Kids, learn about wildlife and have some fun outdoors!

You kids are the future. Our wildlife needs you to care about them. Everyone has to help. I would hate to think the only place we will see animals like bears, foxes, and bobcats is in a cage in a zoo. Hey, we really like zoos, but we need free roaming animals too.

We hope you learn a lot here and have fun. Getting outdoors is healthy! Hiking, walking, fishing and wildlife watching will make you strong and believe it or not smarter. Smarter how you ask? Well, because the more creatures you see, the more you will want to learn about them, and learning makes everybody smarter! So, when you’re done looking around this section be sure to check out the rest of our site to learn even more.

Science Fair Projects & Ideas

So, are you here looking for a fun and easy science project. Hoping to find a free science project? Well you are on the right path now. Check out two of our favorite projects, building an earthworm bed and making a flower and plant press. You can do both of these mostly by yourself and with little to no money needed. You’ll get ideas and suggestions on how to have these two wild projects turn into more projects for school and fun. But just to give you an idea before you go there, keep reading to learn a little more first.

Earthworm Bed

Building an earthworm bed is a fun project. Feeding the worms can be fun too. Worms eat almost any kitchen leftovers except for meat and dairy projects. They really like coffee grounds, egg shells and potato peelings. You could almost consider them pets once you have them in a home. After all you‘ll be feeding and taking care of them, and that‘s what having a pet is all about. If you live in a place where you aren’t allowed to have regular pets like cats and dogs, with your parents permission, worms could be the right pets for you. Does anybody else you know have pet worms? Do you already have a pet? Maybe a pet turtle or lizard that likes worms? Well now you can give him (or her) a treat.

Did you know worms help in the garden and yard? Worms help aerate the soil. Aerate means helping get air into the soil. Worms also break down the kitchen waste you feed them leaving behind a good thing called compost. Compost is rich, black gold that garden plants, like veggies, love. Worm compost is very high in nutrients that plants need. So if you choose to make your own kids garden another great science project idea coming soon in Specialty Gardens, you’ll want to have the worms around for that too.

Ok, to learn how, go to earthworm bed

Fishing Fun

Maybe you really like fishing like the girl pictured below does and are lucky enough to have someone to take you fishing sometimes. Well, when you are finished with the earthworm project, you will always have fish bait ready to go. We know when we were kids, we hated wasting time going to the bait store, we just wanted to start fishing.

Fishing also provides you a lot of opportunities to see even more wildlife. Like frogs, turtles, ducks or maybe even a beaver or muskrat, since these are all found near water. So if you can, take a camera along, because when you're in the great outdoors you never know what wildlife you might see.

If you do choose to make the plant and flower press you'll be amazed at all the projects you can do. Pressed flowers can be used to accent stuff like picture frames by carefully applying decoupage or thinly watered down white glue, (Elmer’s) over them onto the frame. We like decoupage best for these projects. Decoupage is sold at most discount and dollars stores. It dries clear. You put it on with a paint brush. Flat frames works best, but others will work too.

You can also use the pretty flowers, who have kept most of their color, for making laminated book marks & Christmas ornaments, or even frame them for you room. You can get easy do at home laminate sheets at the discount and crafts stores too. You could even decorate you diary, journals or book covers with them using the decoupage method.

Also find ways to use pressed plants in collages and dioramas for school projects. We talk about collages and dioramas more below.

Okay, boys, think you wouldn’t like pressing flowers? Well, you might be surprised to know, that you can create some really neat things with pressed flowers and plants. You could make a scrapbook of plants and flowers in your yard or state, which could count as a whole different science project.

Such a scrapbook might even count towards a future social studies or history project if you did it by a state or my town.

Put pressed flowers in samll round frames to use as coasters under your drinks or decoupage a sample onto a smooth large rock for a paperweight.

Ok, ready to learn how to make that flower press, go to Flower Press

Gift Ideas

How about making some one of the things above as gifts for your parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters or friends. We know our parents and grandparents always liked the gifts we made ourselves. Some of our best presents were ones our kids made for us. We’ll bet once you try one of these projects, you’ll think of a lot more really cool ways to use them. You know what's the most fun part? Collecting all those flowers and plants is the best part. Why? Because, like going fishing, you never know what wildlife you might see while gathering your project supplies.

Great Christmas Projects

Get ready for Christmas time. We have a recipe for making nature friendly Christmas ornaments for the tree in the. This is an easy craft kids can do and lots of fun too!!.

It is basically a dough that acts like modeling clay. You can cut out designs with a cookie cutter or free hand the dough into anything you like. You can mold and shape it just like real clay. You can make your favorite wildlife animals for your tree.

When you are all done making your ornaments, you’ll need to see the instructions on drying them. Once they are done drying, you can paint them, put glitter on them or even use magic markers to decorate them. When Christmas is over, you can choose to save them for next year or use them as mini wildlife feeders (if you used non toxic paints and markers and NO glitter). There is a trick to keeping them in storage, so be sure read that part of the recipe too.

