Families: get ready for World Wildlife Day! On 3rd March each year, we celebrate UN World Wildlife Day, an important event that is all about protecting nature’s flora and fauna. At nursery age, little ones are naturally curious and eager to learn more about the world around them. World Wildlife Day is therefore the perfect opportunity to inspire a greater love for nature and wildlife in our young. Exploring the wonders of plants, trees, and the animal kingdom teaches them more about the world and also helps children develop key skills like language, creativity, and empathy. Whether through outdoor play or wildlife-themed activities, engaging with nature’s wildlife can therefore create valuable early learning experiences. With that in mind, today’s post outlines some simple activities that children, including those under five*, can take part in to celebrate World Wildlife Day. We also highlight some of the benefits of nature to children towards the end of the post.
Wildlife-Themed Activities for Nursery Children
Getting outdoors is the best way to see wildlife, especially if your family lives near a park or the countryside. Rambles, picnics, and simple walks are all obvious options and, of course, wildlife sanctuaries are a good choice if you have one nearby. That said, while such outdoor options are amongst the best ways for children to connect with nature, sometimes they’re simply not possible. However, when that’s the case, there are plenty of other possibilities including bringing the wonders of wildlife into your nursery, home, or garden. Here are some engaging, age-appropriate activities that will allow children to take part in World Wildlife Day whatever their circumstances:
Animal Mask Craft
Encourage little ones, under supervision, to make their favourite animal masks using paper plates, paint, and string. Children will love the finished result! What’s more, they are sure to take on the characters of animals once they wear their creations, for example, with a roar from behind a tiger mask. Not only does this activity spark creativity, but it also allows children to role-play, learn about different creatures, and immerse themselves in different imaginary scenarios.
Wildlife Art
Most children naturally take to drawing, so encouraging them to draw wild animals, plants and birds will be a popular suggestion, especially around the time of World Wildlife Day. For example, they could try drawing British mammals like rabbits and squirrels, jungle animals like elephants and tigers, or sea creatures like dolphins and whales. To make it easier, perhaps give them some visual reference to inspire them. They could choose from a variety of media, be it pencils, crayons, paints, or collages — or something entirely different. Playdough or salt dough models are also an option. Children naturally love to create and, once complete, perhaps display their pieces to encourage future progress.
Wildlife Spotting
Wildlife is all around us, even in cities like London. From pigeons, robins, bats and urban foxes to ladybirds, millipedes and ants, there are lots of creatures to see if you know where to look. To help with such activities, check out our free, downloadable wildlife reference sheets. We have one for birds, another for mammals, one for minibeasts and a lovely one for butterflies. They’re all totally free – simply download and print.
Wildlife Story Time
Reading books about wildlife will introduce children to new animals and habitats. Great options for younger under-fives include ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell and ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?’ by Bill Martin Jr. (author) and Eric Carle (illustrator). Also, of course, children and families have the option to tell each other made-up stories. They’re a great way to encourage creative thinking and can be approached in a number of different ways. For example, a parent could tell a story first to give the child an idea of how to approach storytelling, or one family member could start the story and then another could make up the next part and so on. In this way, the story would evolve in surprising and unpredictable ways!
Bird Feeder Fun
Try making some simple bird feeders with your children. There are lots of easy ways to make them as outlined in our dedicated guide, bird feeder ideas for children. Hanging these outside allows children to observe birds up close and learn to recognise different species. What’s more, children will adore it when birds come to visit their creations. That said, teach children to be patient; birds can take a while before they begin to trust anything new.
Animal Yoga
Turn movement into learning by encouraging children to mimic animal movements. For example, they can hop like a frog, prowl like a cat, bounce like a kangaroo, or try to slither like a snake. Such activities will be fun and help them develop strength, coordination, and body awareness.
Nature Scavenger Hunts
Create a simple scavenger hunt using pictures, words, or our free nature hunt sheets to encourage children to find different natural objects like leaves, feathers, and pine cones. This activity builds children’s observation skills, gives them deep insights into nature, and instils in them a better appreciation for the environment. Currently, free reference sheets are available for an autumn nature hunt, a winter nature hunt, and a leaves scavenger hunt. Also check out our Exploring Spring with Under-5s activity idea, which is a similar concept (new reference sheet to follow later this year).
