The Brave Bones Club - Outdoor Adventurers

You may have already seen the adverts on telly at the moment about the Brave Bones Club encouraging kids to get outside to have adventures? It doesn't really matter what you do, adventures can be found in your garden as well as by the sea, in the countryside, or even a trip to the shops if you take the time to look around you.

We are in the middle of half-term here in the UK, and so far it's been great! We are enjoying some very sunny weather at the moment so it's been easy to spend time outdoors. Bank Holiday Monday was spent in our garden - I've been tidying up the flower beds and getting experimental with colour, while Wiss has been making the most of his new 'mud kitchen'.

We had a very short half term bucket list - go to the park, eat candy floss, spot a kingfisher, visit Papa at work, get outside on our bikes. We have yet to find any candy floss unfortunately but today we went on a Kingfisher Hunt!

We live in South East London, on a busy road, near a retail park and a wonderful green park too. Behind the retail park there is a Green Chain walk which runs alongside a little river. We have often visited part of the river but never walked right the way along, so when we were told there are Kingfishers living there we wanted to explore. I love these birds but have never seen one in real life, and Wiss adores all animals. So, armed with some essential supplies (all adventurers need Battenberg!) we set off.

I just could not believe how beautiful this area is, especially given it's in a busy part of the city and right on our doorstep.

Wiss was in his element, taking notes in his notebook, and he even made a little video of himself talking about the surroundings! He didn't say he was bored once, was happy making up his games and would have stayed out longer if he could. In summary we saw: mallard ducks and ducklings, moorhens, coots, grey wagtails, blackbirds, magpies, crows, pigeons and a heron. We got rampaged by 6 wet dogs who had been swimming in the river and the picnic blanket took the brunt of it! We saw schools of tiny fish, and 3 whoppers. Wiss spent about half an hour perched on a rock in the river catching catkins floating past and got very muddy knees. He had many 'au natural' tree wees (very exciting for a 5 year old) but kingfishers....? Zero :) But I don't think that was the point anymore!

The Brave Bones Club has been created by Cheestrings and Yollies in partnership with the explorer Steve Backshall, to encourage people to have safe but brave adventures. To find out more, visit the website or watch this short video:

If you know an adventurer aged 6-10 years old then why not enter one (or both) of these competitions to win an amazing 4 day adventure with Steve Backshall? They close on 29 May so there is still time!
Brave Bones Competition or Win a 4 Day Adventure

I'd love to hear about any adventures you and your little ones go on, especially if they are city-based. Leave me a comment below or find me on Twitter @thisiswiss. Enjoy the rest of half term, and then there's only 6 weeks left until the summer holidays for more fun...!


This is a sponsored post, and we have been sent an adventure kit to help us with future explorations.

Project Wild Thing

Hello! This month's post For the Kids is all about "Wild Time".

I first read about Project Wild Thing on Lori's Wild & Grizzly blog in January (check out the post here) It really resonated with me because as a parent I do worry about the amount of time Wiss spends in the great outdoors. We are really careful to monitor his screen time, and as he's only 4 it's quite easy at the moment, but I want to make sure he experiences that there's more fun things 'out there'. I bought the dvd straight away so I could watch the documentary at home - it is brilliant! It's funny, and all too familiar, and actually desperately sad too: "children in the UK spend less than 5% of their time outdoors". Wow.

If you'd like to see the film for yourself then check out the website. You can see it in cinemas, buy the dvd or even request a screening for your group.

This weekend Wiss and I headed out to Bradfield Woods in Suffolk with Nana Daisy. It was a beautiful day so we packed sandwiches and drew up a list of things that we hoped we could spot while we were exploring. You can see the list below... The dog poo was at Wiss's insistence I'm afraid!

When we got there we discovered that Suffolk Wildlife Trust actually have a wonderful visitors hut, staffed by volunteers, where you could have a cup of tea, find out more about the woods and their conservation projects and they even had an 'Explorer's Pack" for kids to borrow. The green rucksack (which matched his outfit perfectly) was filled with similar laminated lists of things to to look out for and pictures of the Spring flowers we may spot, as well as binoculars, a magnifying glass and a bug pot. Wiss loved these three items and marched off into the woods to put them to the test!

At first he was in a hurry to check things off our list as soon as possible, but it was great to see him gradually forget about it as he was busy looking and he started exploring at his own pace. There was lots of hunting small creatures, listening to the different bird songs and poking sticks into muddy puddles to see which was the deepest!

We spent a few hours in the woods and it was wonderful for all of us, plus we managed to tick everything off the list apart from the snail!

Even if you're in a city (which we usually are) there are lots of ways you can still enjoy Wild Time - just get outdoors and see what happens! There is a fab and free Wild Time app which can provide inspiration if you get stuck, and you can even get ideas for as little as 10 minutes up to activities to take half a day.

We have a long Easter bank holiday coming up in the UK, why not pledge to swap some screen time for wild time this weekend and see what you and your kids can get up to? Please share your adventures by either leaving a comment or link below or if you're on twitter you can use #wildtime to link up.

Have a great long weekend and Happy Easter to you all :)