watch the area around the bite for several days, keeping an eye out for redness, swelling, or the trademark “bulls-eye” rash of Lyme Disease. There are other tick-borne infections that can also cause a bulls-eye rash (such as STARI), you should call a doctor if you develop any kind of fever or rash after a tick bite. Getting prompt diagnosis and treatment for a tick-borne illness will allow a speedy recovery! This website has a lot of really helpful information on tick prevention, identification, illness, and removal.

Mosquitoes

Who doesn’t despise the whine of a pesky mosquito in your ear? I think we’re all familiar with the seasonal plague of mosquitoes. They breed in stagnant water, thrive in wet areas, and come out when the air is still, especially in the evenings. Just the mention of them makes me itch. We live on the edge of the swampiest woods, and the mosquito issue is real. Their bites are itchy and irritating, but they can also carry nasty illnesses.

Protecting my children became a bigger deal to me as I realized that kids are more susceptible to mosquito bites. It seems like we adults have learned to notice and slap away mosquitoes a lot quicker than our oblivious young children. Some of my biggest mom fail moments are when a toddler wakes up with an eye swollen shut from a mosquito bite (my little ones are really allergic!). It happened again this week after we took an excursion back into Grandpa’s mosquito-laden woods. I failed to get insect repellent on my littlest one’s face and the mosquitoes found the tender skin near BOTH her eyes. For two days I wanted to cry every time I tried to see her sparkling blue eyes behind her puffy eyelids.

Mosquito prevention

Just like with ticks, there are two keys to preventing mosquito bites: covering the skin and using insect repellent. If you know you’re going to be in a swampy area, or sitting around outside in the evening, try to cover as much skin as possible. Bring along some lightweight long-sleeved overshirts, or dress your kids in shorts that roll down as pants. These little precautions help a lot to keep mosquitoes off the sensitive skin of our little ones.

And for the rest of the skin…there’s bug spray. I really don’t like using strong bug repellents if I can avoid it, especially around small children, but I think our littlest ones need extra help to protect themselves from mosquitoes. I’m always on the search for a good insect repellent that I feel safe using around young children and babies. We really like this plant-based product. But, like I learned this week–you have to apply spray everywhere you don’t want mosquitoes! A quick pass over the back of a hat won’t protect the face from aggressive mosquitoes. When we head back out into the woods this week to pick wild black raspberries, I’m planning to spray some repellent onto my hands and gently rub it on her face like I would sunscreen.

We’ve also been burning citronella candles and these insect repellent sticks when we’re outside in the evening, and they help discourage mosquitoes. A smoky campfire works, too! My daughter claims that a good smearing of mud really helps keep the mosquitoes off…but I haven’t tried that one.

Mosquito bite treatment

As with poison ivy, if your kids do get mosquito bites, there are lots of products that make the reaction more tolerable. My favorites are a salve with llavender essential oil (one of the only essential oils universally considered safe for children) and Calagel. Mosquito bite reactions usually begin to disappear within a few days, and rarely need any medical attention. If your child should begin to run a fever or have a disturbing reaction, always consult your doctor.

Enjoy your summer, despite the pests

Yes, poison ivy, mosquitoes and ticks are annoying and can cause problems. But many of the issues are preventable and unfortunately, they’re just another part of being outdoorsy. Don’t let these warm-weather problems keep you from experiencing the wonder, beauty and benefits of being outdoors! Know the risks in your area, find a good insect repellent, dress appropriately, and head outside! There’s a world of wonder waiting to be discovered.

What are your best tips for dealing with warm-weather pests?

About the author

Leslie is an Ohio farm girl and chaser of light, children, and sometimes chickens. She’s a lover of Jesus, wife to her high school sweetheart, and a homeschooling mom of four wild rascals who love the great outdoors as much as she does. As a family, they love hiking, camping, fishing, and just about any outdoor activity. She and her husband are just beginning the process of building a homestead from the ground up, doing most of the work themselves. Leslie has a lifelong obsession with writing and capturing everyday life from behind the lens.

You can find more from Leslie in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
INFORMATION, MCFAMILY
Reflections on Quarantine
- May 29, 2020
While the pandemic has affected us all differently, it’s affected us ALL in some way. We’re more than two months into the thick of things here in the US and some stay home orders are finally starting to be lifted. While things sometimes feel like they’re trying to get back to normal, there’s still so much unknown about what’s to come. One of the things that’s helped me through some of these difficult times is reading about how other moms are doing and handling the situation. A few members of the Run Wild My Child Creative Team took some time to write down their reflections on quarantine and documented the good and the bad about their COVID-19 experiences thus far and how the pandemic has affected their homes, heads, and hearts.

Leslie

@c_l_allofus

When the Covid-19 threat first became real here in Ohio, things shut down with astounding speed. Our heads were spinning with the new information coming out daily, the threat of how this would impact our families and communities, and the frustrations of major restrictions. From the outside, though, it didn’t seem to change our lives that much. I’m a homeschooling mom to four kids. My husband works in an essential job. Our daily schedule remained much the same, and we realize how blessed we have been. Even so, the increasing closures and restrictions made an impact. Art and music lessons were canceled. The libraries closed. Our church moved all services online. We couldn’t get together with friends and family. Even grocery shopping became a challenge. And, thanks to the weather, outdoor adventures (my favorite way to have fun with my kids) were more of an ordeal than a fun outing. After a long and cold winter, our Ohio spring remained cold, wet, and windy. In fact, if you had told me at the beginning of the quarantine that it was going to snow clear through Mother’s Day weekend, I might have crawled under my bed covers and not come out until Memorial Day!

But despite the challenges, I have so many things to be thankful for during this quarantine. We’ve spent even more time than usual together as a family—and as you all know, that comes with both challenges and blessings. But without anyone else to turn to, my children have become better friends with each other. All our needs have been met, and I know that isn’t the case for everyone during this time. And even though the weather hasn’t been ideal, we have repeatedly turned to the great outdoors for adventure, excitement, and fun. Right before the pandemic hit, we moved into a rural farming area and we’ve been thankful for that every single day. We haven’t had to fight through park closures or social distancing for outdoor time, because we can step outside our door and wander through woods and fields and up and down our quiet country road. And we have…every single day. When the monotony of life within the walls of our house feels overwhelming, we’ve gone outside to explore. When winter has felt never-ending, we have searched the fields and woods for those sure signs of spring. And when our indoor entertainment has run out, we’ve gone outdoors and found endless new things to play and enjoy.

Nichole

@coleyraeh

The bad. It’s been a long two months. My daughter turned six almost RIGHT before the Covid-19 pandemic hit American soil. We were lucky to have her birthday party with friends the first week of March. That next week we made the decision as a family to self-isolate. My husband worked from home for one month, but then had to return to work. Nearing the end of two months at home, and we are feeling it. Workouts are interrupted with requests for snacks, writing sessions are at best, sporadic. Though we are a homeschooling family, we rarely stay home. In fact, I think the hallmarks of our homeschool are our field trips and shenanigans. Typically we are done with school at the end of April and we spend May visiting my Mom and Step-Dad in Phoenix, using their home as a base for farther explorations. Staying home hurts. Our family is so far from us and we miss them dearly.

