Encouraging wildlife to your garden is great when you have children. Not only is it good for helping wildlife by providing them with a habitat but young children particularly are fascinated by spotting wildlife. There are also many opportunities for learning about wildlife too as well as fun crafts and other outdoor activities for children.
Here are some ideas for things you can add to your garden this spring. Some of them are links to other bloggers tutorials for activities that your kids will love and there is also a review of a couple of lovely items we have been sent to review.
Ideas for encouraging wildlife to your garden with kids
Make bird feeders
We’ve made bird feeders a couple of times now and it’s always a fun activity to do with children and as a bonus, they enjoy watching the birds in our garden. There are many different ways to make simple bird feeders. From simple hoop cereal threaded onto pipe cleaners to pine cone feeders. Juice carton bird feeder from Happiness is homemade Biscuit cutter bird feeders from Messy Little Monster
Add a birdhouse
You can buy lots of birdboxes available to buy or perhaps you’d prefer to make your own using this great tutorial from Rainy day mum.
Add a ladybird house or butterfly biome
We were sent this beautiful ladybird house and butterfly biome recently from Find me a gift. They are lovely additions to our garden and they will attract some of my favourite insects. The ladybird house is currently in the sale for £8.49, a steal I’m sure you’ll agree.
You might have guessed we love ladybirds so this is a lovely addition to our garden. It is made from sustainably grown birch and oak with a hollow centre filled with natural materials. Ladybirds are a great addition to your garden as they are a natural predator of aphids and greenflies that might be attacking your roses or similar.
The butterfly biome is again in the sale on Find me a gift for £18.99. This butterfly house is dual purpose. In the summer it can be left open and used as a feeder and in the winter you can shut the front and butterflies, moths and other insects may use it to shelter from the wind. A packet of wildflower seeds that butterflies love and a guide to common UK butterflies is also included in the box. I can’t wait to see if any butterflies are attracted to this summer and I know my girls will love it.
Find out How to Create a Butterfly Garden here.
Plant the right kind of plants to encourage wildlife
Adding the right kind of plants can really help with encouraging wildlife to your garden. If you want to know what to plant to encourage ladybirds then read this post from Rainy day mum. For butterflies, read this one from Megan Zeni. If you want to encourage bees then you will find lots of ideas in this list from the RHS.
You can make these DIY garden markers so you don’t forget what you have planted where.
Add a bird feeder
Over the winter particularly birds need a helping hand so why not add a bird feeder to your garden. You can pick them up pretty cheap but you could also make one with the kids. I have a post with 12 different Bird feeders for children to make.
Make a bug hotel
We often see bug hotels while out and about and I know they have one in the outdoor area at my eldest’s school. I think when my toddler is a little older we might add one to our garden. I found a great tutorial from The gingerbread house that I think we will follow when we get around to making one. This one from Red Ted Art is great if you are looking for something a little simpler or smaller. I hope I have inspired you to get the kids involved in encouraging wildlife to your garden. I’d love to hear in the comments how you are doing this.
Where to next:
Find more outdoor preschool learning activities here.
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What lovely post!! Thank you so much for including some of our projects in it too! Will add it to my Tailwind Schedule!
Thank you. I’m glad you like the post enough to pin it.
Our garden is quite bare at the moment. But we have great plans to introduce sunflowers, bird feeders and nesting boxes to help us attract more wildlife
We are growing sunflowers too.
My boys would really love the ladybird house! How cute ? x x
I bet they would.
Love these ideas, we have started putting up bird boxes but want to do an insect house too x
Thanks. love that you are already doing these ideas.
It’s lovely to get kids involved with nature and gardening at an early age. Great fun as well as educational too.
Aw ive just ordered my son a kit very similar he loves the outdoors and birds and bugs.
Really lovely ideas, nice post! x #KidsandKreativity
These are great ways in which to encourage wildlife into the garden #KidsandKreativity
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This is brilliant! We are just getting rid of our rock landscaping and putting in grass so our 18 month old can play outside! These are perfect additions to our new outdoor space!
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Aww that’s such a cute idea. My daughter would love a bird feeder in our garden! #BloggerPinParty
Great post, I think it’s so important to encourage wildlife into your garden, and great fun too! Thanks for joining in with #KidsandKreativity, I hope you come back next time x