Out of the city and into nature – outings with children outdoors
Especially City children come into contact with nature far too rarely, because the nearest park or forest is often far away – and landscaped recreational areas in the big city rarely have much to do with real nature anyway.
Excursions to the surrounding countryside are therefore a great way from time to time to experience nature up close. Here children can explore, touch and search for everything on their own. Maybe you can watch a few deer grazing? Or listen to a woodpecker tapping? You can identify large and small plants together with your child using a plant book. This way children discover playfully what there is to see in nature.
Outdoor games – discovering nature with your child
When you are out in nature with your child, you should give them enough time to move freely and explore independently. To make the perception of nature even more intense, you can also use small games to stimulate all your child's senses and thus sharpen awareness of the many different life forms in forests, meadows and fields. This helps children learn to perceive nature with open eyes.
Plant memory:
The adults collect various plant parts such as branches from different bushes, flowers and chestnuts. The children look at the collection. Afterwards they can try to find the same plant parts again in the forest.
Clean-up game:
Anyone who has made collecting a passion can try it. Everyone sets off – equipped with rubber gloves, a bag and a stick sharpened at the bottom – in search of all the things that do not belong in the forest. The nice thing about this game is that it doesn't really need a real winner, because if everyone takes part, the forest always wins.
Collecting game:
If you set collecting under a certain theme right at the start of the forest walk, there are surprisingly varied possibilities. Today we might simply collect all the colors: something red, yellow, brown, black… Whoever has the most colors at the end is the winner. That can change tomorrow when something round, smooth, crooked, wet, or scratchy is sought. Some finds are so beautiful that you can later copy them at home or arrange them on a piece of cardboard.
Tree telephone:
Wood resonates – did you know? You tap with your finger or with a stone at one end of a lying tree trunk. The tapping can be heard well at the other end. Sometimes the vibrations can even be felt with the hand.
Pine cone game:
Everyone knows the egg-and-spoon race, but pine cones balanced not on spoons but on forked branches are only found in the forest. If you form two relay teams it becomes especially fun, because most cones fall during the handover. Whoever that happens to has to run the round again.
Touching trees:
The bark of trees differs depending on the species. With their eyes covered, children can feel the texture of the bark and the size of the trunk. Which tree is particularly rough and which has the greatest circumference?
Barefoot park:
With bare feet you can perceive different plants, stones and mosses especially intensely. Lay out a course, e.g. from pine needles, moss, twigs, straw and wet grass. Your child must not see what is in the barefoot path. With eyes covered and bare feet your child now walks step by step through the course and must guess what is under their feet.
Collect forest sounds:
How many different birds can be heard in the forest? Can they also be seen? What sound does the wind make when it moves through the forest and makes the leaves rustle? What does the rain sound like when it falls to the ground in the forest or on the field?
Smell game:
Flowers and herbs are held under everyone's nose to smell. Of course not without first covering the eyes with a cloth or scarf. Whoever sniffs out the most scents correctly is the winner. Of course, to mislead you can occasionally offer a "wrong" thing to smell, e.g. a handful of forest soil or a sausage sandwich from the provisions.
Rolling game:
If you find a sloping meadow on a walk, everyone can roll downhill in a race. Not rolling sideways and veering off course is quite an art.
Ant fun:
Those lucky enough to find an anthill in the forest can have a bit of fun with the little busy creatures. First of all you should just observe and be careful. Ants can bite hard with their strong jaws and secrete a sharp fluid from a gland in the abdomen to defend themselves. For us humans such an ant bite, combined with formic acid, itches considerably. If we look for a violet flower and hold it to the anthill, the little forest policemen immediately attack the supposed intruder and spray the flower with their acid. The flower turns red at the spots hit by drops of acid.
Balancing game:
A long, wide fallen trunk is the only thing you need for this fun. Everyone stands on the trunk at small intervals. The first person now tries to balance along the trunk. The others are obstacles that they can only overcome by clinging to them and hauling themselves past. Everyone helps as best they can, because no one may touch the ground or fall off the trunk. If that happens, the next person is up.