Without the road trips, day trips, and shenanigans to seek out I’ve found myself slipping into the grips of Mom guilt daily. I’ve been shorter with my fuse and sharper with my words, stemming from all this togetherness without an outlet. My typical routes of self-care are no longer accessible and alone time is a precious commodity that looks like sitting in my car in a parking lot with a latte from home. (which is actually just left over coffee mixed with chocolate oat milk). Anxieties have reared up from where they were buried and at night when I’m trying to sleep, perceived failures and shortcomings intermix to keep my brain firing. I feel like I’m drowning. But then, when I’ve taken a moment to pause, I realize that my kids are standing in that water I think I’m drowning in. They are fine. They are thriving. And what they most need right now is our family. And we are right here.

The good. I have never been so grateful and appreciative of our home. I’ve never been more aware of how absolutely privileged we are as a family. My husband had the ability to work from home for a while. He has a job to continue working steadily, and regularly brings our groceries home after work. Our fridge hasn’t been bare and our bellies have been full. Our back porch has become a sacred space. Our children rediscovered how much fun our backyard can be. We do not live in a major metropolitan area that has been hard hit. As a family, we our weekends were typical non-stop adventuring, staying home all weekend had been a rarity for us. So, this time of turning inwards has been a blessing for us. No nightly tennis practice, no gymnastics, no running for the next activity. My husband and I, and our kids, chose to invest that energy into our garden. It’s a space that brings me so much joy and is a source of peace in the daily grind. This year, prior to the pandemic, we added four more raised beds. I threw myself into planting them. Then we added huge barrel planters for giant dahlia blooms. Then (thanks to Instagram) I got an idea for an arch. My husband made that happen, but he went above and beyond anything I could have imagined.

This summer, we won’t be traveling like we used to, but we will have the most amazing arch tunnel, that you can walk under. It will be filled with morning glories, luffa plants, cucumbers, mini pumpkins and mini squash, sour gherkin cucumbers, nasturtiums, and whatever else I planted on it that I forgot about. Last weekend, we added a potting bench (built by my husband). We have delighted in picking fresh produce for our meals almost every day for the past two months. (We live in zone 8, so gardening starts in February). My kids enjoy our mornings outside and I enjoy my nightly garden stroll with my husband to show him what grew that day. Just yesterday, I was showing him the sunflowers that are starting to bloom. It’s been an excellent exercise in patience and presence. (#coleyraegardens). Our schooling may have been sporadic during this time, but we have read some wonderful stories, had more family dinners than ever before, played more board games, laughed together at Dude Perfect videos on YouTube, and enjoyed the gift of this slowed down time.

Sara

@sara_mccarty

The bad – I first became aware of just how scary and devastating this pandemic could be while at work, listening to doctors, actuaries, and experts come up with a plan for social distancing. Things escalated faster than I ever could have imagined and only days later, we were officially home and self-quarantining (my daughter has a heart condition, so we took it seriously). We were working from home (two lawyers), schooling from home (2 school-aged kids + 2 year-old), and living socially distant from our friends and family. It was incredibly heartbreaking to drive down the street and see stores and restaurants closed. Friends started to get laid off; many had to close their businesses. The stock market continued to drop. The panic buying set in, the statistics got worse, the fear surmounted. Everything felt so overwhelming and scary. The kids missed their friends. We were overwhelmed with screen time and schoolwork. Nothing was getting done, the laundry piled up, the house was a wreck, there were so many meals and chores and snacks and Zoom calls. I was taking care of kids all day then working until 2:0o am every night and I still couldn’t keep up. Overwhelm set in and I lost it.

I’ve been surprised by the sheer volume of how much and deeply I felt. Somedays, within minutes I could go from being so incredibly sad, scared, stressed, and helpless to bursting with love, joy, pride and gratitude for my little family. I’d throw myself a pity party about how hard this all is and then I’d consider how much harder it is for so many people and how lucky we are. Then I’d feel guilty about feeling bad in the first place. It’s been so confusing. Are we overreacting? If we let up, could I ever forgive myself if something happened? What really would happen? How long will this last? There’s so much to think about. My temper’s been short, my stress level through the roof. After full days with my kids all over me, the introvert in me wanted to scream and hide in a closet. Never (not even while pregnant) have I felt so emotional and exhausted. I withdrew from everything and it took me weeks to (very slowly and deliberately) get back into a headspace where I felt like I could function again. That’s so not like me and very unnerving. It’s left me very worried about what’s to come and if this will happen again.

The good – Never in my life have I been more aware of how incredibly privileged, lucky, and blessed we are. The pandemic has made me fully aware of how much we’ve taken for granted and how grateful we need to be every day. We have a home that’s comfortable, a fridge that’s full, bodies that are healthy, and opportunities just a click away. Friends and neighbors have gone above and beyond with birthday parades, organizing virtual events and dropping off goodies like freshly baked pretzels, homemade jam and booze. After a few stressful weeks, I kicked my guilt to the curb and decided that homeschooling on a screen was just not going to work for our family. We found other ways to learn inside and out and it made it huge difference in our attitudes letting that go. Work’s been busy, but flexible enough that we can get out and do things together as a family. Ryan and I make a great team and work together so we can each get things done. We’re lucky to have friends with private land nearby so we can explore outdoors all day and never encounter another person. We’ve been camping, floating, fishing, hiking, and spending countless hours in our own backyard.

We eventually hired help (a college girl home for the summer) to take the kids on socially distant outdoor adventures during the day so my husband and I could work (necessary to keep our full-time jobs – we know how lucky we are for our paychecks). My kids have spent nearly every day of the last two months in a creek, on a trail or by a lake and it’s been incredible for them. While they still fight constantly, I think they’re also closer than ever before and they’re thriving on all the time they get to spend outside and with us. Being outside has made a world of difference to us all and really solidified my passion for helping other families get outdoors together. I love being home and (while I don’t want to be here forever) I’ve truly enjoyed having dinner together as a family every night, doing house projects with my husband, adventuring with the kids and all the time together we’ve been blessed with.

Jemma

@thimbleandtwig

Lockdown for us has been a mixed bag. I feel blessed to have extra time with the kids and to spend loads of time together as a family. We’ve done some fabulous crafts, had a garden campout, toasted marshmallows, and played board games. There have been some days that have been truly lovely. I’ve adored watching the kids develop a lovely bond and play more together – I’m so thankful we have 4 kids – they have entertained each other!

However, the juggle has been oh so real and a struggle! Trying to work (teaching live lessons as a secondary school teacher or leading training whilst my husband takes a work call) has been super stressful. There have been days where I feel sad that the kids bickering and me as an impatient mum have dominated the day. It’s also been hard that the kids have missed out on seeing their friends and grandparents. My daughter was in the last year of primary so she won’t get to say goodbye to her friends, won’t have the leavers parties, and end of school play. Both my son starts school and my daughter starts secondary and they won’t have a transition period. Other things have been tricky – friends have had their babies and I won’t be able to meet them until this time is over. Parties and anniversaries have been missed…my 100k overnight walk with friends was canceled.

But we’re thankful. We’re all healthy happy and safe – we’re intrigued how we’ll navigate the next period – longing for life to return to normal. I am worried about how the next part of the journey goes. Will our children grow up fearful of others? Will we always be crossing the road when someone walks too close? Will we turn into a germ-centric generation? Lockdown leaves all these feelings and although I know we’re so, so lucky – it’s still hard to think about how we’ll all be touched by this crazy period of time.

Ginny

@1000hoursoutside

Sometimes I wonder “What if?” What if we would’ve known ahead of time? How would we have prepared? But the fact that we couldn’t prepare in advance forced our family to be creative and to learn new things.

