Colour with Nature – Free Animal Templates

Put the pencils down! Colour With Nature instead!

Put those colouring pencils down! Today you’ll colour with nature instead!

I’ve been wanting to use more natural products in our play and activities at home and decided to start slowly by providing an animal template for the girls to use as a guide for our colour with nature project.  It’s a simple activity that can take anywhere from ten minutes to 30 (depending how much they get into it). Here’s what we did today.

First, we collected some nature offcuts.

Collecting from Nature Collecting for a nature collageNature Activity

Then, we glued our off cuts onto these templates (free downloadable templates below). It was lovely to see a collage of  natural colours and textures on the page rather than drawn on crayon or pencil.

Nature fun for kidsNature activity kids

This activity was not only great for fine motor skills but we also compared the real body covering of animals (which we’ve looked at before) to the nature we’d collected. The grass and fern leaves that Miss Possum collected mimiced kangaroo hair and the clover really did look like turtle scales.

Nature for kids

Turtle activity

These templates are free to download here (click on the picture to download).  There’s one condition. You must use nature to colour them in. No pencils allowed!

Colour with Nature - Turtle templateColour with Nature - Kangaroo Template Colour with Nature - Cricket template Colour with Nature - Bird template

 Enjoy!

Catching a Spider: Catch and release for Kids

Spider Catch and Release for Kids @WildlifeFun4KidsYou may be scared of spiders or love them, although I fear most are in the first category but spiders do play an important role in the environment. I try to teach my children that every animal has a role to play and so when we stumble on any creatures, we usually take some time to look at and discuss it. This time though, we have to get a little more hands-on!

Miss Possum found a  huntsman spider in the house and it was a perfect opportunity to teach the girls that we don’t need to kill an animal to get it out of our house. Instead we can release it outside.  So we did.

What you need to catch a spider

All you need is:

  • A container or a cup that’s bigger than the spider
  • A piece of paper (or cardboard, if you don’t feel that’s thick enough).

I should remind you all here to check the type of spider it is before catching it. If it’s venomous it would be better left for the professionals and save this activity for a spider that you know is quite harmless.

Before you try to catch the spider to release it outside, talk about the spider. Here are some questions you can pose to your children:

  • How many legs does it have?
  • What does it eat?
  • Where are its eyes?
  • Why do you think it’s in our house?
  • Why shouldn’t we kill it?
  • Why are spiders important for the environment?
  • Do all spiders make webs?

Teaching children about Spiders

We looked in our wildlife guide-book  to find out if the huntsman spider was poisonous (I already knew the answer, but I think it’s good for children to find out themselves). We also learnt a lot about them. We learnt that a huntsman spider is nocturnal and doesn’t make a web but hunts it’s food at night, they are great for around our house because they eat cockroaches and we also admired the features on its body.

How to catch a spider

Next, you’ll need to catch it.

I caught it before I realized this would be a good post for you guys (the things I do for a blog post!) and so I tipped the spider out and did it again while getting hubby to take the photos.

I must admit, I did squeal a couple of times. They are just so fast and although I love spiders, I’m not fond of having them run up my arm. I tried not to get silly about it and reassured the girls I wasn’t scared. Still, i did see my children get slightly more anxious after that (darn instincts, why did I squeal!)

  1. Catching a spider works best if your spider is on a flat surface. Have both your cup (or container) and piece of paper ready and close by you.
  2. Grab your cup and quickly place it over the spider (try not to squish those little legs).
  3. Then, slowly move the paper under the cup.
  4. Put your hand up under the paper to keep the spider contained. There, wasn’t that easy?!
  5. Then, release it outside!

Catching a Spider in your house

How to catch a spider

Yesterday, Miss possum found another huntsman inside, although this one was much smaller and she wanted to catch it herself. I was surprised but she did it and she did it without squealing too!

It’s so lovely to know that my children are already thinking to take animals outside when we find one in the house (we catch moths too). This little activity really does teach your child that every animal has its place in the world and it’s important that they do their job… just outside!

Have you ever caught a spider? How do you feel about spiders in your home?

Teaching children about spiders

Keeping Garden Snails as Pets

A great pet for kids - snails

Many of us automatically view snails as an annoying little pest that eats our veggie gardens but next time you see one, don’t get out the spray (or organic defenses) just yet, snails make great pets for kids! Why keep snails? They’re quiet They don’t take much work A simple setup is quite inexpensive Children [...]

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Backpack Essentials for Wildlife Explorers

wildlife explorers

It doesn’t take much to encourage our children’s curiosity in nature and wildlife.  It’s a subject that most children seem to engage in quite naturally.  There are, of course, ways to enhance those curiosities and adding some mostly inexpensive tools to their backpack will help them to get closer to nature and make exciting wildlife discoveries. Bucket.  A small [...]

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Finding Animals in Clouds

Cloud activity

Cloud watching can take five minutes, be done almost anywhere where the sky can be seen and you have right cloud cover and is a great way to use your imagination in nature. Cumulus clouds, with their ever changing fluffy cotton wool appearance are the best for finding shapes in clouds. Miss Possum, Platypus, Panda and [...]

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Food Fun: Create Fruit Animals

animal food fun kids

Do you need a simple activity that will not only be fun and creative but also fill your kid’s tummies with healthy food?  Well, letting your child create their own animal, using healthy bits and pieces from within your fridge worked a treat for us! After a week of unhealthy eating (we still have so [...]

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Animal Kids Craft: Toilet Roll Menagerie

Animal craft

The recycled toilet rolls in our craft bin had been piling up since the twins started toilet training and if I didn’t do something soon, we would be overrun, swimming in a playroom of faintly ocean fresh-scented cardboard rolls. What’s worse is that my mum started to collect hers for me too. What could I do [...]

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Make Animal Prints in the Dewy Grass

dewy grass faun

I forgot all about making bunny and bilby feet in the dewy grass on Easter morning but I think 4.30 am was just too early to go jumping around getting my feet cold and  wet! I still decided that it would make an interesting activity to do with the girls though. So, the next morning when they’d all woken up (including [...]

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Easter Activity: Hunting for Animals that Lay Eggs

Egg Hunt Fun (271x500)

Although we started our Easter crafts with a life-sized bird nest for the girls, we haven’t done anything else to celebrate this festive season. In fact I’ve been so busy with birthday parties, dance rehearsals and planning to move house that I didn’t realize until yesterday that it was Easter this weekend. Opps! Luckily, I had a lovely little egg hunting activity [...]

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Wildlife Art – Animal Drawing from an Image

Art for children

Does your child love to draw animals? Have you encouraged your child to draw from an animal image?  Wildlife art isn’t just great fun but by taking the time to analyse a wildlife image first, you can learn a lot about the animals in it before you even put pencil to paper! Miss Possum loves to draw her usual subjects of animals, plants and [...]

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