NATURE DETECTIVES - an innovative, award-winning website and wildlife club for under 12s - is run by the Woodland Trust.
You can learn about wildlife, investigate where you live with some colourful spotter sheets, start a nature diary, do springwatch and autumnwatch and help real scientists research climate change.
Throw in some great competitions, nature detectives TV, online games, hundreds of downloads and some exciting revolutionary ideas in the pipeline, and you’ve got a great package to learn, get outside, get active and have fun!
As well as the free online materials, there’s also a kids’ CLUB with specially structured schemes for families, schools and groups.
The welcome pack’s got five activity sheets to get you started, a big challenge poster and a set of 52 stickers that lasts a full year. Every week a challenge arrives by email: it could be anything from finding autumn berries or doing one of Owl’s quizzes to colouring a picture or making a model. You’ve got all week to complete the challenge and put that sticker on your poster.
Plus activity packs in the post – packed full of puzzles, pictures and stuff to take outside.
How it started
Set up in 2004 with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, nature detectives started as a phenological recording scheme (noting the dates of seasonal events) for children.
What we've developed
Our simple, high-quality materials - designed to help children identify and investigate seasonal events in nature - proved very popular, addressing the shocking lack of skills in this area by starting with the basics.
Over a million resource sheets have been used.
Huge demand
At the end of its 3-year lottery funding, the website had received 5,555% more visitors than anticipated and nearly eight times more people had registered to take part.
There are now over 26,000 email subscribers and 10,000 CLUB members.
Bank of resources
This site is now home to all of the Woodland Trust's resources and activities for primary aged children.
We've everything from printable leaves to online blogging.
Pick n mix
Grab what you want, when you want and use it for what you want.
We're not teachers. We're not your kid's parents. We're not group leaders. You're the one who knows what you need and how best to use the materials.
So dive in! Join the CLUB (from £12 a year) or get our email (free)