Just under a year ago we moved to a small hobby farm. Knowing nothing about farming, we figured we would ease into it. Coronavirus moved up our timeframe considerably. Having a little bit of land allows us to contribute to our local food system and since we were stuck home anyway we decided to go all in. We went from knowing nada to owning goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs, guineas, and barn carts in the matter of a few months. The cows come this weekend. One of our goats gave birth to twins in March and so we’ve added milking to our daily routine. Teats and udders are now a part of our daily vernacular. And of course, we set up a makeshift garden and are attempting to grow all sorts of things we’ve never grown before. All that to say, our family has learned an unbelievable amount in the last 10 weeks and I consider that a plus! Combine endless time at home with empty grocery store shelves and I transformed into “Farmer Ginny” :).

One thing I’ve struggled with (and there have been many) was finding a new footing. I think we all settle into a routine that has a balance of inhales and exhales. These last 10 weeks have been extremely demanding as lots of plates have been added but without the regular things we do to relieve stress, like hiking with friends. Socially, emotionally, and physically the demands on mama skyrocketed and I didn’t rise to the occasion as much as I would’ve hoped. Overwhelmed and consumed with the news media, I took four weeks off of our seat work for school. I struggled with depression despite knowing that mostly we were okay. We are finally starting to come around but it’s taken a long time.

Tiffany

@dear.wildlings

The good. What a time to be alive am I right? The circumstances leading up to the stay-home orders have tremendously affected everyone’s lives including ours, homebody Homeschoolers. While there have been challenging moments I can honestly say that this time at home has been and will remain one of my fondest memories of my children’s childhood for the following reasons. Time. Oh, bittersweet time. Our days were often filled with at least one errand or obligation we had to be at and with the stay-home order, they cease to exist leaving me with my children, distraction-free. Our conversations were enriched and I felt a sense of slow normalcy I have never felt before. I didn’t pay attention to what time it was and something about the constant slow days made me appreciate my time interacting with my children without the hustle and bustle of life even more. We all ate at the table every night together. I can’t say how much this has changed our lives.

As a photographer, there are many nights that I am not home in time for dinner as I am chasing the sunlight and I miss that time. Lots of nights were wrapped up with mom grabbing something on the way home and dinners were rushed so we could keep our normal bedtime routine. Being home allowed me to cook (more than I ever have before) and enjoy dinner time with my children every single night, never missing a beat or moment or conversation I otherwise would have missed. It gave me more time with my children, my husband, and even myself.

The bad. Negatively I would say that the hardest struggle any of us went through were the days we needed a change of scenery. We highly missed our outings to lunch, spur of the moment out of town day trips, book store, and coffee shop mornings…and just having the option of getting out of the house especially with how much it rained his spring season. You can only expect kids to be stimulated at home so much when suck inside. I think those are the days I struggled and the kids struggled too. I think I personally struggled too with my lack of working, being a photographer – I missed creating. This mentally made me feel worthless some days as a high functioning creative – it made me feel a bit in a rut. However, I did my very best to challenge myself in other ways creatively and come up with new ideas on how to create income. However, I would do it all again if we had to and have learned through this experience that its okay to have slow days and ignore the “real world”. I don’t want that to ever change or “go back.” The good completely outweighed the bad.

We’d love to hear how your family is doing through all this.
Drop us a comment and let us know.
CRAFTS, NATURE SCHOOL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, URBAN NATURE
Creating Nature Fairy Gardens
- April 22, 2020
Are you looking for a nature activity for your children that requires no special preparation or supplies? Has the last month left you burnt out from trying to keep your children’s’ days full of magical projects that you have to shop for, plan, and oversee? Are your outdoor adventures currently limited to your own yard? Then this is the perfect activity for you! Today we have the amazing Leslie Alvis, Ohio homeschooling mama to four, here sharing a timeless nature play idea that can be adapted for any age or situation – the nature fairy garden. It’s a simple activity that requires only the materials you find in your own backyard! Nature fairy gardens can keep kids busy for hours gathering materials, building their unique creation, and then playing with it. It’s a wonderful way to incorporate nature and imaginative play.

Building memories with fairy gardens

Several years ago, when my oldest daughter was just a toddler, I found myself with an unexpected block of time to play with her outside. We were on vacation and I wanted to do something fun outdoors with her. However, we didn’t have any special activities or materials. My son was happily exploring the woods nearby and the baby was napping in the cabin. I was searching for something special we could do in the yard. I remembered one of my favorite outdoor activities when I was growing up: building a miniature dollhouse out in nature. Years before fairy gardens were a thing, I loved to build miniature gardens and houses with bits and pieces of nature. I spent hours designing and creating these little fairy gardens, and then playing with imaginary characters inside them.

A magical nature fairy garden

My daughter and I collected some moss, sticks, nuts, and rocks. We found a hollow at the base of a huge oak tree and began to build our own little fairy garden. I didn’t realize the significance of our creation until months later, when we were back at that cabin. My still-tiny daughter grabbed my hand and tugged me out to that same tree, begging me to build another fairy house with her. Our little nature project had made a lasting impression on her.

Building a nature fairy garden was something she wanted to do again—and again, and again. Now, building nature-oriented fairy gardens is something both of my older daughters love to do, too. And occasionally my son might join in, making a stockade or a fort of his own. They put their imaginations to work and create all kinds of fairy garden spaces.

Getting your fairy garden started

Building a nature fairy garden is so easy! You may have to get your children started with some materials or ideas, but they will probably carry on with little help. Unless, of course, you’re having too much fun to let them play alone!

To start with, pick your location. We like to use the base of a large tree where the roots jut out and make a natural hollow. The more interesting the space, the better! One of my daughters just spent two days playing in a little clump of grass for her little fairy house. Basically, you can use whatever place catches your eye.

Gathering materials for your fairy garden

The next step for your nature fairy garden is to have your child(ren) scout around the yard, neighborhood or local park for tiny bits of nature: sticks, moss, bark, nuts, unique stones, leaves, and flowers. We usually gather some small sticks to build our walls and moss for the floor. You can also lay down leaves or bark for the floor, or just use dirt. You can poke sticks into the ground for walls, transplant plants to create a natural border or build stone walls. Nature fairy gardens are immensely versatile. They easily adapt to different seasons and situations.

Making a potted nature fairy garden

Even if you don’t have a backyard, you can gather materials for a nature fairy garden and create one in a pot! Just start with a nice wide pot full of potting soil or sand. Then see what you can collect on a nature walk in a woods or park somewhere (as long as it’s a place where it’s okay to pick up natural materials!). You can build a nature fairy garden for your porch or even inside. You may wish to purchase some small plants for your pot (succulents or flowers). Just check the labels to make sure they aren’t going to take over your entire fairy garden space as they grow!

Adding finishing touches to your fairy garden

When you’ve created your basic structure or space for your fairy garden, your children get to decorate it. Our fairy gardens are usually dollhouses of sorts, and they get furnished accordingly. Stones become tables and shelves; seed pods and nuts, food. Acorn tops make perfect fairy dishes. I love seeing the amazing ideas my children come up with. This week we had an oven (with flowers baking inside) and a table built out of stones and bark. Both girls’ fairy gardens featured a stone shelf nestled in an uneven bit of bark. My daughters also created a bed in a nest of grass for a pine cone doll, a room hidden under a moss covering, and countless flower dolls.

The joys of creating fairy gardens

Once kids start creating their own fairy garden, they begin to see everything around them with new eyes. Every little thing around the yard has new potential. I’ve found that while I might have to get them started, my children very quickly take over this project and play for hours (or days) without me. Their imaginations and the beauty of nature combine to make creative, delightful fairy gardens. To me, this is the great benefit of outdoor play like this. I love seeing my children enjoy nature, using their hands and their imagination to entertain themselves and create something beautiful. They come back to their fairy gardens over and over.

