We love going hiking and being outside with our boys. These Nature Explorer Kits will make nature really come alive for them.
Nature Explorer Kits
Every Summer my entire family plans a family get-away and this year I am in charge of the planning, food and activities. We typically find a place where we can spend a good deal of time outside in nature and I found a really fun hike that we are planning on doing with the kids. We have quite a few smaller kids in our extended family and I was trying to come up with an idea that would make our hikes more entertaining for them and to help them really get involved with nature. I came up with the idea of putting together some Nature Explorer Kits that would make it fun for the kids to explore the plants, bugs and animals we might come in contact with.
Oriental Trading provided many of the items I needed for these kits for me to review. All opinions are 100% my own. I just love all of the products that we are including in our kits.
Items included:
- Camouflage Backpacks
- Going Buggy Bug Tongs
- Going Buggy Magnifiers
- My Bug Jar Craft Kit
- Animal Print Stationary
- DIY Paper Binoculars
- 3 in 1 Whistle, Compass, Flashlight
- Camouflage Drawstring Bags
- Fall Friends Shapes stickers
- Water bottles
- Snacks
First I know how much my boys love bugs and being a Biology teacher myself I actually don’t mind when they go exploring for creepy crawly things as long as they aren’t spider. 😉 We made these fun Bug Jars using a Bug Jar Craft Kit for them to keep some of their bug finds in for observation. The kits come with all of the supplies needed to make these, minus glue. We found that glue dots worked out the best for keeping the pieces on the jars. I loved that the lids came with holes already punched. I have memories of hammering a screwdriver into the lid of baby jars as a kid to make the holes and this was a lot easier. And plus they are cute!
We also decorated the Paper Binoculars with marker and the Fall Friends shapes stickers. I loved those stickers because they were all items we would find in nature such as squirrels, acorns, leaves, etc. They worked perfectly! I was really surprised that the binoculars really worked. They are the perfect addition to our kits.
Then we added our water bottles and snacks to the drawstring bag and used the backpacks to hold it all. Then it was off on an adventure. We are visiting Grandma and Grandpa for the week and since they live on a farm, there is a lot to explore. We thought we’d try out our Explorer Kits before heading out on our camping trip next week.
My boys had lots of fun looking for birds in the big trees. They used their notebooks and pencils to draw pictures of the birds they saw. They also had their compass/whistle/light that they used to “lead” us around the farm. I love including the whistle because when we do go camping I know it is easy for kids to wander off without parents noticing and these can also give us some peace of mind when we are out in the mountains.
We also searched the garden for bugs and found lots of ladybugs to observe.
I love that the bug tongs make it so the kids can catch bugs without squishing them. They were great for little hands and worked perfectly. We also found lots of potato bugs (rolly-pollys).
My 2-year-old just loved looking at everything through his magnifying glass. He carried it the entire time and would let us know if he spotted a bug. 🙂
We ended up with several bugs to observe and learn about. We also saw a lot of birds and plants up close with our binoculars and magnifiers. We can’t wait to use our kits when we are up in the mountains with our cousins.
(And just for the record, we observed the bugs for awhile and then released them so no bugs were hurt in the making of this blog post. 😉 )
This week on Summer Survival for Moms of Boys we are sharing tips and tricks for camping with boys. These Explorer Kits are the first for our camping theme so make sure to check out the other posts as they come in this week: Summer Survival for Moms of Boys.
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