Go to Christmas Ornament Recipe

Another fun after Christmas project is redecorating the tree and placing it outside for the birds and other wildlife. Have you ever strung popcorn for your tree? If not, then consider doing it this year, afterwards, for the birds. It’s really easy and fun and you can snack on the popcorn as you work. You can also make hanging fruit ornaments for the birds. All this and more for Christmas for the birds is covered in the Plans & Tips section.

Nighttime Activities

Some of the best times outdoors is at night. At night you may see wildlife, such as raccoons, opossums, armadillos, bats, owls and flying squirrels. Look and listen. You’ll definitely hear wildlife, an owls hoot, insects buzzing and singing in the summer, or you may even hear a creature scurrying just out of sight.

A really cool way to see spiders at night is to hold a flashlight on top of your head and slowly scan the ground and bushes. You will see little green or red eyes reflecting back, that‘s the spiders. Don‘t laugh until you‘ve tried it, it really works! Try it and keep walking towards the eyes, you‘ll find the spider. It doesn‘t work as good to hold the light any other way. So get silly and put the flashlight on your head and look for spiders just because you can.

**Please know that shining lights at other wildlife isn‘t really nice and in some places is illegal, especially at whitetail deer. It‘s called harassing wildlife. We know you wouldn‘t do that, you like wildlife, so just steal a peek if you hear something, don‘t keep the light shining on anything other than spiders ( they don't seem to mind) or your feet.

We enjoy sitting around a campfire at night here at our home, especially in winter. If you have a big yard, why not ask your parents about building a campfire pit somewhere for your family to enjoy. All you need to do is make a shallow hole, a little wider than a car tire and line the otside of the hole with rocks. Now you have a fire pit. You can now have marshmallow and wiener roast at home. This is a great way to enjoy the sounds of wildlife and for watching stars. Who says you have to go camping to have a campfire? Be sure to get your parents permission and NEVER start a fire by yourself!!!!

While you are outside look up. If you are outside the city lights you can see the milky way, a celestial galaxy we are a part of here on earth. At different times of years you can make out various the constellations, which are names given to groups of stars, for example, if you see three bright stars in a straight line in the winter in the USA, you are probably seeing Orion‘s belt. We challenge you to learn more about the constellation Orion and others, like the Big and Little Dippers.

If you check online you can even find when the space shuttle is close enough to see at night and when meteor showers will occur. Meteor showers are showers of falling stars, well the stars aren’t really falling, it’s really a space dust trail earth is passing through or close to, but it looks like hundreds of falling stars. If you have never seen a meteor shower, you need to check the date of the next one and try to sweet talk an adult into taking you out to a park away from the lights.

Many places have astronomy (studying of the stars and planets) clubs who set up at schools and parks and will let you look into their telescopes. That is awesome.

If you are in Georgia, check out the Charlie Elliot Wildlife Center, as they do this often in the winter time. Best of all, it’s free and the people there will teach you a bunch about the night sky.

Kids love a veggie garden. (See the picture above) Do your parents or grandparents have a garden? If so, ask them if you can have a space to call your own. If they don’t, ask if you can make a small garden space in the yard or maybe put a container or two on the deck or patio. We really think you will like growing your own flowers, veggies or maybe even seem seasoning herbs, like oregano for pizza and spaghetti. Fresh herbs are the best in foods. Whoever does the cooking at your house would probably like this too.

Gardening isn’t really hard and you’ll get to see a host of wildlife such as insects, (like grasshoppers, lady bugs and a praying mantis if you are lucky), toads, lizards, butterflies, and bees. Hummingbirds and a moth that resembles a hummingbird, will often visit your flowers. Watch for the moth around dusk to early night. That little moth is really neat, so if you see him, try to look at him through binoculars or a camera’s zoom lens. You’ll notice he has a tiger striped body. He’s really super cool to see.

Conclusion

We hope you like the Kids for Wildlife page and visit often. It’s all about wildlife and the great outdoors. Study up on wildlife conservation, the effort to preserve and keep our wildlife healthy and around along time, and look for ways you can help.

Above all else, have fun, get outdoors like the kids pictured below and make time for gardening-and-landscaping-for-wildlife. All the animals of the earth will be glad you cared and did!!!

A section devoted to Specialty Gardens, including a Kids garden page and more. So be sure to come back and look for the specialty gardens section and access the kid’s garden page for some of the best ideas and directions for beginners.

If you have been exposed to gardening already or feel really passionate and ambitious about gardening, then there will be other pages to review like how to build a raised bed garden, creating a bog garden orbutterfly garden. Each page will have great information and you‘re sure to find something that interest you.

Also coming soon, nature and wildlife themed search-a-word puzzles you can print and share.

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