Have you ever created a nature fairy garden?
What unique spin did you put on it?

Hi, I’m Leslie Alvis! I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, wife to my high school sweetheart, and mom to four rascally kids. They love the outdoors as much as I do, and our yard often feels like the scene from “The Sound of Music” where you hear voices and laughter and can’t find any children until you look up into the trees. I love writing, photography, and all things outdoors, and do pretty much everything with my kids tagging along. We live in Northeast Ohio on the edge of Amish Country, where it’s perfectly normal to park beside a horse and buggy at the grocery store.

We homeschool, which basically means that I’m trying to teach my kids to use their minds without losing my own. While we follow a traditional curriculum, I weave every outdoor adventure I can into our educational journey. I believe that the lessons children experience firsthand sink deepest into their hearts and minds, and there is so much we can learn outside in the beauty and wonder of nature.

You can find Leslie online in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
RWMC posts: Leslie Alvis
ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, CRAFTS, GOOD FOR NATURE
Easy and Eco-friendly Bird Feeders to Make with Kids
- February 17, 2020
Did you know that birds, on average, eat between ¼ to ½ of their body weight every day? That’s a lot of calories for a bird to scrounge up every day, especially in the barren winter months. Feeding the birds is such a great way to get kids involved with nature and teach our children how to observe and feed wild animals. It’s no wonder so many of us love to help feed our feathered friends. Today, we have creative team member Leslie Alvis here, an Ohio homeschooling mom and photographer, sharing four eco-friendly easy bird feeders you can make with your kids.

Birds of a feather

Many of us have birds outside our windows on a daily basis. If you don’t feed them regularly, you might not realize just how many birds live near your home. In our yard, we don’t feed the birds during the plentiful summer months. However, during the winter we fill up our bird feeders and then looking for other ways to offer them some treats.

I’m always amazed when we put out seed and the birds just flock to our yard. My children press up to the windows, delighted to see all those little feathered creatures nibbling away at the treats we’ve made for them. We hope these bird feeders make the cold winter days a little easier for these busy birds.

Eco-friendly bird feeders

My children love making homemade bird feeders. However, I’m a little picky about which projects we tackle. I like our bird feeders to be environmentally-friendly and biodegradable. That way, if the next windstorm blows them away, they aren’t creating litter somewhere. Also, I’m not a super crafty person, so they need to be simple enough for all of us.

We’ve tried making a few different types of bird feeders this winter that pass our tests of being both ec0-friendly and easy. Today, I’m sharing four eco-friendly and easy bird feeders you can make with your kids: (1) bird feeder muffins, (2) pinecone bird feeders, (3) log suet bird feeder and (4) birdseed wreath feeder. I hope you’ll try making these with your kids, too!

1. Muffin bird feeders

First up, muffin bird feeders. Muffin bird feeders are an easy and completely eco-friendly recipe to make with the kids. I came across this adaptable recipe in an older book on backyard birding and knew we had to give it a try. This particular way of feeding the birds is perfect if you don’t have a place to hang feeders! These cute mini muffins can be set on window ledges, benches, tucked in crooks of trees, or set on porch railings. We scattered them everywhere around our house and yard. The kids had so much fun seeing where the birds like to eat and if they’d find them all!

The whole process was easy and fun. My children loved helping mix up the ingredients, baking the muffins, and then setting them out all around our yard. The birds loved eating them! It was delightful to find only a few crumbs left after a crowd of birds had pecked away at the muffin. We even put some on our front window ledge and had cardinals, blue jays, and sparrows right in our front window.

Bird feeder muffin ingredients:

The original recipe for the muffins called for the following ingredients:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- ½ cup sunflower seeds
- ½ cup peanuts
- ¼ cup chopped bacon
- ½ cup raisins
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- 1 small apple
- 1 egg
- 2 T maple syrup or honey
- 3 T butter, melted
- 1 cup milk
Bird feeder muffin recipe directions
1. Toss the seeds, nuts, fruit, and bacon into a food processor or chop very finely.
2. Mix together with the flours, then stir in the wet ingredients.
3. Pour the muffins into a greased mini muffin tin and bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
4. Refrigerate or freeze any muffins you don’t distribute right away.
My favorite thing about the recipe for muffin feeders is that they can be made with whatever ingredients you want to use. I tweaked this recipe based on the ingredients we had on hand, and they turned out great! They are packed with yummy and high-protein foods for birds. If you have other whole grain and seed options on hand, they can be added in place of some of the more processed ones here. We just used the options we had.

2. Pinecone bird feeders

Pinecone bird feeders are an oldie, but a goody! I made these simple bird feeders when I was a little girl, and now I love making them with my children. Sometimes you just can’t go wrong with the classics. The birds love them, too! I especially love that this feeder uses nature for its base, and when the pinecone has been picked clean you can simply untie it and let it return to the ground. You can reuse the string, or lay it in the tree branches for the birds to use to build their nests.

Collect the pinecones

I absolutely love that you get to start this bird feeder project with a nature walk to gather pinecones. We had so much fun spending a sunny winter afternoon tromping around and looking for the perfect pinecones. When we had stuffed our pockets full, we carried them home and took advantage of the mild temperatures by making these bird feeders outside at our picnic table. It kept the mess outdoors, and it also helped us keep working on our #1000hoursoutside. (Thanks to Ginny Yurich of 1000 Hours Outside, we are becoming increasingly more conscious of choosing time outside for our family.)

Pinecone bird feeder ingredients

To make these feeders, you will need the following:
- Pinecones—whatever size and shape you can find
- String
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 2 T shortening or butter
- 2-3 cups birdseed
Pro tip: if your pine cones are closed up tight, you can pop them into the microwave for 30 seconds at a time until they open up!

Pinecone bird feeder instructions
1. Tie 6-8 inches of string to the tip of each pine cone.
2. Melt your peanut butter and butter together until runny. If it’s too hot for little fingers, allow it to cool slightly.
3. Dip your pinecones in the mixture until they are completely covered.
4. Roll the pinecones thoroughly in birdseed.
5. Hang in nearby trees and bushes.
This whole process is so hands-on and fun for all ages. From our toddler to our tween, everyone really enjoyed this whole activity. And they all had their faces pressed to the windows first thing the next morning, watching the birds enjoying their new pine cone feeders!

3. Log suet bird feeder

This next bird feeder option is still quick and easy, but does require someone who can use a power drill (the kids love this!), so adult supervision is necessary. I suggested this idea to my 11-year-old son and showed him the picture from a book. To my surprise, he completed the feeder in 15 minutes! While I’m not promoting turning little kids loose with power tools, this would be a great project for an older child (teen/tween) that knows how to properly use these items. (My husband is a carpenter by trade and has trained our son to use tools safely for years now.) I was impressed by his accomplishment and he was so proud of himself!

Making a suet feeder

To make the bird feeder, all you need is a log, about 4 inches in diameter and 12-18 inches long. Take a 1.5-inch drill bit and drill holes into the log, about 1.5 inches deep. The number of holes you drill depends on the size of your log. We ended up with five or six in our feeder. My son then nailed a 12-inch length of chain into the top of the log so we could hang the feeder. Like I said, it took him about 15 minutes working with materials we had on hand, and I think it’s the cutest little suet feeder I’ve ever seen! He even added a little perch under one hole for the birds who like to perch instead of clinging to a tree to eat.

