Five summer holiday garden activities

How to keep the kids busy in the garden!

The school summer holidays are here and anyone with children or grandchildren will welcome ideas to keep them entertained without spending a small fortune.

We’ve put together five ideas that will keep youngsters entertained and help them to learn about plants, insects and gardening.

Build an insect house

Insect houses can be built out of lots of different materials that are either lying about in the garden or can be easily foraged. Raid the shed or garage for some spare pallet wood and/or a few bricks. You can also collect pine cones, bark and branches from the local park or woodland areas. Here's a great step-by-step guide to follow.

Potton lower school, Beds SG19 2PBshots of RSPB make and do activities for a pack that is going out to inner city primary schools in the major cities, London, Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff etc. Pix illustrate the step by step guidelines.

Collect seeds

August is a great time for collecting seeds from plants around the garden. This activity can be made even more interactive by getting the kids to make seed packs using paper, sticky tape and scissors. Once the packets are ready, send the kids out into the garden to search for seeds, encourage them to draw the plant the seeds came from on the packet.

Own patch

Set aside an area of the garden that the kids can call their own. Get them to either work directly in the ground or within a raised bed, and encourage them to weed the area and prepare the soil ready for planting. Veggies including broad beans, spinach, onions and spring onions can be sown in August.

Build a WoodBlocX raised bed

This is a WoodBlocX blog after all! Our wooden raised bed kits are ideal for building with kids, there’s no sharp tools or heavy lifting needed, just a little adult supervision. From preparing the ground to laying out the base layer, youngsters love building our timber structures and get a real sense of achievement out of it…and so do the adults!

Insect spotting

The garden is full of life at this time of year, with butterflies, grasshoppers, ants, garden spiders, bees, ladybirds and more going about their business. Encourage the kids to search them out and write a list of the different varieties they find and draw pictures of their favourites.