Creating a pond for children

As featured on The Works blog 

When you join the RSPB, you receive activity packs the whole family can get involved in and we loved creating our bug hotel under the guidance of the RSPB's booklet.

Now it was time for our next challenge - to create a mini pond.  I've been looking forward to creating this with my son ever since we bought our £2 washing-up bowl from B&Q.

As I imagined, my son was very keen to dig a hole in the garden, he rehomed all the worms he found and placed random bugs in the hotel!

He got bored.

I was left to dig our hole, it wasn't a big hole but took long enough for my son to ask me why I hadn't finished his pond yet!  He's very much a hard taskmaster that one.

Once our bowl was straight, we added in pebbles across the bottom, stones up one side to be used as stepping stones should any little creatures fall in and stones around the top.  We added twigs as ladders and a little water plant to finish off the pond.

The fun part began - we filled our pond up with rain water which had been collected in a bucket, I knew I had that bucket left out for a reason......

As you can see from the picture below, my son also thought the pond needed some mud!  I just let it go, it's his pond after all.....

The mud soon settled down.

We love our little pond and check it daily, we clean it of leaves and check nothing has fallen in.  It's a great little conversation piece and gives my boy some responsibility of his own that he loves.

Then, whilst we were in town a couple of weeks ago The Works were selling some fabulous little beach house money boxes and it was my partner who suggested we get some to make a beach scene around the pond!

And so we did.

This is a great little pond, we've had such fun making it and I would highly recommend this if you have space in your garden.

Thanks to RSPB's Giving Nature a Home booklet we now have a bug hotel, a mini pond and a hedgehog house (that we bought).  Our garden is really beginning to feel homely now.

This activity features in Twinkl’s World Food Day and the Problem with Water.

How to encourage birds to your garden

#Gifted

Watching the birds being fed in our garden

Since moving into our new home last year, we have actively been encouraging nature in our garden, from creating a bug hotel out of pallets, hiding a hedgehog hotel under one of our bushes, to creating a mini pond thanks to the RSPB booklets.  But one of the quickest ways of encouraging birds into the garden is to put birdseed out.

I've written in the past how we have some very demanding starlings when they are feeding their babies and squawk at me for mealworm in the evenings!  Now that feed is not cheap but as it's for the babies, I feel I'm doing my bit.

When we are not feeding the parents of demanding chicks, I am always on the lookout for good quality bird seed that a range of birds would like and I have been very fortunate to be given the opportunity to try some of Ivel Valley wild bird food.

Currently on special offer for £17.50

Ready Peck 5 a day seed ground and table mix 

Not quite our 5 a day, this product contains suet, oats, seeds, nuts, and insects!  The mix is designed to attract birds such as Great Tit, Blue Tit, Greenfinch, Robins etc.

What I found, is this food is very popular in my garden but has attracted a very bolshy seagull!  I've stopped putting this food out on the table and instead spread it on the ground which seems to have done the trick, although I do have a couple of noisy magpies that come down in the evening.

a 2kg bag will cost £4.50

Ready peck 5 a day suet pellets - apple 

These I believe are the seagulls favourite and he ate the lot regardless of me being out there. I've now stopped placing this food on the table too and have since started throwing the food directly on the ground.  The problem I now face is the dog likes these pellets!!

This food is also very popular with our starlings and blackbirds, who are regular visitors but I also want to start placing this feed in a wire mesh feeder as I think it is going to encourage more birds in the garden, and if the feed is up high near our trees, who knows who will visit.

Birds favourite and only £1.95 for 6!

Ready Peck 5 a day suet balls - insects and mealworm

The most popular feed we tried and we have these in a suet feeder, and it brings wrens, sparrows, and starlings in almost immediately.  They also don't wait for us to go back in the house before swooping over for their food, which I love to see.

I'm very much loving our little garden and there's nothing quite like watching the birds feed in the mornings as I try and wake up and get ready to start my day.  I love listening to Max in the evenings differentiate between all the birds, he's getting rather good at it.

Nature can be so beautiful.

Bee Friendly Gardening

Those who follow my blog or my random little snippets on social media will know that we are very much into our gardening at the moment and encouraging nature to visit our garden.