Making suet filling

To fill this bird feeder, you can buy suet or make your own. We decided to try making our own, mixing birdseed and rolled oats with fat rendered from a ham we had recently cooked. I tossed the bone and the fat from the ham into my instant pot and cooked it for an hour and a half. After the mixture chilled, I scraped all the fat off the top and that was my suet base. You can also use lard or vegetable shortening. Learn more about making your own suet here).

We pressed this mixture into the holes on the feeder and my son hung it up in the crab apple tree outside our front window. The birds were fluttering around it within an hour! It’s easy to refill and I think we’ll be using this feeder for a long time.

4. Wreath bird feeder

We were having so much fun making all those other easy bird feeders, we had to try this one, too! I gave my eight-year-old daughter this recipe and she made this all on her own! She loves to read recipes and try new projects, so this one was a great one for her to try independently. It was an easy and fun bird feeder for her to make. It does take a day or two to harden, so we had to be patient and leave it alone while it dried! That’s a lesson all of its own!

Birdseed wreath feeder ingredients

To make this recipe, you will need the following ingredients:
- 1/2 cup hot water
- 1 T unflavored gelatin
- 3/4 cup flour
- 3 T corn syrup
- 4 cups bird seed
Birdseed wreath feeder instructions
1. Stir together the hot water and gelatin until dissolved (this takes a bit of time and stirring!).
2. Add the flour and corn syrup and mix together into a sticky paste, then add the birdseed.
3. Using your hands or a wooden spoon, mix well and then press into a well-greased bundt or tube pan.
4. Allow the feeder to dry for a least 24 hours. After a day, we flipped ours out of the tube pan onto a drying rack to let it finish hardening.
5. Tie a scrap of burlap around it and hang it out for the birds!
A note of caution: this feeder may not hold up well to rain. We hung ours on a bush that hangs under our porch roof a little to protect it from the elements.

Eco-friendly bird feeders for kids

So there you have it – four super easy ec0-friendly bird feeders to make with kids. We hope you’ll try making one (or all four!) of these this winter for your local neighborhood feathered friends. Feeding the birds is such a great way to get kids involved with nature, teach our children how to observe and care for animals, as well as being good for the environment.

How do you like to feed the birds?
Have you made bird feeders with your kids?

Hi, I’m Leslie Alvis! I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, wife to my high school sweetheart, and mom to four rascally kids. They love the outdoors as much as I do, and our yard often feels like the scene from “The Sound of Music” where you hear voices and laughter and can’t find any children until you look up into the trees. I love writing, photography, and all things outdoors, and do pretty much everything with my kids tagging along. We live in Northeast Ohio on the edge of Amish Country, where it’s perfectly normal to park beside a horse and buggy at the grocery store.

We homeschool, which basically means that I’m trying to teach my kids to use their minds without losing my own. While we follow a traditional curriculum, I weave every outdoor adventure I can into our educational journey. I believe that the lessons children experience firsthand sink deepest into their hearts and minds, and there is so much we can learn outside in the beauty and wonder of nature.

You can find Leslie online in the following locations:
Instagram: @c_l_allofus
Client work: @lalvisphotography
RWMC post: Leslie Alvis
FALL, HIKE, INFORMATION, NATURE SCHOOL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES
How to Get Kids Outside During the School Year
- October 2, 2019
It’s that time of year again – our children are trading in their beach towels for backpacks and holding pencils more than sidewalk chalk. Whether you homeschool or traditional school, back-to-school generally means less free time and fewer hours to play outside. Not only that, but the days are growing shorter and the weather’s turning cooler. Getting kids outside during the school year can be a challenge. However, spending time outside in nature is still necessary for our kids’ physical health, mental focus, and emotional development. Today, the amazing Leslie Alvis, Ohio homeschooling mom of four, is here sharing a few ideas for practical ways to build outdoor routines into your school days. Hopefully, these tips will help you incorporate more nature into your busy schedule without making outdoor time feel like one more thing on your to-do list.

Make nature time a priority

Whether back to school means a traditional school program for you or homeschooling with a flexible schedule, days become extra busy as you settle into a fall routine. Many of us have kids involved in extra-curricular activities and sports. It’s easy to feel like we don’t have enough time for nature exploration during the school year. However, a busy schedule doesn’t mean the outdoor adventures have to stop! In fact, I think it should help us make nature time even more of a priority. We’re here to show you how to get kids outside during the school year.

Our kids need us to help them balance the demands of school with the freedom of childhood and the wonder of exploring outdoors. Formal education is necessary, but children also require time outside for proper growth and development. Ginny Yurich, author, educator, and founder of the 1000 Hours Outside movement, says,

Nature play facilitates growth in every area, making time outside a crucial part of the landscape of childhood.”

Time outside matters

Time spent outdoors doesn’t always have to be done in giant hour+ long chunks. Even on busy days, there are many ways to get our kids outside for short amounts of time, which still have huge benefits for kids. A quick break to explore outside helps break up the mental stress of school. While a long hike or bike ride gives them a chance to catch their breath mentally while also strengthening their bodies, sometimes a short walk/ride around the neighborhood is just what they need. Weekend adventures provide fun and memories for the whole family, but short outings to a local park are great for when you don’t have tons of time. Our family tries to include a mix of these different activities throughout the school year to keep us all enjoying the great outdoors, no matter our schedules or the weather. Time outside gives us space to breathe and the freedom to explore.

Take walks to get kids outside

Walks are one of the easiest ways to get kids outside and moving! A family walk can happen anywhere, anytime. It doesn’t have to take long or have the perfect setting. Just look around at what you do each day and see if you can link a walk into that activity. Walk to the bus stop. Stroll to get the mail. Wander to the end of the street…around the block…down a country lane.

As homeschoolers, we work a daily walk into our school routine as our recess. Sometimes we do it when the lessons are dragging long, or sometimes as soon as the school day is finished. But at some point, we grab the bikes, scooters, and stroller (and the dog! Our neighbors call us a parade!) and head outside for some fresh air and exercise. The time out in nature is good for us all. I’m pretty sure it’s all that saves my sanity on some long winter days.

When you get your kids outside to take a walk, you’re not only getting active together, but you are also exploring and observing nature together. My kids never fail to find something wonderful to point out to me on our walks. The bunny that’s always lurking near the vacant lot on the next street over. A brilliantly colored leaf or flower. A puffy cloud.

There are a world of discoveries from every sidewalk, driveway, and walking trail. Sometimes we have more time to linger and wander than others, but wherever we are outside, we see amazing and beautiful parts of the natural world. Getting kids outdoors on a walk is a great way to tailor-fit a quick nature adventure to your family’s busy schedule.

Evening adventures get kids outside

Sometimes our days get really full and busy. I try to plan at least one evening (or late afternoon as the days grow shorter) each week to intentionally get outside! Look at your schedules and find an hour somewhere in the week to go have a little outdoor adventure. Play at the park. Walk in the woods. Blow bubbles. Get some friends together to play frisbee or hide-and-seek together in the lingering twilight. Again, this doesn’t have to be elaborate. It just requires you being intentional about making time for your family to breathe in the fresh air and explore nature together. You won’t be sorry you did!

Take kids’ school outside

Another way to get kids outside after school is simply to take the lessons or homework outside! Before you discard that idea as impractical and impossible, I challenge you to give it a try. When the weather is nice, set up a school/homework station on the porch, the backyard or in the tree fort. Let your older students take their reading up in their favorite tree. Pack up the backpacks and snacks and go sit in a picnic area at a park. There are so many ways to help kids take their schoolwork outside!