Sensory Nature Play
Fill a tray with natural materials like leaves, pine cones, wheat ears, and sand, and let age-appropriate children explore the different textures. You could even play a game where they close their eyes and try to guess what they’re touching. This hands-on experience aids sensory development and fine motor skills while also encouraging children to appreciate the finer details of natural things.
Wildlife-Themed Songs and Rhymes
Another simple way for under-fives to celebrate World Wildlife Day is to sing songs and rhymes about animals. Examples include 5 Little Ducks Go Swimming One Day, Incy Wincy Spider, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Mary Had a Little Lamb and Old MacDonald Had a Farm. This activity helps reinforce language development and introduces children to different wildlife in a fun and engaging way.
Simple Science with Plants
Engage children with easy science experiments, like planting seeds and watching them grow or observing how water moves through a flower’s stem using food colouring. Such activities are fascinating for children and help them understand basic biological concepts in an interactive way.
The Benefits of Connecting Young Children with Nature
Spending time in nature or learning about wildlife isn’t just fun—it has incredible benefits for early childhood development. To harness such benefits, families can incorporate nature-based learning into children’s routines in a variety of ways. Examples include organising outdoor exploration sessions, setting up small wildlife observation areas, and using nature-themed storytelling to engage the young learners. Connecting children with nature:
- Encourages curiosity and creativity. For example, observing bugs, leaves, or birds encourages children to ask questions and think creatively about the world around them.
- Supports language development. For example, talking about animals, their sounds, and habitats helps build new vocabulary and boosts communication skills.
- Enhances emotional well-being. For example, research shows that spending time in nature reduces stress and promotes calmness, even in young children.
- Teaches empathy and responsibility. For example, caring for plants, feeding birds, or learning about endangered animals helps children understand their needs more deeply and encourages greater kindness towards living things.
- Benefits children academically. For example, in studies, even just a view of green outdoor space has been shown to boost academic performance.
These are just a few of the many benefits that spending time in and around nature has for children. Learn more about the importance of nature and its many benefits to children here.
Make Wildlife a Natural Part of Children’s Lives
Incorporating wildlife into children’s activities doesn’t have to be limited to one day. Encouraging youngsters to notice the birds in the garden, look for insects on nature walks, or watch the changing seasons can gift them a lifelong love of nature. Parents and families can make wildlife observation a regular habit, perhaps by keeping a simple nature sketchbook where children can draw or glue in pictures of what they see, or by creating a wildlife corner at home with books, nature finds, and small child-safe plants. Even setting up a bird-watching station near a window can turn everyday moments into exciting learning opportunities. By celebrating World Wildlife Day, we can inspire the next generation of nature lovers—one little explorer at a time!
Children Love Nature at Little Cedars Nursery, Streatham
At Little Cedars Nursery in Streatham, we love helping children connect more deeply with nature — we understand how important it is to their learning and development. As well as having natural, open, spaces nearby, children also get to enjoy and learn from the nursery’s plant and vegetable area. There, they can nurture plants as well as harvest their own nursery-grown vegetables. They love seeing the fruits (and vegetables!) of their labour and it gives them an enormous feeling of achievement. In addition, such nature-based nursery activities teach children valuable lessons about empathy, responsibility, cause and effect, how their efforts can be rewarded, where food comes from, and the circle of life. It’s all just one small part of the wider early years education that children receive at Little Cedars Nursery.
If you are considering a possible nursery place for your baby or child at Little Cedars Day Nursery, Streatham, please get in touch:
Little Cedars Nursery is a wonderful nursery in Streatham, London SW16. The high-quality setting supports free childcare for eligible children under five and babies as young as 9 months. It is rated as a Good Provider by Ofsted. As well as serving Streatham families, the setting may also be a convenient choice for families from Tooting, Furzedown, Balham, Norbury and Colliers Wood.
* Children, especially the young, should be supervised appropriately by a responsible adult. Also, check out our safety tips for outdoor play.
