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.

If you have a garden, install a bird table. Otherwise, perhaps a feeder attached to a window. Encourage them to grow things, even mustard and cress, from seeds. When out walking, turn over stones to see the insect life; pick a few leaves to identify in an 'Observer' book or on the Internet; use similar techniquest to the I-spy books, eg. stick coloured dots on a poster of British birds/wildflowers/butterflies as and when you spot them on your outings. Older children can write the dates on the coloured dots. Each child can have a different colour if they like.

Where do I start?!

Get them involved - we collect acorns, conkers, pine cones, nice pebbles, shells, seed pods, feathers and all sorts on our walks and my LG has a nature tray where she displays all her treasure. She's always going and playing with them and definitely has her special favourites.

Something of their own - it doesn't have to be a whole veg patch, they could sow some lettuces or sunflowers. Or if you're short on space, they can have a big pot on a balcony etc.

Tap into something they already love - if they're into fairies, make a tiny fairy garden in a tub or under a tree. If they're into toy soldiers, make an assault course. It doesn't have to take masses of time or money, you just need to be resourceful.

Stargazing - even better with the ISS in our skies, after bath and before stories, we pop outside for a look at the night sky, even if it's cloudy. The cool air also helps to keep them calm and snuggly.

Wellys and puddles- hours of outdoor fun

We love to spend time outdoors. My three year old granddaughter is a great wildlife fan and loves nothing more than feeding the ducks and swans at the local country park. I actually have to hold her back from the swans, or she'd get far too close. Building a den with whatever materials you can find is a great activity when in the woods.

Outdoors offers a wealth of opportunities for investigating and exploring so I think the secret is to make it fun and exciting. The more excited and enthusiastic we are as adults, the more children will be inclined to join us. It doesn't matter what the weather is - rain just adds to the fun!

Some of my favourite activities are scavenger hunts, mud pies, outdoor mark making using sticks, stones and mud as well as bug hunting.

My children are older now (12 and 13) but are not too old to enjoy playing in mud! I also enjoy exploring the outdoors with the little ones at the Preschool I manage. It's an absolute delight to see the joy on their faces as they run outside to explore....priceless.

Leaving extra time for the school run works for mine (we have a longish walk, and a really nice couple of off road bits). My 10 and 8 year olds love it if the puddles have frozen on one lane we use, and my 2 year old likes running up and down the grass bank. It is nice to have them calm and ready for school after a bit of exercise and fresh air.

The national trist really is great as an intro to nature for kids (and urban adults!). We always make sure we pick up the free kids guides or trails which can really engage them. We also have a wood near us that does kids trials and hunts. Anything that gets them out in nature is good and we find that having some goals for them a even a homemade simply nature treasure hunt, helps to engage them. If all else fails, the promise of an outdoor play area and a cafe works wonders too.

take them to the beach (if you can), rock pooling is mesmerising. failing that, collecting snails in a bucket is a winner (return them after) or building bug hotels x

To help get children interested you should do a nature trail, have lots of fun questions and easy clues that provide educational knowledge

Geocaching is great.
Get a dog!
Or seek cones.

Getting outside with them as much as possible. My ds was terrified of dirt and mud til he 'helped' daddy dig up the patio in the garden. Now he is happy to pick up worms!

Depending on the time of year I like to give the kids little topics to find out more about certain birds, animals or plants, and then draw pictures, write about them etc. Letting kids do things like bark rubbings so that they have direct contact with the natural world. Another favourite is nature bingo - all it takes is a few pictures on cards and a pen so they can mark the things off as they see them during walks in the woods etc. The kids also love to plant edible things so that they can proudly pick and share their own produce and receive a lot of praise for providing fresh ingredients for snacks, meals & BBQs.

We are members of ZSL and take our children/grandchildren regularly to Whipsnade Zoo.

We have woods near us which we explore. We also go geo cashing which makes a walk more fun for the DC. In our garden we built a compost heap and they help with the gardening. We have also grown tomatoes and sunflowers to see how things grow

Walk everywhere! Make regular trips to the park. Let them help out in the garden and grow things like beans and tomatoes. Don't let the weather put you off: puddle jumping in wellies and appropriate clothing is fun!