Yes, you may have to keep tabs on them and make sure they aren’t totally distracted from their work. But honestly, most of the time kids will buckle down and get their book work done when they realize all the many other things they would rather be doing outside! And wouldn’t you rather have your kids distracted by the mystery of the cicadas and the falling leaves than sitting inside glancing at a computer or television?

We are a second-generation homeschooling family. I grew up hauling my textbooks outside every chance I got. I loved it. (This probably contributes to the feeling of claustrophobia when I’m stuck indoors.) It motivates me to give my own children the same opportunities to get outside in all seasons, doing all kinds of things. Even schoolwork.

Outdoor learning

Whether you homeschool or not, there are a lot of ways to extend learning outside. When you step out into nature, everything around you is a science lesson, art lesson and history lesson. Studying the beauty of nature gives inspiration to every kind of art. Observing the mysteries of the natural world naturally leads to questions and learning about plants, animals and how things have changed over time. Time spent in nature is never time wasted. So, when your days are busy with school schedules and extra-curricular activities, don’t forget that time in nature is an essential part of your children’s education, too.

Look for ways to include outdoor time as part of school! Choose a nature-based science fair project. Conduct your own STEM activities outside using nature. Help your kids study the weather, the seasons, the natural world around them. Volunteer in your child’s classroom to take them outside to work in the school garden or go for a nature walk. Incorporating education into your outdoors time is one of the best ways to make sure you are getting your kids outside after school starts.

Picnics get kids outside

Is the sun shining? Is the sky so blue it takes your breath away? What about the breeze that’s the perfect combination of crisp air and gentle warmth? Take advantage of the lovely fall weather and have a picnic! Take PB&J sandwiches on a hike. Order pizza delivery to your favorite local park. Or build a campfire in your backyard and cook hot dogs and s’mores. Kids don’t need fancy food—they need time outdoors and memories with their families. Impromptu meals outside on a gorgeous day are some of my favorite times with my kids.

Weekend adventures get kids outside

Another way to get kids outside during the school year is to plan weekend adventures! We all know that sometimes if we don’t make plans to do something, it just won’t happen. So, grab your calendar and make some plans. Pick a Saturday afternoon and go explore that state park. Find a new bike trail and spend a few hours on it. Go hiking together, or just go have a picnic at a nearby park. Find a local corn maze or fall festival and enjoy some outdoor fun. Pull your family loose from the tug of school schedules and obligations and make some memories together.

Weather

Just a quick note on the impact weather can have on your fall activities. Cooler days, shorter evenings, and more rain can make planning an outing challenging. Getting caught in a summer shower can be fun. But getting caught in the rain in October can be miserable. Especially if you aren’t dressed for it. There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing, so be prepared! Check the weather often and look for days that will suit your family and the activity you are planning. Take advantage of those gorgeous sunny days and enjoy nature to its fullest!

Don’t let bad weather keep you from getting your kids outside this fall. Sometimes the wind is unexpectedly biting. Sometimes it pours rain every time you plan a nature outing. Several times we’ve planned for an all-day outdoor adventure and had to do it in chilly, incessant rain. Honestly, that makes memories, too! Sometimes they’re the best memories! Just remember that your attitude sets the tone for dealing with the unexpected or inconvenient. Oftentimes, kids don’t mind wet feet and pants as much as adults do. And a cup of hot chocolate can turn a chilly experience into a delightful adventure for a kid!

Need more fall ideas?

As we mentioned, sometimes planning an outdoor activity and making it a priority is half the battle. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas of things you can do outside this fall as a family, we’ve got a great list of 100+ outdoor fall activities for kids and families. This list should give you all kinds of inspiration for easy and quick nature crafts to outdoor adventures, STEM experiments and more.

How do you get your kids outside during the school year?

Hi, I’m Leslie Alvis! I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, wife to my high school sweetheart and best friend, and a mom to four rascally kids. They love the great outdoors as much as I do, and our yard often feels like the scene from “The Sound of Music” where you hear voices and laughter and can’t find any children until you look up into the trees. I love writing, photography, and all things outdoors. We live in Northeast Ohio on the edge of Amish Country, where it’s perfectly normal to park beside a horse and buggy at the grocery store. We also homeschool, which basically means that I’m trying to teach my kids to use their minds without losing my own. While we follow a traditional curriculum, I weave every outdoor adventure I can into our educational journey. I believe that the lessons children experience firsthand sink deepest into their hearts and minds, and there is so much we can learn outside in the beauty and wonder of nature.

Find Leslie on Instagram @c_l_allofus
ANIMALS/WILDLIFE, LESSONS, NATURE SCHOOL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES
Nature Study: Exploring Ponds with Kids
- July 15, 2019
Summer is a perfect time to get kids outdoors to explore and experience new things! And what better place to enjoy on hot days than someplace with water? Today, the incredible Leslie Alvis (Ohio homeschooling mom of 4) gives us a unique look at a common place your children can explore this summer: the ever-delightful and intriguing pond. Exploring ponds with kids is not only fascinating and fun, but it’s also educational! There’s so much to see, feel, observe and learn about around a pond. Technology and screen time cannot replace the hands-on lessons children learn just playing outside in the amazing classroom of nature. So grab a bucket and a butterfly net, and let’s head to the pond together.

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.”
Henry David Thoreau

Why head to a pond?

Ponds are a fascinating place, an ecosystem in their own right. They sustain entire life cycles of plants and animals in their own self-contained space. In the summer they hum with life, providing a vibrant atmosphere to explore. From the birds and insects filling the air with song to the fish flashing by in the water and the bullfrogs calling just out of reach, they are a child’s paradise of discoveries.

Exploring ponds with kids is also timelessly interesting, entertaining, and relaxing. Most children can find an endless number of interesting occupations at a pond. I can never believe how long my kids will spend just tossing rocks or sticks into the water. And I’m amazed at how beneficial that simple activity is: building strength and developing motor skills, making them aware of cause and effect, and introducing them to basic physics (gravity and displacement, for instance). Today, we will look at just a few ways you can experience a pond with your children, weaving education and development together with delightful play.

A note on pond safety

Before we get started, I’d like to mention some safety guidelines. Any time water is involved, we have to be extra conscious of our children’s safety. Water is such a fun thing that few children understand its danger. And unlike swimming beaches, ponds often have slippery mud or grassy banks that can drop abruptly into deep water. Teaching children to swim is the number-one prevention to drowning accidents, but even that isn’t a guarantee of safety. Never leave children unattended near any water, especially a deep body of water like a pond.

Be safe together!

If you are comfortable allowing your children to wade in the water, make sure you have carefully checked out the wading area yourself for dangers like slippery mud and sharp drop-offs. And even if you have instructed your children to stay out of the pond, we should be aware that accidents happen and a child can slip and fall into the water in an instant. Stay close and focused on your children, adventuring and playing together. Exploring ponds with kids should be fun and safe.

Teaching nature skills

To start off exploring a pond with kids, simply walk around the pond. Talk before you start about how everyone needs to use their “nature skills” to explore the pond area. These skills include walking quietly, speaking quietly, and trying not to disturb the wildlife around you. We always have to work on sharing our discoveries quietly—the first child to yell they saw a goose will probably scare off the whole flock! This is also a good time to teach children how to study nature without disturbing it, to observe but not take, and to show respect for the natural environment surrounding them by being careful where they step and what they touch.