Transform your living room into a mini adventure zone. If you don’t have existing adventure equipment, perhaps use cushions and make tunnels from blankets draped over furniture. You can also create masking tape ‘routes’ on the floor to mark out an exciting course for little ones to navigate, crawl through, jump over, and balance along. You can add a timer to make it a fun race or include challenges like hopping on one foot or crawling backwards. This is a great way to build gross motor skills while having loads of fun.
Hide small toys or objects* around the house and give your child simple clues or a checklist to find them. This activity encourages problem-solving and keeps them engaged in an exciting mission. Perhaps introduce themes, for example, a pirate treasure hunt with a ‘treasure map’ or a nature scavenger hunt using items like leaves or toy animals.
A few sheets stretched over furniture, with blankets, pillows, and child-safe* LED fairy lights below, can create a cosy hideaway. This can be used for storytelling, imaginative play, or simply a quiet space to relax. Encourage your child to bring their favourite books and stuffed animals inside, to make it their own secret retreat. Den building helps encourage creativity, teamwork, and a sense of independence.
Let your little ones dress up as pirates, fairies, princesses, or superheros and encourage them to act out their own stories. Role-playing helps boost their imagination, creativity, and confidence. Provide props like child-safe* toy swords, wands, or kitchen utensils as pretend play items to expand their stories. Acting out different scenarios enhances communication skills and self-expression.
Swap traditional paintbrushes for sponges, cotton pads, or even cut vegetable fingers or potato ‘stamps’. Using unusual tools to apply paint allows children to explore different textures and get creative with their masterpieces. You can also use things like leaves, or child-safe kitchen utensils, to achieve different effects. Let them mix colours and discover new shades while experimenting with new application techniques.
Help your child make their own salt dough with flour, salt, and water. Moulding and shaping salt dough is a great sensory and motor skill activity. While supervising children for safety, provide cookie cutters, rolling pins, or stamps so they can make different shapes and imprints. You can also add child-safe food colouring for extra sensory fun.
Give your child a mix of stickers, old magazines, and child-safe glue sticks to create their own collage artwork. This is a great way to develop fine motor skills. Set up themes such as Under the Sea or Space Adventure to inspire their creativity. When finished, perhaps display their artwork on the fridge or a wall to encourage pride in their work and nurture their sense of achievement.
A large cardboard box can become a rocket, a car, or a house with just a little imagination. Provide crayons or water-based markers and stickers for decoration and let their creativity take over. You can cut out* windows, and doors, and even make a steering wheel for them. Encourage storytelling by asking them where their box creation will take them.
Closely supervising* children for safety, fill a washing-up bowl with water and let them guess whether different objects will sink or float. This simple science experiment is both educational and fun. You can extend the activity by discussing why some things float and others sink, teaching basic physics in an engaging way.
Dye dry rice or pasta with child-safe food colouring for a colourful, ‘scoop-able’ sensory play activity. Once the dye has dried, provide spoons, cups, and small containers for pouring, scooping, and mixing. This activity helps develop fine motor skills while being visually stimulating.
(While supervising children*): mixing flour with baby oil or vegetable oil will create a soft, mouldable 
Freeze fruit like strawberries, orange segments, or suitably sized small toys in ice. Once you have removed them from the freezer, let children “rescue” the fruit and objects from the ice by using warm water and spoons. This activity promotes patience and problem-solving skills with a scientific twist. You can add child-safe food colouring to the water before freezing for a more visually engaging experience.
Provide ready-made bases, tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings for kids to assemble* their own mini pizzas. Encourage them to arrange toppings into faces, pictures, or patterns, making the activity both fun and delicious.
Applying icing and sprinkles to cookies or biscuits makes for a fun and tasty decorating activity. Let children experiment with different patterns and colour combinations, encouraging creativity and hand-eye coordination.
Let children choose their ingredients and blend* fruit with milk or yoghurt to make delicious and nutritious drinks. If they’re old enough, are closely supervised, and it’s safe for them to do so, let them help with mixing. Once the smoothie mix is ready, use fun paper straws or cups to make it feel like a special treat.
