Create a record of your garden to help children appreciate the changing seasons and see the value of simple and regular observation. Recording things provides memories for the future
What you will need
a scrapbook
sticky-backed plastic
old seed catalogues
a camera
scissors
glue
paper
felt pens and crayons

1 Ask your children to draw a picture of themselves in the garden, write the date and their address underneath it and stick it on the first page of their scrapbook.
2 They can collect leaves and plants from the garden and put them in their scrapbook. Help them to put sticky-backed plastic over them, and to write their names by them.
3 They can draw pictures of different parts of the garden.
4 Or they can take photographs of the garden. Maybe they could choose one part, and take a picture of it on the first day of each month for a year. Then they can see how much everything changes.
5 Encourage them to keep their scrapbook near a window and draw or write the names of the birds they see coming into the garden over the different seasons.
6 Stick in the seed packets of any seeds they grow. Give them old seed catalogues to cut out pictures of plants they want to grow - or they may like to design their dream flowerbed!
7 They can draw, cut out and label any wildlife they find. They might see frogs, butterflies, hedgehogs, ladybirds, beetles, ants, bees, caterpillars, foxes - the list is endless.
8 Why don't you get them to ask other people in your family, or visitors, to add something to their book?

What you will need
new terracotta plant pot of any size
emulsion paint in a range of colours - at least two
wide and thin paint brushes

Cover your work surface with old newspaper, and ensure your children are wearing old clothes or a painting apron. Now they're ready to paint their pot with a base coat of emulsion. They don't need to paint the base, and only need to paint inside down to the bottom of the rim. Then they can stand it on an old coffee jar lid to dry. Wash their brush and let this dry too. When they've decided how they are going to decorate the pot, they can paint it on with the thin brush. They can paint spots or stripes, flowers, a face, or even some ladybirds! Tell them to let their imagination go wild or try some of our design suggestions below. If they are using more than one colour for their decoration, they need to let the paint dry between each colour.

Tips and advice
Always try to use water-based emulsion paint for this project, as it's very easy to clear up, and it dries quickly.
Your children will probably be tempted to paint everything at once. Avoid this. Wet paints will run together and make a mess!
Talk about the design with your children before they start, then let them get on with it. Just ensure they have the right amount of paint on their brush - neither too much nor too little

Let your children go conkers! By collecting tree seeds and planting them, they will learn how to plant while reinforcing their understanding of the link between seeds and plants.

What you will need
a plant pot
crocks
soil and compost
some tree seeds - conkers from a horse chestnut tree, acorns from an oak tree, and helicopters from a sycamore tree are all good ones to look for

Take your children for a walk in the park or in the countryside to collect some seeds. Conkers are always a good seed for planting. Check their seeds do not have any holes in them - if they have, it means insect larvae will be inside eating! Place some crocks at the base of a pot, then nearly fill it with soil, mixed with some compost. Ask your children to plant their seed about 2cm deep, then cover it up with soil and compost, watering it well. They can put their pot in a shady place in the garden for the winter. Ensure the children check it from time to time to see if the soil is too dry - but they shouldn't overwater it! Explain to your child that they will need to wait until spring to see if their seed has sprouted. They can grow their tree in a pot as long as they keep repotting it into a bigger pot whenever it gets too cramped.

Wrongly accused
An insect is a small creature with three body parts (head, thorax and abdomen) and three pairs of legs. Many have wings. Most of them undergo complete changes of shape during their lifecycles.
Several 'creepy-crawlies' common in the garden are wrongly known as insects: centipedes, millipedes, woodlice, spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, ticks and mites are all from the family Arthropoda. All insects are arthropods, but not all arthropods are insects.
Interesting facts
All wasps die in winter, except the queen.
Only bumblebees and honeybees live together in colonies. Most species of bees live on their own, some in holes in the ground.
Grasshoppers sing by rubbing their hind legs against their front wings; crickets sing by rubbing their front wings together.
Some plants eat insects! They do this by catching them and dissolving their bodies, then they absorb the juice. This gives them nitrogen, which normal plants get from the soil - but these plants live in places where there isn't any.
The larva of the rare Death's Head Hawkmoth squeaks if it is touched.
Most beetles can fly, but the ground beetles you may find in your soil have lost the ability to fly - they scuttle everywhere very fast instead.
The Chilean red-leg spider can eat mice and birds. The funnel-web spider has fangs, which can pierce bone, and its bite can kill a person in two hours.

How do they survive?
Cacti and succulents have adapted to grow where there is not much fresh water, in places like deserts. Deserts get very little rain, are very hot during the daytime and often frosty at night. A prickly cactus stops birds and animals trying to eat them for their water!
About cacti
Most plants get rid of litres of water every day, by a process called transpiration, giving out water through their leaves (a bit like when we sweat!). Cactus leaves have become a lot smaller so they don't lose so much water; most have shrunk to spines or hairs but some have disappeared altogether!
The stems are green to make food for the plant, because the leaves can't do it any more - they are too small.
Cacti stems and ridges expand to store lots of water when it rains. Think of a camel that stores food in his hump! This guides as much rain as possible to the roots.