Sensory exploration

Exploring a pond with kids provides a great sensory experience. It’s easy to get started by asking questions involving the senses. What do you see? It’s like an amazing game of “I Spy.” Do you see those wildflowers on the far bank? Can you spot that turtle out sunning on a log? How many frogs can you count? Oh, no, one just ducked underwater!

Hearing and Smelling

Observing the natural atmosphere of the pond moves quickly to hearing. Do you hear the birds singing? The bullfrogs calling? The wind whispering through the tall grass? The buzzing of the insects? And then there is always smelling—and if the pond you are visiting has the smell of stagnant water, your children are sure to notice it! But you can also smell wildflowers and a fresh breeze. Honeysuckle and freshly cut grass. I love how much my children will get into talking about all the details they notice.

Unforgettable sensory experiences

When exploring ponds with kids, there are countless ways to experience the natural world. How many things can you find to touch? From the smooth leaves and raspy blossom of the cattails, to the silky water and slippery plants in the pond, to the slimy skin of a frog and the soft whisper of a dropped bird feather, there are a multitude of things to feel around a pond. (Of course, unless you have the owner’s permission to pick things, make sure you give careful instruction about not picking any plants or disturbing the environment. Leave it unspoiled for everyone to enjoy!) Touching pond creatures might stretch the sensory comfort zones of some kids, but if you have the opportunity to let your children touch a frog or a fish, it will be a sensory experience they won’t forget!

Hands-on adventures

Getting wet and dirty is part of learning about the pond environment, too. If my children are within reaching-distance of water—any water—they are sure to get wet! It doesn’t matter the temperature or what they’re wearing. If we are going near water, I just plan on them getting soaked. So, if the pond you are visiting is wading accessible, wear some water-appropriate clothes and footwear. Bring some buckets, a net, a magnifying glass, and explore a pond with kids up close!

Exploring a pond with kids is a hands-on activity. If you have an adventuresome child with quick reflexes, they might be able to catch a bullfrog or net a minnow to examine. These are good opportunities not only to study creatures up close, but also to teach our children how to handle them and to release them safely back into their natural environment. The minnows can’t breathe air, so we have to observe them in the water. The frog is slippery and likes to jump, so we have to hold it securely but without squeezing it.

Tadpole science project

In early summer, tadpoles are one of the easiest and most fun things to catch and study. Find a shallow still area at the edge of a pond in early summer, and you will probably see dozens of tiny black blobs wiggling around in the water. These are tadpoles—baby frogs who will develop before your eyes! If you have permission from the pond’s owner, scoop some up in a bucket and you will have a hands-on science project. Bring them home, feed them, and watch them grow! Before long, it will seem unbelievable that these miniature frogs grew from those funny wiggly creatures you caught in the pond. For more information, we’ve got a great post on raising tadpoles with kids.

More hands-on activities

When exploring ponds with kids, study the pond water itself. This is particularly fun if you have access to a microscope. The multitude of tiny organisms living in pond water is amazing. Even if you don’t have a microscope, you can get a pail full of pond water and see if you can spot little plants and water creatures in it with a magnifying glass. You may be surprised just how much you can find!

Exploring ponds with kids isn’t limited to the water. A butterfly net can help you capture amazing creatures such as dragonflies, butterflies, and other flying insects, as well as water insects. Chasing a flying insect is a great hand-eye coordination activity—plus, it’s just fun! And when my children do manage to catch a butterfly or damselfly, they love to examine their vibrant colors and fragile wings. Every creature is so unique and beautiful.

Keeping a pond notebook

If you want to make this a more formal learning experience, bring a notebook or nature journal for each child. Help them keep track of the different living things they see and hear. I love keeping nature notebooks where children can draw pictures of things they have observed and what they have learned about them. Having a pond notebook is a great way for them to process what they are discovering with a quick sketch and a short description. This appeals to some kids more than others, but sitting beside the pond and drawing pictures of what we see is such a lovely way to spend a summer day…or a least a few minutes of one.

Resources

We have found that nature guides and handbooks are valuable resources for learning about pond life. Teaching kids to look up different plants and wildlife that they see helps them learn on a deeper level. Once they have looked up a bird or a flower in their guide book, they are much less likely to forget its name or characteristics! Plus, we can learn together all the things I don’t know (which are many!). We use some of the classic field guides, like Kauffman Field Guide to Birds of North America.

There are also some great resources available for less than $10, like these illustrated nature guides. The entire Take-Along Guides series is geared toward helping children learn about nature in an easy-to-find, graspable format. I can’t recommend them enough if you are serious about helping your children learn about wildlife and plants for themselves.
What do your kids like to do at a pond?

Leslie
@c_l_allofus

Hi, I’m Leslie Alvis! I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, wife to my high school sweetheart and best friend, and a mom to four rascally kids. They love the great outdoors as much as I do, and our yard often feels like the scene from “The Sound of Music” where you hear voices and laughter and can’t find any children until you look up into the trees. I love writing, photography, and all things outdoors, and do pretty much everything with my kids tagging along. If we can’t do it as a family, it’s likely it won’t happen. We live in Northeast Ohio on the edge of Amish Country, where it’s perfectly normal to park beside a horse and buggy at the grocery store. We also homeschool, which basically means that I’m trying to teach my kids to use their minds without losing my own. (Every once in a while I think I might be succeeding.) While we follow a traditional curriculum, I weave every outdoor adventure I can into our educational journey. I believe that the lessons children experience firsthand sink deepest into their hearts and minds, and there is so much we can learn outside in the beauty and wonder of nature.

If you want more from Leslie, read all her Run Wild My Child posts here.
INFORMATION, NATURE SCHOOL, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES
Tapping Trees & Making Maple Syrup with Kids
- April 10, 2019
The process of making maple syrup is one that absolutely fascinates me. The whole concept of tapping trees, collecting sap and creating your own syrup is something I’ve been curious about and interested in for years! Today, the amazing and inspiring Leslie Alvis is back sharing her family’s adventures in tapping trees and making maple syrup on their family cattle farm in Ohio. The Alvis family takes maple syrup seriously. They have nearly 300 taps and quite the set-up. While this may not be practical for everyone wanting to try their hand at making maple syrup, it is absolutely fascinating and you’re sure to learn a lot about the process and walk away with a newfound appreciation for the hard work and dedication that goes into making delicious treat!

Winter is ending

Every year, just when Ohio winters have reached the peak of their monotony and we’re not sure if we can’t survive another week of dreary coldness, a subtle shift occurs. You can smell it in the air when you step outside in a crisp February dawn – a hint of green, of dirt, of life. It can be heard it in the trees, as the bird cacophony increases. You can feel it in the ground, as the frozen dirt begins to soften. In the rhythm established by our great Creator, the world is waking up.

And we are ready. The end of winter means the days are lengthening and temperatures are finally rising. Although, by this time cabin fever has become a very real malady, and we are overtaken by another sort of seasonal madness: maple sugaring! Each year our family heads to the woods in these late winter days to begin the age-old process of making maple syrup.

Maple sugaring

For hundreds of years, residents of the North American continent have tapped holes in maple trees in late winter. They’ve collected the sweet sap that flows through the trees as the days warm above freezing, and boiled it down into pure maple syrup. The Native Americans taught this process to the early settlers and the tradition has continued throughout the years, changing and adapting with inventions and technology.

Today, major producers in the maple syrup industry tap hundreds of trees. They collect the sap through a vacuum tubing system and boil it down in huge, state-of-the-art evaporators. On the other side of the scale are the small hobby producers, who tap a handful of trees in their yards and boil the sap in a single pan. Our operation falls somewhere in the middle. We put in between 250-300 taps each year, collect it in buckets, and boil it down in a moderate sized wood-fired evaporator.