Play your children’s favourite tunes and have a dance-off! A dance party is great for burning off extra energy indoors and it’s immense fun. Children can swirl paper ribbons or strands of coloured tissue paper for added fun and movement when they dance. Dancing helps children stay fit and is also good for honing coordination, balance, and motor skills.
Musical statues and musical chairs are classic games that never fail to bring laughter and excitement to a rainy day. Add fun challenges like dancing in slow motion or pretending to dance like a robot and it’s sure to be a big hit with kids!
Create shakers using rice or dried pasta in bottles — or use pots and pans as drums, perhaps using a wooden spoon. Encourage your child to form their own mini band. Different materials and a range of cardboard boxes or Tupperware-style tubs will allow children to experiment with a variety of possible sounds. It’s very creative!
Watch any infant, toddler or preschooler for just a few minutes and you’ll see that one thing comes naturally to them; play. Indeed, it’s as if they’ve been programmed that way, with the need to play coming instinctively to youngsters, whatever their species. Aside from it simply being great fun, there are a multitude of very good reasons for that — play teaches them an enormous amount about each other, themselves, other living things, cause and effect, and the world around them. It also allows them to learn and fine-tune a whole swathe of new skills as they grow older, play new games, and become more experienced. Add in some careful steering and nurturing during that play from Mum or Dad and they have a real recipe for success. With that in mind, we look today at the key ways in which learning through play profoundly benefits children.
Play and creativity go hand-in-hand. Whether making up a new game, role-playing, constructing, or playing in a den, children will naturally create both scenarios and physical items as part of their play. Such activities teach them how to use their imaginations and to be creative — in a myriad of ways.
Different play activities require different types of movement and physical interaction from children. Indeed, this is a fundamental aspect of play. Whether jumping and running with large movements or carefully constructing with small items like building blocks, children will naturally hone both fine and gross motor skills during play. Such physical skills are essential to their ability to navigate and interact with the world around them and, in the most natural of ways, play is at the heart of enhancing those abilities.
Social skills are also improved through play. Children naturally play with other children and, by so doing, will soon pick up social skills as they begin to better understand social protocols that allow them to succeed both as individuals and in groups. Decent manners, saying please and thank you, cooperation, teamwork and closer bonding are all examples of social skills that can benefit through group play. Other examples include conflict resolution, better sharing, negotiation and communication, which we’ll come to next.
Through all this play, children will be communicating with each other and with any adults that are supervising. As such, play is a great facilitator of communication. Indeed, good communication is essential to most games and, through it, children can cooperate and achieve in ways that will help them in both the short term and into adulthood. Improving communication skills is also a fundamental way to improve success when you think about it.
Mathematics is often embedded into games and pastimes. Children can learn, for example, about adding, subtracting, multiplication and division through games. Even dividing group play into teams requires some fundamental maths to ensure teams are equal in size. Building towers out of blocks is another great example where children can count how many blocks they can stack into a tower before it falls over. They can try to beat their own maximum, or even compete against one another to see who can use the most blocks.
Play comes in a vast array of different forms, shapes, and sizes. Through so doing, it introduces children to countless scenarios, situations, and challenges. By immersing children into such widely differing environments, they learn huge amounts about the world around them, and everything within it. Whether it’s newfound knowledge about a new object, material, place, culture, activity, or something else, play is an amazing conduit to new knowledge and the need to learn new skills. Play is the ultimate educator and the incredible thing is that children may be unaware that they’re learning — they’re having too much fun!
Both children and adults have a natural affinity with music. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures that just about everyone seems to enjoy in one way or another. Children will naturally start to move, dance, join in or even learn songs that they hear — such reactions seem instinctive to them. Learning to play a musical instrument is therefore a natural next step for them. Indeed, it’s one that parents, guardians and carers should consider encouraging, particularly given how beneficial such an endeavour will be to their child. Learning to play a musical instrument is not simply fun; it profoundly benefits children’s learning and development. With that in mind, we take a look today at the incredible array of benefits that learning a musical instrument poses for children, including under-fives.
