Let’s celebrate nature for World Environment Day

The United Nations World Environment Day takes place every year on 5^th June. It’s the perfect occasion to encourage children to think about why we love the world around us and what we can do to care for it.

This year, World Environment Day is all about biodiversity and making time for nature. So we’ve put together some ideas for fun outdoor activities you could do together with your little one. Your Co-op Little Pioneers nurseries are busy celebrating World Environment Day too. We’re big on caring for the world, it’s one of our core values and why we worked hard to achieve the Silver Eco-Schools England Award, which all our nurseries take part in – read on to find out more!

It’s time for nature

Spending time outside with your child can help them learn to love the great outdoors. Here are some things you could do together:  

Build a bug hotel:

Bug hotels provide a home for lots of insects all year round. And insects are a really important part of our ecosystem! You can easily create a bug hotel using items from your garden or a nearby park. Young children will enjoy watching the different insects using the hotel, which could include ladybirds, slugs, spiders and woodlice. If you leave bigger spaces within your hotel you may also attract hedgehogs or frogs.

You will need materials such as: old logs, bark, pinecones, sand, soil, bamboo canes, twigs, dried hollow plant stems, bits of wood, straw, moss, dry leaves, woodchips, old terracotta pots, old roof tiles, bricks with hold in, roofing felt.

Firstly, create a frame for your bug hotel, to keep all the different parts together. Fill up the lower part with larger objects like pipes, pots and roof tiles. As you continue to fill up the layers of the bug hotel add smaller objects like pinecones, bamboo canes, straw and bark.  Keep going until you are happy that the bug hotel is full. Don’t forget to put a roof on top to keep the hotel dry! Roofing felt works well for this. Then all you need to do it wait. The new residents are sure to move in quite quickly!

Go on a scavenger hunt:

The world around us is full of wonders – all you need to do is look for them! A scavenger hunt is the perfect opportunity to set your child some challenges and discover nature together. Whilst on your daily walk or trip to the park, take along this checklist – how many can you tick off?

• Find something that makes a crunch sound

• Find something that smells good

• Find a worm

• Find a spider web

• Find something that is smooth

• Find something that is rough

• Find a feather

• Find a pine cone

• Find something long

• Find something short

• Find something colourful

• Find the biggest tree

• Find 3 of the same thing

• Find a treasure!

Grow your own food:

Children love to watch plants grow – and growing your own vegetables is a great way to teach them about where food comes from and encourage them to enjoy eating their greens! Check out our article Fun food growing activities to try at home for more details.

Putting the environment first

At Your Co-op Little Pioneers, we’re proud of our core values which guide us in everything we do: democracy, openness, equality and social responsibility. At the heart of social responsibility is the environment – we want to bring about positive change for our planet.

Our nurseries and teams are led by our values and we share them with our children too. Our Little Pioneers characters bring these principles to life and encourage little ones to make their own choices, express their feelings and make a difference in the world. Ebo is one of the Little Pioneers and he believes that we all have a responsibility to look after each other and the world.

Ebo is our champion for the Eco-Schools programme, a child-led, global campaign that teaches children to protect the environment. All of our nurseries are taking part, and all have achieved the Bronze and Silver Awards (apart from our three newest nurseries in Sunderland, but they won’t be far behind!). That means they have an eco-committee made up of our pre-schoolers. Our children have completed an environmental review covering topics such as energy, litter and water, and they have created an action plan with goals such as increasing recycling. It also means that key environmental themes are covered in our learning and we get parents, carers and the wider community involved too. We’re all working hard to reach the final award: the Green Flag! A few of our nurseries are already flying their Green Flags.

The brilliant thing about Eco-Schools is that our children are at the heart of the decision-making for the impact their programme will have on both the nursery and the local community.

Why not find out more about Eco-Schools and how we’re making our nurseries as environmentally friendly as they can be.

Join in and share your nature activities with us!

We’d love to see what you get up to this World Environment Day. Why not take some photos and share them via our Facebook page? Don’t forget to add the hashtags: #WorldEnvironmentDay and #ForNature. Look out for posts from our nurseries too!

If you’d like to find out more about our environmental values or your local nursery, just get in touch.