We rescued some tadpoles from a drying up puddle and look what happened

We recently watched our rescued tadpoles grow into teeny tiny froglets thanks to RSPB's mini pond tutorial and my son is convinced we have a hedgehog living in the hedgehog house we have hidden away under the bushes, so it will come to no surprise that we also try to encourage the bees to pop by, and oh my days we had a biggie visit the other day, but she seemed to be camera shy (translated to I lost her when I pulled my phone out my pocket)!

Bees visiting last year

So below is a very informative and rather lovely infographic that I want to share with you all.  As with many infographics, there is a lot of information to take in from what bees do, their decline and there are also tips on what you can do to encourage bees in your garden and from this piece, I'll be doing the following this year:

Choosing flowers to help bees

Choosing purple flowers
Planting singular and tubular-shaped flowers
Sourcing Lavender for the front garden & Heather for the back garden.

Create a bee pot for the winter

Creating a shelter for the queen bumblebee for the winter, I love this idea and will be adding this to our garden to-do list!

Do have a look at the info below, thanks to Suttons and let me know if you too will be trying to encourage the bees in your garden.

Sponsored Post

Review: Chapelwood® Fun 'Bumble Bee' Feeder

#GIFT

What did we think of this great novel bird feeder?

My regular readers will know that we are all about encouraging nature into our garden, and thanks to the RSPB guide books we've made a great bug house and lovely little mini pond which has seen our first froglets grow from!

Butterflies with Insect Lore

I'm not entirely sure how this happened but I caught an advert on TV - and got sucked in!!

Now I'm not trying to brag here that I don't usually get sucked in by adverts - I do, I'm human......what I mean to say is I don't usually get to watch programs when they are aired - I end up watching TV on catch up and Sky+ when little one has gone to bed.

Somehow, probably on Boomerang - the Tom and Jerry channel!  I caught the advert on growing your own butterflies from caterpillars sent to you - thanks to Insect Lore and found myself thinking about the advert the rest of the day!!  Put a status up on Facebook and found other parents had either done this project before or thinking about doing it.

So I bought them!

I'm not entirely sure who got the most enjoyment out of this.

When our caterpillars arrived we put them up on the shelf out of direct sunlight and watched them grow.

Funny little things they are.  Shedding and silk threads, food and growth all in the space of 7 days!  Then, they all started making their way to the lid to form the pupa stage.  This took a couple of days to complete and we had a moment when Max picked up the cup only for one of the caterpillars already in its chrysalis to fall!!  Oh, my days!  I did worry about that one!

Yes, this project comes with stress!

The chrysalis can be moved after a day into the butterfly netted tube - stress.  You need to make sure there is no silk when transferring the chrysalis otherwise they butterflies could get tangled in it.  If they fall off, scoop them up with a spoon and put them on tissue on the bottom......

Well after spending 10 minutes trying to get the lid off slowing and carefully..... we put our butterflies new home up high out the way of danger.... (little fingers)

And there they stayed, growing, getting darker and waiting...... waiting for us not to be looking - to emerge!  We managed to miss every single one of them!  3 appeared overnight so they have a good excuse.  1 waited until I was in the bath - and that was the one that had fallen from the cup.  More appeared that night and whenever we popped out.

We caught them just after, stretching their crumpled wings and it really was the most amazing thing to watch.

Once all the butterflies had hatched we kept them for a couple of days with twigs and flowers and nectar.  Then the moment came to let them go.  We took them out into the garden near the trees and opened up the tube and with a little help set them free.

It's been a fantastic experience and will definitely be doing it again.  We may even try other bugs... but that's a big maybe, not sure I'll feel the same about stick insects as I do about beautiful butterflies.

Letters to my son - Coombes Farm

Dear Max,

Well, it's that time again, it's your daddy's favourite time - Lambing Season at Coombes Farm.

As we did last year, we went and saw the newborn lambs being born yesterday, and you also got to 'feed' some of the sheep who all seem to take a shine to you.

We are so lucky where we live, downs to the north, beach to the south and farms just a short drive away.



You were very well behaved on the tractor waiting for it to start - we had a little picnic whilst we waited.

With the farm in the morning and getting all the toys out in the garden in the afternoon - you were tired and asleep for the night.... by 4.30pm!

Love you always my little man

Mummy

xxxxx