Studies have also shown that learning an instrument or learning how to read music develops the left side of the brain. This area is responsible for processing language and reasoning. Hand-eye coordination skills are also aided when learning to play a musical instrument and reading music. As children’s playing and reading become more advanced, it requires the brain to work at a range of speeds, which is also great exercise for the brain.
Music gives children a really flexible way of expressing themselves. For instance, the way they choose to bang on a drum, shake a tambourine or strum a guitar can allow them to show happiness, anger, frustration, calmness and many other emotions. Playing a musical instrument gives them a real freedom of expression, even at a very young age. Then, if they reach a point where they are able to make up their own melodies and arrangements, music can become an almost immeasurably powerful tool for self-expression and communication.
Although playing an instrument is creative, music and maths are very much intertwined. Beats, rhythms and scales are all based on maths and children naturally need to work out some maths in order to understand the song and any sheet music. This will naturally help them to better grasp mathematics and illustrate a real-world example of how it underlies many things.
Whether your child is listening to a tutor, teacher, friend or relative, listening skills are very important. Music is a natural way to encourage listening and that’s even more true when children learn to play music themselves. Doing so in their early years will help them to follow instructions, listen out for smaller details as well as the bigger picture. Working together on a piece of music is also a fantastic way to hone group listening skills and teamwork and to encourage collaboration.
Indeed, music helps to support all 7 focus areas of 
When children master a song, no matter how basic, they get an enormous sense of achievement and even more so if they are praised by adults and peers. Such praise also encourages the child to progress further, of course. Boosting self-esteem and self-confidence in their early years is important for their future wellbeing too. Achieving something through learning, patience and practising regularly also teaches them that persistence and effort will help them overcome challenges. That’s a very important lesson in life.
Little ones can first practise keeping in time to music or a beat that an adult is demonstrating, perhaps. Maracas are also good starter instruments although, again, anything that makes a shaking sound can be made at home at zero cost. For instance using an empty carton or plastic container securely sealed with dried rice, pasta or lentils inside. Once they get the hang of such percussive or shaker-style instruments, you can consider transitioning them to more advanced instruments like recorders, ocarinas, keyboards, stringed instruments and so on. Often, children will be more than willing to give such instruments a try and some encouragement and guidance from knowledgeable adults or older children will always be helpful. And, who knows, they could end up being maestros and even stars in the making!
It’s amazing how much nature benefits children, particularly in their early years when they’re finding out about the world around them — and also learning about themselves. There have been many studies into the importance of nature, to youngsters in particular, and the studies all reach a similar conclusion — nature is incredibly important and beneficial to children. Today we’ll explore the topic and learn why children should regularly access the natural world.
Stress is also reduced on both a mental and physiological level through exposure to a natural environment. In studies, stress hormone and blood pressure levels both improved after exposure to nature, helping children both physically and emotionally. Nature seems to be a great way to recharge children’s batteries and lower stress and anxiety, as well as improving attention, engagement and academic performance. That includes improvements in important skills like reading, writing and mathematics.
Improved social skills and even wider circles of friends due to the opportunities offered through outdoor play and adventure.
The new skills, knowledge and freedom that nature gives children also helps them to become more self-confident and independent individuals.
Even in built-up cities like London, immersion in nature is possible via gardens, parks, commons or, if you’re lucky to have them near you, nature reserves and nature gardens. There are many of these dotted around London, including 
If you’re searching for 
Sensory Play Ideas for Babies
• Paper. Babies will love the feeling of scrunching up paper and will notice the sound as well as the contoured feel of their new creation. They may need a demonstration to get started, though. They’ll start to comprehend the concept that something in one form, like a pristine, wafer-thin sheet of paper, can be made into something completely different — in this case, perhaps a simple ‘ball’ of scrunched-up paper. Even 
• Different objects & materials: babies will enjoy playing and learning about the properties, touch, feel and sound of different objects and materials. For example, (safe) wooden utensils, water in a closed beaker or bottle or small plastic or card boxes that they tap like a drum, or try to stack into a ‘wall’ — and so on. They’ll learn about physical properties of each along the way, including sounds, textures, touch and, if they include some carefully chosen food items, taste. It’s amazing what fun babies will have with such simple items — often learning far more from these than from purchased toys.
