Free gifts from nature

I suppose one would think of foraging and what you can eat for free from the countryside around us.  This is a topic which does interest me and which I will return to, but for today my subject is entertaining children for free.  Children are so tuned in to the commercial world that we now live in that they know exactly which toys are the latest fashion, are aware of pocket money and piggy banks, and as they get older are more difficult to persuade to come on a good old-fashioned walk in the country.

We spent the weekend in Devon with my husband's aunt and uncle where we always look forward to a good country break with lots of walks and fun.  On our first day there, my husband took centre stage in entertaining the children, by showing them how to build a dam on the beach and re-direct the stream of water flowing back into the sea.  All three children seemed to devise their own tasks with my daughter distributing sand, my eldest son redirecting the rivulets of water and my second son building the dam - they had such a lovely afternoon, completed by an ice-cream on the beach!

Chris took them rock pooling as well where we found many crabs of all sizes, a shrimp, anemones and again they were all entertained for free.  The children found it so satisfying to help Daddy find the crabs and then collect them in their nets to deposit into the buckets of water.  After some time of splashing in puddles and collecting beautiful shells, we put the sea creatures back and said goodbye before setting off back for a well-earned lunch!

Today, I defeated the world of commerce by successfully entertaining my children with a walk on a tow-path in Devon.  What made me proud was that all I did was pass down secrets of nature that my Mum and Granny had shown me.  Wild grasses can be transformed into catapaults and confetti and the possibility of finding a four-leaved clover can occupy a six year old for at least half an hour.  Nature became a fun and magical world that I think beats computer games and football cards any day!  Our last activity was to head to the dunes by the beach where the boys decided to collect large pebbles and find dips in the sand dunes, so they could sit on their (pebble) dragon eggs and wait for them to hatch, while my daughter had great fun chasing waves and throwing stones into the sea.

I just loved watching them choosing their own games in the natural environment, all having fun for free and learning so much at the same time.  At the end of each activity we had to coax the children back home with the lure of food - otherwise they would have stayed there for hours!