Share your ideas for getting kids interested in nature - win a copy of BORN TO BE WILD plus a pair of Barbour wellies!

[TinaMumsnet]

Looking for ways to get the children away from the screen and into the green?

Packed with great photos of real families in the outdoors, Born to be Wild contains easy-to-follow instructions for activities that require nothing more sophisticated than a small person's imagination and access to a little outdoor space. And the best bit? Everything you need to engage in the activities can be found in your kitchen cupboard. No expensive art supplies or outward-bound kit required – just ordinary household essentials like recycled food containers, scraps of paper, string, glue and an empty jar or two.

With spring and Easter holidays on the horizon, it's a perfect time to get inspired. Create a Jam-Jar garden, build a nest, make a treasure map or do some pond dipping! Born to be Wild will show you how.

To enter the draw to win a copy of Born to be Wild plus a pair of adult Barbour wellies (got to get you outside too!), just share your ideas for getting kids to love nature.

This discussion is sponsored by Bloomsbury and will close on 11 April.

Growing their own vegetables as they taste so much better and its lots of fun. We have grown our own flowers too as well as butterfly and bird feeders from drink bottles. My little boy even made a wooden bird box and a solidarity bee house at a local english heritage site. National trust are brilliant for kids events too, we recently made a raft at Wray castle. The forestry commision deserve a big cheer too for all their trails such as stickman and the gruffalo.

Walking, talking about what we can see, planting stuff in the garden, feeding the birds and checking them in a bird book. Just taking every small opportunity to talk about all the good reasons there are for being outside.

Encourage a love for nature by helping care for pets e.g. changing the straw in the rabbit hutch or cutting up vegetables for them. When out walking take photos of birds, flowers etc. and identify them in a reference book or make as scrapbook of interesting things like shells they've found or press flowers/leaves and mount them in a book.

We're always outside. My middle son plays a lot of sport and my daughter gets fed up watching - so we often wader off and explore. We spend lots of time in the local woods and love looking at the wildlife. My children love nothing more than mini-beasting. Turning over stones and seeing what's underneath or looking at bark on trees. Fortunately I haven't transferred my phobia of creepy crawlies - as I've been determined to be brave in front of my children ... they are fascinated and I do believe their fascination has rubbed off! Daddy's allotment helped; learning about how things grow and tasting the produce too. It's all a wonderful learning curve.

Go out to a snowy place in the Arctic and go for reindeer sleigh rides, build snowmen, pull them around on sleds, hunt the Northern lights, get pulled by Huskies and generally be silly in the snow.

My boys like to collect little treasures on our walks like feathers or smooth stones. And they love blackberrying

I recently discovered that you can still get "I-Spy" books, which my parents used to buy to keep us occupied on long car journeys. Many of them are nature themed & most kids love ticking things off - shall be trying them out on the grandchildren in the summer.

the national trust is great. the huge parks make for lovely walks through all sorts of different nature and wildlife. running up and down hill,through streams.getting wet or muddy it doesn't make getting out chore it makes it a dream:)
try growing seeds.let them nurture and watch things grow.
big encyclopedias was something mine loves pouring over haha. shows great parts of nature and the history of it.
picnics. putting food into the equation always helps things:)

Let them get as mucky and messy as they want! Good for the immune system and great fun too. Planting seeds & watching them grow, making mud pies & splashing in muddy puddles galore. Thank goodness for washing machines& baths!

We go on adventure walks to see how many new things we can spy - mushrooms, heather, butterfly, squirrels and so on
We encourage this by enabling our daughter to grow her own flowers to encourage the bees and butterflies
She also loves the mud pit, which was once my veg patch!

we spend lots of time in the garden. We have magnifying bug boxes so they can catch things and have a look at them. We like to grow our own veg and the children help to plant the seeds and pick the produce - peas never make it inside - they get eaten straight from the plant. We also sometimes look after a friends ducks so the kids get to follow them round the garden and hunt for the eggs

I love the outdoors so we all go for a walk in the woods, a runabout in the park, visit RSPB Pulborough, and Nymans. We have some lovely books and posters about birds, trees and insects which help to encourage the DC to learn what's out there to discover

I find having decent waterproofs for the toddler mean that we can get out and about in any weather - much easier to enjoy if you are wrapped up warmly! Also we've done things like collect pretty leaves or sticks or similar to make pictures at home - so making what we do have a bit of purpose - and makes the toddler feel inportant by collecting them.

Last year my little girl loved eating the tomatoes in our greenhouse whenever she could get her hands on them. This year, now she's 3, she's keen to get her own fingers green, so we are getting out in the garden as much as possible, and she has her own tomato plants to nurture, as well as growing some plants from seeds, which she is being uncharacteristic ally patient with! We've also got bird feeders and bird boxes to encourage them into the garden and she loves to get outside and fill up the feeders.

We sometimes go to local park and kids are asked to collect 10 fallen leaves with different shapes. It's a lot of fun for toddlers and pre school age kids.

My little grandson has his own little plot next to my shed ,and he loves coming outside with me and having an adventure in the shed or on his plot while i mow the grass or do some weeding !

The wetland centre in barnes was great for getting my kids interested in birds. We went on some of the guided walks there aimed at families and tried to tick off all of the birds on the sheet. Now my daughters are much more aware of the birds around them.

We love going camping, especially to the more paired back campsites that allow fires etc. The kids love roaming in the woodlands and finding sticks and flowers, we have The Stick book and it's amazing what you can make using a few twigs and flowers. I think the favourite makes have been fairy crowns and dream catchers

Bug hunts are great fun.

My 4yr old has her own bug hotel and bird box and loves watching the bees on our lavender. I bought her a magnifying glass so she can look for mini beasts (and solves crimes too!)

National Trust properties do loads of great activities for kids. We put them all in the calendar as soon as we find out about them - not as a fixed commitment but as a reminder in case we happen to be free those days. I also agree with keeping a ball in the car - even 10mins play outside is better than nothing

It helps that I am an Environmental Biologist really, we just take them out, point out a few things and let them run loose as soon as they are in a safe space to do so. They like looking for snails in crevices, insects in tree bark, different types of trees, plants and rocks. Usbourne do good identification guides, you can also download guides from the Woodland Trust and RSPB to help you answer the inevitable 'What's that one'?

I spy books are brilliant. We have them for Nature, Wild flowers, and Camping .We spend lots of time outside together hunting for things.

For Easter i always do a treasure hunt , hiding messages in plastic eggs hidden around the garden.

Also RSPB wildlife areas do great holiday activities such as pond dipping etc all year round. The admission price is really reasonable if you're not a member.

I've done nature with both of mine since they were tiny. With my first, before he could walk I took out a WWT membership and we used to go once a week to our local centre for a stroll in the buggy, to feed the ducks/birds - they also had a little toddler group there once a week too, which was great fun. Once he could walk I joined the National Arboretum as this was a really safe place to toddle around & play and explore in amongst the trees. They have seasonal trails which are a lovely way to see the best of the place at each time of year. They also have nice activities and craft stuff going on in school holidays - so it's a great place to while away a day, taking a picnic for lunch. Our all time free favourite though is a coastal walk!

My children love the nature,i'm on the other hand hard to persuade with all the mess and mud and never ending rain.I think geo caching is great,Real Family Holidays,and the most important part is to have spare clothes for change and appropriate clothes to go in!