Puddle game:
Anyone wearing rubber boots and muddy clothes can wade through all the puddles without worries. Shallow, small puddles make a different sound when you step into them than deep, muddy ones. You can create waves and clouds of mud, build a channel to a neighboring puddle and, if the puddle is not too huge, jump it clear. Just be kind enough to make sure no one is standing too close. After all, a proper jump splashes the water wildly to all sides.
Hour of the moths:
On a night hike you can attract nocturnal moths with a brightly shining flashlight. Simply hang up a white cloth and shine the lamp on it. On a warm night hundreds of moths gather within a short time. Among them are specimens with very large antennae. These are the males, which with their large antennae can smell the females' pheromones over very long distances. You may also spot bats in the beam of light, taking advantage of the "well-laid table" and going on the hunt.
Recipes from forest and meadow – experiencing nature with your child
Sorrel pancakes with mushrooms
You need:
1 handful of sorrel leaves
Butter for sautéing
1 bowl of mushrooms
1 small onion
20 ml vegetable broth
2 tsp flour
100 ml whipping cream
3 eggs
50 ml milk
Here's how: After you have sliced the sorrel leaves into strips, you can sauté them in butter. In a separate pan sauté the mushrooms, sliced, together with the onion and deglaze with the broth. You can season the mushrooms with salt and pepper. Mix half the flour with the cream, add to the mushrooms and bring briefly to a boil. Stir up an omelette batter from eggs, milk and flour and season with salt and pepper. Heat butter in a pan and pour in half the batter. Before the surface sets, sprinkle the sorrel on top and finish cooking.
Blossom lemonade
Linden and elderflowers bloom between June and July. Diluted with mineral water, elderflower or linden blossom syrup makes a delicious lemonade.
Here's how: Soak 100 g fresh linden or elder blossoms in ½ l water overnight. The next day bring to a boil, strain and boil again with 250 g sugar and 3 g citric acid. Pour hot into clean bottles and seal. Store cool and dark.
Buttered bread, freshly topped
Nowhere do buttered breads taste as good as at a picnic in the countryside. Especially with self-collected wild herbs: daisy flowers, small dandelion leaves and flowers or nettle leaves are as tasty as very young, tender beech leaves or wild garlic that smells of garlic.
Beech leaf salad
With freshly sprouted beech and linden leaves you can prepare a tasty salad with vinegar and oil. Beech leaves taste slightly tart. Linden leaves are very mild and slightly nutty. The best time for this is early May. Shortly after sprouting the leaves increasingly store bitter substances – precisely to prevent them from being too tasty.
Wild garlic pesto
Wild garlic grows in large stands in some deciduous forest areas at the end of March. It is so common there that its leaves can be harvested before flowering without concern to make a tasty wild garlic pesto.
Important:The typical garlicky smell of the leaves is a reliable distinguishing feature from the similar but highly poisonous leaves of autumn crocus and lily of the valley.
Here's how: After thorough washing, the leaves are chopped, filled with sunflower oil and herb salt, grated hazelnuts and Parmesan flakes are added. Tastes very good with pasta or simply on buttered bread.
Sweet woodruff punch
From the end of April sweet woodruff grows in semi-shaded beech woods. The best time to collect is before and during flowering. The harvest should be dried for several hours. During this the leaves form coumarin, which causes the typical sweet woodruff flavor. Two or three stems of sweet woodruff are hung in a liter of apple juice. After one to two hours the flavored juice can be drunk with cold mineral water.
Spring vegetables
The defining taste of this dish is the slightly nutty aroma of coltsfoot leaves. Gather about 1 kg of a leaf mixture from young coltsfoot leaves (the white, cobweb-like felt on the upper surface of the leaf must still be visible), tender nettles and lesser celandine leaves (must be harvested before flowering).
Here's how: The coltsfoot is washed, destemmed and cut into fine strips. The nettles are cooled so they no longer sting, and roughly chopped. Dice the onions, sauté in butter, add some vegetable broth and stir in the vegetable mixture. Mix 1 tbsp flour with 1/8 l cream, add and let thicken briefly. Season the finished vegetables with salt and pepper and sprinkle with roasted sunflower seeds.