• The natural world: babies also greatly enjoy the simple pleasures offered by the natural world. A breeze on their faces may greatly intrigue them, even more so when they see leaves rustling and moving a little on the ground. The feel and texture of grass on the lawn or the sight of sunlight dappling through the trees or reflecting off puddles can be wondrous to them. Under close supervision, getting to know the textures, hues and smells of safe, natural objects outdoors can also be a source of sensory discovery.
• Hand & foot prints: preschoolers will never be bored with smothering their hands or feet in coloured paints, then making prints on paper or card. Footprints and handprints can be random or used to make images or patterns. This process is both creative and a sensory experience for them as the cold paint squelches between fingers or toes. They’ll learn so much including about mixing pigments, creating images from simple printed shapes, about the concept of paint eventually drying to form something semi-permanent and about different textures being formed, depending on the consistency of the paint. We take these discoveries for granted as adults, but we would originally have had to learn about them during our early, formative years.
• Food creativity: toddlers can also take playing with food to the next level by introducing the concept of making images out of things like fruit- or vegetable-based sauces, cream or yogurt. Whole pictures can be made of food, using the hands, for example using broccoli for ‘trees’, peas for grassy areas and so on. The whole thing can smell great and even be tasted! Playing, hands-on, with food in this way can be fun and creative but also help children learn to accept new foods and tastes into their diets. However, care needs to be taken because proper mealtimes require good manners and children need to understand that food is not usually for playing with.
• Sensory sand: it’s very rare for little ones to dislike playing with sand, which allows youngsters to get hands-on creatively. They can learn about the unique and varying textures, consistencies and properties of sand, depending on how much moisture it contains. Dry sand has its own unique set of properties, acting and feeling almost like a powder. Very runny, wet sand is great fun as it can be used to run through the hands and ‘set’ into pointy mountain shapes that look quite magical. Or, when less water is added, sand can be fashioned into shapes and, of course, “castles”, using the hands or by filling buckets, hollow vessels, or tubs. Children can also press their hands and feet into level, damp sand in a sandpit or tray, to make impressions and patterns. It feels great too and is an almost essential part of childhood. Young children learn so much from this stimulating, multi-sensory type of play.
• Playing with dough: whether bought or home-made, dough is always a big hit with young children. It can be fashioned with the hands into shapes, characters, animals and mini-sculptures. Using food colouring in dough also allows children to discover more about mixing pigments. Salt dough can also be baked (under the close supervision of an adult) so that it hardens into more permanent creations. Many types of dough even smell great too! What’s more, it can even lead to a bigger interest in cooking real, edible dough and other baked foods when they’re a little older.
• A sensory garden. We’ve left perhaps the best until last. Making a sensory garden area with, or for, little ones will give them a magical experience. There are so many materials that can be used in the construction of sensory gardens, including soil, earth, pea shingle, tree bark, moss and so on. Plants themselves will also add to the fascinating mixture of textures, colours and even smells found within a sensory garden. It can be as small or large as you have room for and can even be achieved in containers, pots or on balconies for those who do not have gardens. It can take many forms so it’s design also gives children a wonderful creative opportunity. Sensory gardens are a complete feast for the senses for young children — adults too — encompassing touch (e.g. the textures of materials, moss and plants), smell (why not include some herbs — these smell wonderful and can be tasted too), potentially sound (crunchy gravel, rustling leaves etc.), sight (aesthetics, colour etc.) and will also give children ample opportunity to improve balance and body awareness as they construct and create in this unique space.
Sensory play is incredibly important for under-fives. Babies and young children benefit enormously when their play activities stimulate the senses and in this article we’ll explore those benefits in some detail.
activities that involve touch, where babies and children can acquaint themselves with the feelings of temperature, softness, hardness, pressure, vibration, roughness, smoothness etc.;
The Benefits of Sensory Play
Babies and children are, of course, given a huge variety of sensory-based play opportunities at 