We spend a lot of time outside and my DC (9 and 6) often choose to be outside. We're lucky, we live somewhere where they can play outside with their friends, but other things we do are:

National Trust membership - gives access to different places to go and explore
Camping - the DC love it and it gets us living outside
Walks - having a dog really helps get us out of the house and walking whatever the weather
Learning about nature - we love watching the birds in our garden and getting out spotting nature. We have nature books and tick things off as we spot them.
Taking part in activities - everything from fossil hunting to trying out canoeing, beach combing and archery.

It has to be fun though, otherwise everyone ends up miserable and the children would much prefer to be on their screens. Dressing appropriately for the weather and activity is also key. Nobody likes being cold, wet or uncomfortable.

Growing our own vegetables made a big difference. I let the children help dig up the ground and plant the seeds, although the latter affected how much we grew! They enjoyed checking on the products and eating them. We tried feeding the birds, but there are too many cats. I also "let them" collect worms for the compost.

Lots of little simple things like;

Going for forest and beach walks, collecting pine cones, shells and seaglass

Looking (carefully) in rock pools and hidden places for small creatures

Finding as many different fungi / flowers as possible

Gardening, learning how to grow, discovering the different stages of plants as they grow through the year, growing our own fruits and enjoying the eating, finding what small creatures live in our garden, feeding the birds, making big boxes

You need to resist any urges on your part to go "yuck" when confronted with mud, fungi, invertebrates etc and embrace the fact that they are all part of Mother Nature. DS is a London boy but he can spend hours looking at lichen, moss, ant-hills and random shrubs along the way home.

He's currently breeding Daphnia on the kitchen windowsill. Having a box of green sludge sitting in my carefully colour coded kitchen isn't doing much for my interior decor, but I reckon it's setting him on the way to a career in zoology.

We only have a gravel garden at the front of our flat but we've dug out borders together and planted bulbs. You can do a lot with a small space. Planting a few shrubs has encouraged loads of insects and grubs which have provided hours of entertainment (usually when we're trying to go somewhere).

Planting a little veggie garden is fun. This lets the children see how things grow etc. Pumpkins are favourite.

Buy waterproofs so you can go outside come rain or shine. Skimming stones on water is a firm family favourite in our house! We also like walking in the woods

Lots of activities out in the garden. We only have a very small back yard, but it's enough to hunt for creepy crawlies; arrange found pebbles into little rockeries; plant seeds; generally mess around with mud; digging soil using beach buckets and spades; just lying down on the grass staring up at the trees and the sky: getting blankets out and making dens and having picnics; learning the names of the different flowers and plants in pots.

We also have a caravan and love finding the wilder, back to nature campsites. The children, aged two and four, absolutely love the lifestyle of being outside all day, exploring woods and mountains and moorland and dales, cooking on the bbq and having a campfire before bed. We love it too, and they always sleep better than they do at home - added bonus!

We are National Trust members and also Dorset Wildlife Trust members. DD2 who is 10 adores getting the wildlife trust magazine when it's delivered and she reads them avidly.

We have been den building and also gone to a beach where DD collected plastic pellets which had been washed up on the beach and they were handed into the Wildlife office to add to their collection. They kill lots of wildlife every day so every one collected is appreciated. We also did a rock pool activity where we all went out to catch things and they were identified and recorded for the Wildlife office. We actually found a very rare pipe fish which was very exciting.

The most simple thing was getting a load of frog spawn off a local freecycle site and placing it in a shallow container in the garden. We then checked on them every day as they hatched into tadpoles and then started growing legs and losing tails before they all hopped away. Really good to watch them develop and grow.

I take my 3 year old to a Forest School at our local nature reserve. During the two hour class she looks for bugs, plays in the mud kitchen, does crafts with sticks or plays hide and seek. Since we have been going I've noticed that she has become much more engaged with nature. When we go to the park now rather than going to the playground she wants to go and play around the trees and bushes. She collects sticks and uses her imagination to play which is so lovely to watch.