A family affair

Maple sugaring is a family affair for us. We began this enterprise, together with my parents, 6 years ago. My husband had dreamed of making maple syrup for years. My parent’s farm has acres and acres of woods with hundreds of maple trees. After talking about it for ages, we finally decided to give maple syrup making a try. We went to a local maple supply store with the idea that we would just dip our toes in the water, so to speak. We thought we’d put a few taps out in Dad’s woods, boil the sap on a propane burner and see what happened. Somehow, with a little education and evaluation of our woods’ potential, this plan quickly escalated into a full-blown project.

We bought a used 2’x6′ evaporator, put in a lot of hours scrubbing it up, and began tapping trees. Before the first week was over, we were back at the maple store buying more taps. Only our limited manpower and evaporator capacities have kept us limited to 300 taps!

We include our children in every part of it. From washing buckets to tapping trees, gathering sap, splitting and hauling wood for the evaporator. Making syrup is a huge amount of work, but it is also a grand adventure. The children love being in the woods….as long as we keep their hands and feet warm and their tummies fed. I learned early on to have snacks, lots of them. And a full change of clothes for every child. Those two things are key to making sure the kids have fun throughout the long days we spend making syrup.

Timing is key

Our “sugar bush” (stand of maple trees) is tucked deep in my dad’s woods, down the road a half a mile from the main farm. The sap begins to flow when the days rise into the 40s and the nights fall below freezing. Producers like us who have open taps have a 6-week window once we put in the taps. After that, we risk harmful bacteria getting into the trees. So we watch the weather carefully to decide when to tap. As soon as we see a weather pattern of days well above freezing with nights still dropping into the 20s, we start putting in taps and the clock is ticking.

Tap carefully

We tapped our trees on a chilly day in late February this year, with snow still on the ground but sun warming the trees. The trees immediately began dripping sweet sap into the buckets, and the beginning of a new season filled the air with excitement as we hurried from tree to tree. The children raced around with buckets, handing them off to their dad, uncle, and grandpa as they drilled holes 1.5” deep in the trees.

There’s a careful science to tapping trees responsibly to avoid injuring the tree and to allow for the best yield. We don’t tap any trees under a 12” diameter, giving them time to grow. A large tree can support 2-4 taps, and our largest tree has 5 buckets hung from it! We move the position of the taps in each tree from year to year, allowing the tree to heal up and continue to grow and be healthy.

Old-fashioned fun

When the sap is running, it has to be gathered and boiled frequently or it will spoil. So when the days warm up, we head out every day to gather sap. We haul 55-gallon barrels out to the sugar bush on a trailer behind a four-wheeler. Everyone tall enough to carry a bucket grabs a couple and we start going from tree to tree, emptying the buckets from the trees, then carrying each bucketful to the barrels. This is the old-fashioned way to gather sap, and there is no way to make it easy. But as long as it’s not pouring rain and the four-wheeler doesn’t get stuck in the mud, we have a lot of fun.

We are trying to teach the kids that they can work hard and have fun at the same time. Fun conversation, cheerful encouragement, and frequent smiles as we trudge through the woods remind us that our attitudes make all the difference. Despite the heavy work that needs done, we are doing this because we love it. After all, the woods are one of our favorite places to be. And making syrup is a fascinating and fun experience.

Gathering the sap

The amount of sap we gather varies from day to day and from tree to tree. Some trees are big producers; filling their buckets with startling ease. A tree that isn’t as healthy or doesn’t have as large of a spread of branches overhead will produce much less. But with 275 taps, even if every tap only produces an average of one gallon of sap in a day, that’s a lot of sap to boil!

Our sap has averaged 1.5% sugar content this year, which means it takes 58 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of syrup! That’s a lot of work for a small yield…which may help you understand the high price of a gallon of pure maple syrup. The entire process is incredibly labor intensive.

Sugar shack

After we gather the sap, we haul it back to the main farm to boil it down in the little “sugar shack” near my parents’ farmhouse. It takes our evaporator an hour to boil down 30 gallons of sap. So, a big day means ten hours of work in the sugar shack. My dad, my husband, and I all take shifts running the evaporator. The evaporator allows the sap to flow through a series of pans as the water boils off and the remaining liquid increases in sugar content and density. When the syrup flows into the final pan, we monitor the temperature until it reaches its finished temperature of 219 degrees.

Running the evaporator means: (1) pumping the sap into the preheat tank, (2) monitoring the fluid levels to make sure a constant flow is feeding into the evaporator, (3) feeding the roaring fire every 5-10 minutes to keep the boil going, and (4) constantly checking the temperature of the syrup. Finally, we draw off the finished syrup, opening the nozzle and trickling it through a triple-layered filter to remove any impurities before we bottle and seal it.

Sugaring safety

The sugar shack is a cozy, steamy place to be on a chilly late winter night, but it is also a frightening place to have children! The evaporator fills the space like a fiery beast, breathing out smoke and spewing maple syrup. We are ever-conscious of the dangers of having little ones around this fiercely hot boiler. The rule is that if they are in the sugar shack, they have to be sitting down in one of the seats along the wall.

Most of the daylight hours the children spend running and swinging and climbing trees outside anyway. Sometimes after dark on a chilly winter evening, after they are worn out from playing and working outside all day, we get out a tiny portable DVD player and have a family movie night while we boil. It keeps everyone still, safe, and warm together. We keep a picnic table nearby and eat our meals at the sugar shack. March picnics are a real thing during sugar season!

Dedication to the craft

This year’s maple season has been a good one, with some major runs and long boils. Usually, my husband does the majority of the boiling after his day job. He runs the evaporator till late in the night, then gets up at 4:30 a.m. to go to work again. This year, I’ve also spent a lot of hours boiling sap during the day, just to keep up with our sap flow. We’ve also been keeping our homeschooling days going on the run. Plus, I’m constantly trying to watch out for our two littlest ones! They are all independent, busy, outdoors-loving rascals who love to run around the farmyard, play on the swings near the sugar shack, and help Grandpa with his chores in the barn.

I have spent the last couple weeks a little wild-eyed and wild-haired. I’ve been shoving wood in the evaporator, checking the temperature and fluid levels, then dashing back outside to do a head count on the kids. One on the swing behind the sugar shack. One doing school on the hale bales in front of the sugar shack. One reading in the top of the juniper bush near the swings. One headed to the barn to see Grandpa. With everyone okay for the moment, I hurry back to check on the syrup. Every time I’ve been about to lose my mind, Grandma or a friend has arrived to help me out. I have been so blessed by their extra hands and eyes.

End of the season

Despite the hard work and busy days, the kids get up every morning and ask me when we are going to the farm. If our toddler even thinks she hears something about going to the farm, she’s racing for her boots and coat. But the calendar has turned to spring and the maple season is beginning to wrap up as the days warm and the trees begin to bud out. When the trees bud is determined by the number of days we’ve had over 50 degrees. We are nearing that limit for the maple trees. The sap begins to turn cloudy and sour-smelling and the flow slows down. Soon we will pull our taps, wash hundreds of buckets, and clean out the evaporator so everything will be ready for next year as the rhythm of the seasons continues.

Leslie Alvis is a wife, mom, follower of Christ, and lover of all things outdoors. She uses writing and photography as ways to keep her sanity amidst the chaos of rearing and homeschooling four children. Outdoor activities with her family are some of her favorite things. You can see more of their family’s adventures on Instagram at @c_l_allofus.