Ways to discover joy of nature this summer

I ALWAYS look forward to the school summer holidays. Hopefully I will see more of the younger members of my family and perhaps we can do some enjoyable low-key activities together.

Thinking about this, I came up with a list of fun, green suggestions for the summer holidays.

Here are some you might like to try (with or without children).

Why not turn your garden into a haven for wildlife? It is easier than you think, you can do it by:

l Planting some native flowers — a mini meadow in a pot. They do better on poor soil, so you can use any rough ground.

l Make a beetle bucket or a beetle bank. Dig a hole in the ground the size of a bucket, place large stones in the bottom, some upright logs then tip in bark chips or dry leaves leaving about 10cm around the top. Fill up with some soil from the excavation and place a couple of small logs on top to tempt your beetles. For more information, visit wildaboutgardens.org.uk

l Allow some grass to grow very long to make a butterfly belt — somewhere for them to lay their eggs.

l Make a bee box for solitary bees or a bug hotel for a mixture of invertebrates.

l Make a hoverfly lagoon. Hoverflies are some of the best pollinators we have, second to solitary bees. There are more than 280 different species of hoverflies in the UK. Hoverfly lagoons are designed for those that have an aquatic larval stage. Again, for very clear instructions for making a simple hoverfly lagoon, visit wildaboutgardens.org.uk

l If you and yours like playing with mud, you could have a go at making bee bricks (cob bricks) from clay, sand, straw and water.

Go on an insect safari. There are up to 8,000 different species of insects in the average garden. How many can you find? A good magnifying glass and a clear insect guide would help with this count.

Hold a “green garden party” for your friends and neighbours. Try to make it plastic-free.

l Make bunting out of old magazines stapled to string. Or being really creative, print on to triangles of newspaper. (Potato printing, or leaves/stick printing.)

l Invent some games to play — a scavenger hunt, or a nature version of hunt the thimble.

l A fun outdoor activity is painting stones then hiding them for your guests to find.

l If it is a sunny day you could have a “Who can make the best hat out of a sheet of newspaper?” competition.

Before the party, you could label some of your plants and include information about the creatures that benefit from them. (Red valerian is favoured by the hummingbird hawk-moth for example.)

Plant some vegetables — quick-growing salads are good. Then let your youngsters design a sandwich using some of their homegrown produce. They will think it’s the best sandwich they’ve ever eaten!

Or have a go at growing sprouting seeds in a jar (alfalfa, mung beans etc). They will be ready to eat in a few days and extremely nutritious — you could add a few organic radish seeds to them to spice up the flavour.

Make a “zine” — a mini booklet on any inspiring subject using one sheet of A4 paper folded to make eight pages. Did you see the bee zines at the Bee Friendly Henley stall? They are very popular for small hands.

Stay up late and go on a bat walk.

Make a moth trap and identify the visitors to your patch.

Make a bat box.

Become a citizen scientist by:

l Doing the flower-insect timed count, which runs to September 30. This is a national survey of pollinating insects run by the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme. For more information, visit ukpoms.org.uk

l Join the big butterfly count between Friday, July 18 to Sunday, August 10, for 15 minutes only. Instructions and lovely identification sheets are available on bigbutterfly
count.butterfly-conservation.org

Do you have a pond? Do some gentle pond dipping to identify what life your pond is supporting.

Come to the play day in the park on July 30 and do some nature counting with Greener Henley.

Hold a beetle drive with your friends. All you need is paper, pencils and a dice. Or if you want more of a challenge make the pieces out of cardboard and make up a beetle as you play the game.

Remember beetles are insects and have six legs, two wings, two antennae, two eyes as well as a body and a head. So you need to make enough body parts to make one beetle each. Have a look at Buglife.org.uk for activities to do with children. You can also make your own narrow-headed ant and an ant mask.

Collect flower seeds on a sunny day and make seed bombs to give away.

The Woodland Trust has good instructions on how to make a wormery. Easily achieved in a big jar and interesting to watch how the worms mix up the soil.

Turn your garden into a wildlife park then invite a granny around to visit it. This would involve:

l Making signs with pictures of the bugs in your garden.

l Making up a nature trail for them to do.

l Making a guidebook about all the nature in your garden.

Plant a tree and keep it watered. If you have a young sapling put it in a big pot first, ready for planting out in the winter months. (Join Greener Henley’s trees group.)

Wet day? Learn to knit and knit a bee!

Do you like dragonflies? How about making one out of pipe cleaners, two beads for eyes and card wings. There are some great dragonfly activities here at british-dragonflies.org.uk-schools+kids

Have you done Greener Henley’s nature trail along Coldbath Stream at Mill Meadows? Pick up a leaflet from the town hall or the River & Rowing Museum.

If you go to the River & Rowing Museum, make sure you look at the school’s exhibition in the corridor between the two galleries. This is a combination of art and poetry with work submitted for the Greener Henley environmental science challenge on the river as habitat. Super work by local schools and the Pathways Conservation group at The Henley College.

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IT was lovely to see so many families enjoying the Big Green Festival, part of Great Big Green Week, perhaps you visited and made a “pledge for the planet” at the Pledge Café, changing one thing you do for a better choice.

We had a list of suggestions to choose from, covering all aspects of modern-day life.

It was good to read the article about the “swap spot” (Standard, June 27) happening every Friday morning at Trinity Church. What a fantastic opportunity for parents of those aged up to six to be able to swap their children’s clothes and other items.

Babies and children grow so fast they hardly ever wear out their clothes, so what a good idea to share them with others. This is much better than sending unwanted things to landfill.

It is also brilliant that we have the new Henley Repair Café, which is obviously in high demand going by the queues of people outside the building in June. Well done everyone involved in that enterprise.