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.

We are lucky enough to have a nature trail behind our house! We often go for walks on the weekend (weather permitting)!

We live in central London and it's still easy to be close to nature. We collect "treasure" from the local park - skeleton leaves, interesting pebbles, catkins, feathers etc. It does mean the kitchen is full of these bits of rubbish, ahem, treasures, on a Saturday afternoon but they love it. City farms are fab too and lead to great chats about where animals come from and what's on their plate at dinner time.

Don't rush!
Just be out for the pleasure of being out. Make it relaxed. There's nowhere to be at any time. Just chill and smell the roses!!!

Having a tiny pond...we dug a small area of the garden and sank half a barrel my partner had for making beer in. Some rain water plus some frogspawn last year was all we needed for our boys to be there for hours.

Spare clothes, promise of hot chocolate after (if cold), and take a "collecting bag" for all those 'interesting' sticks, stones, pine cones, leaves, fungi...

My kids hate being made to leave the house but change into little angels as soon as they are over the doorstep. Any stump or log to climb on and they are in heaven. The woods near my parents have various abandoned dens which they love patching up and playing in.

Geocaching.

This is essentially real life treasure hunting where you can download a free app to your phone to get you started where you navigate to a spot where a container is hidden. You find the container, sign the logbook inside and often there are little nick nacks and trinkets inside you can swap.

Caches are hidden all over the place, on busy high streets, up trees, in country parks and often in National Trust properties. You have probably been walking past them every day without knowing they are under your nose!

Caching has taken us to places we would not normally have visited, shown us beautiful spots in our own area we didn't know about. It's educational for kids, learning about navigation, coordinates, and often having to solve a puzzle or clues to find or get into the cache. Great for team working too.

We recently bought a snail tank from our local garden centre, a small plastic lidded container with a guide for how to build an ideal habitat. You gather twigs and leaves from the garden, find some snails, pop them inside and feed them with veg peelings. Great way to watch them close up.

We have a bird feeder on the garden that the kids love to fill up & watch the birdies that come visit

Get a dog or borrow a dog for a walk. Immediately the walk is more fun and the children are outside running around and caring for the dog.

Dress well for the environment you're in. Waterproofs, raincoats, wellies rock. Kids can do anything ( and adults ) if they're dressed for the weather!

Lots of snacks, eaten as picnics whatever the season. Hot chocolate in a flask with marshmallows in winter and ice cool drinks in summer.

Vary activities with the season. Spring- lambs being born, craft activities, making fires ( all year- with adults!) etc. Make birdfood, plant vegetables etc.

Taking a picnic!

Outside our house, there are shrubs with big leaves.
My oldest son, who's 5 gets a leaf and collects a variety of foliage on it.
It's his version of a nature buffet.

We go cray fishing in local rivers with our 6 yr old - it's such good fun. We also build dams in rivers (always taking it back down when finished).

We grow tomatoes in pots, along with strawberries.

Lying on our backs in the height of summer, just watching clouds is one of the best things about having children - it takes you right back to being a child yourself.

Build a den. This will need adult help to get a good one but if you can go to somewhere with woods or rambling gardens and plenty of sticks/twigs/ivy, kids adore it. And then they have a hide to watch birds from.

Buy a white tray and a magnifying glass, take the kids to a pond dip the tray in and use the magnifying glass to explore all the little creatures you've found :) it's called pond dipping. It teaches them all about their surroundings and how important ponds can be for local wildlife. It's also a very interactive way for them to learn :) if you don't know what the creatures are yourself then buy a wee book :)

Our DS is only 18 months so there's lots to learn and at the moment the biggest tool is time, taking time on our walks to let him just stop and look/touch etc means he's interested!

We regularly holiday in secluded countryside locations so nature is right on the doorstep. Outdoor treasure hunts, and kids nature books are a big hit here - we have one book which has gorgeous photos of birds/insects and we tick them off when we've seen one.

Visiting country parks gets us all out of the house a lot.

Screen time has never been more attractive than being outside for my kids. We always have doors and windows wide open when we can, and a swing and basketball ring in the garden. I love the outdoors, and I hope I've passed that love on.

We try to make a seasonal display at home - nothing big or flashy, just a shelf where we collect things we find going round the park or on trips out. In Autumn we talked about the lifecycle of plants and why some trees lose their leaves, in winter we talked about hibernation and why some animals change their coat and now it's spring we're talking about baby animals and growing plants. He loves to get out in the garden too, going to get him some sunflower seeds as soon as it ok to plant them outside.

Get out whatever the weather - as long as you're all dressed appropriately then it's fine!
And it doesn't matter where you go - parks, the garden, woods, fields, forests...
We go to National Trust sites a lot as well as National Parks such as the Peak District and New Forest.
Look for animals / insects, climb trees, splash in puddles, roll down hills, chamber over rocks, run!
All great fun!!!

My 9 year old son is a junior member of the rspb, he loves birds and nature. For Christmas he had his very on pair of binoculars and rspb books.
We are going on hols to Hunstanton in a few weeks-he's mega excited about all the animal sanctuaries and things he can explore there.
He recently had major surgery at Bch but even that couldn't quash his passion for nature, here he is watching with extreme concentration at the magpie building a nest in our large fir tree-we are very privileged apparently lol

We have encouraged him, he goes out side exploring the farm land around us in his wellies with his compass and binoculars!!! He has a bit of an obsession with Bear Gryhlls at the moment.
We go on nature walks with a bag of snacks and a checklist of items we need to find.
We have a fair few local independent nature trails and farms.
We do canal side walks with lots of nature spotting.
We feed the birds and 2 squirrels lol! We also have a resident fox at the back of our house on the field. Fantastic mr fox!
We encourage him but to be honest he would do it all himself! He had many new suggestions.
We did the bird watch for the rspb in our garden. We also make our own fat balls.
Rock pools are also a firm fave.

Sorry I've rambled but I'm convinced I'm raising the next Packham!!!

We are lucky we live in middle of country so try to at least once a fortnight get on our bikes & scooters & go exploring.
Pond dipping is awesome the kids love it, even my very grumpy pre teen!

DD has always loved muddy puddle walks and once came back from one looking like a mudmonster after jumping up and down and then falling in the puddle.

We're members of the National Trust and love exploring their properties as there is always something for the DCs (6 and 4) to do, whether it's an outdoor children's trail, natural play area or den building. Our DCs love exploring the outdoors so long as we are geared up for it - we always have welly boots in the car (for DCs and us!) and an extra gilet in the winter.

We are enthusiastic about muddy puddle jumping and rolling down the hillsides, carving the waves at the seaside and lead by example, so they copy and enjoy it too. It's important to realise they they start getting tired/hungry as they can switch from happy to miserable in a matter of minutes - you don't want to ruin a great day out by missing the signs!