GIVEAWAY: Buttercups, Bumble Bees and Beetles – Play More

Buttercups, Bumble Bees and Beetles.

New Research Reveals Our Children Are Out Of Touch With Nature

Playing outside and discovering the world of nature is part of growing up, or is it? Do children still push aside logs to see what’s crawling underneath? Are daisy chains part of playground life or some relic from the past?

Children are spending more time indoors than outside and they are missing out on exploring the natural world around them. In fact, research found that 1 in 9 British children have not visited a beach, park or forest in twelve months, and on average, a British child only spends 4 hours a week playing in the great outdoors.

This is why Sudocrem set up the award-winning Play More campaign, an initiative designed to encourage parents and children to get back in touch with nature and explore the greatest playground on earth – the outdoors! As part of the campaign, Sudocrem carried out a survey which asked 200 children between the ages of 4 to 8 years old to identify some of the creepy crawlies in Britain. The survey revealed that 9 out of 10 children (89%) were unable to recognise a butterfly even though there is an abundance of native British insects, with around 27,000 insect species calling the UK home. Moreover, 51% didn’t know what a Bumblebee looks like. And, surprisingly, 1 in 3 (29%) didn’t realise that bees make honey.

Children are not only unable to identify some of the most distinctive insects, but they are also missing out on the adventure which comes with playing outside in a natural environment. Over half of those surveyed (59%) admitted that they had never climbed a tree, 89% didn’t know what a Buttercup was and 77% couldn’t identify a Sunflower. Are children losing their sense of wonder and adventure?

According to children’s TV presenter and naturalist, Chris Packham, who’s an ambassador for Play More, parents should be encouraging their children to get outside and explore the natural environment around them. “I was very fortunate when I was a child because I was encouraged to interact with the outdoors – looking under rocks and searching under logs and hedges to find creepy crawlies. If you just open your eyes, you’ll see that there is an incredible natural world out there waiting to be discovered”.

As a parent I’m shocked by these statistics, Jake would probably get the whole 10 and Grace wouldn’t be too far behind. From an early age I have encouraged them both to play outdoors in our garden, and for them to investigate what they see we have even been on ladybird hunts to help with the chilli plants that keep getting Aphids and teaching them that ladybirds will help by eating the Aphids and saving our chilli plants.

We have plenty of fruit and vegetables growing which they originally planted themselves, which we know is a great learning curve to know produce doesn’t just come from supermarkets! I also allow them to help with the gardening when we cut the grass, and Jake recently trimmed our Italian rosemary bush by himself and he was so chuffed with how well he did. We do live in an area that is full of trees so going ‘on a bear hunt’ is such a great idea around here, seeing what nature we can find. There is more than you think when you actually take a close look.

Here is Jake as just a little one meeting a caterpillar from the garden.

Jake is now 7, and these last few weeks has became even more interested in helping the wild life and our environment as we had a bumblebee in the garden, and after I had seen a few social media posts about the bumblebees that look tired and stationary on the ground, they need a help to revive, so this is what we did! We got some sugar and water and placed it on a teaspoon. To our amazement the bee took a good sip of the water from us, very gentle and stayed for a while longer. I left the spoon on the ground for it to use as it needs. This was such an experience for us both for sure!

If you have been reading our blog for a while you will know we grow our own sun flowers, tomatoes, strawberries and chillies and at the start of the month we even planted our own cherry stones too as Grace enjoyed cherries so much she wanted to grow a cherry tree!

Jake and Grace both love having fresh strawberries from the garden. Here’s Grace with a bowl of strawberries and marshmallows after she’d been to her Teddy Bears Picnic with Nursery School

How would you children rate in the test, would they recognise a range of our creepy crawlies?

Play More Campaign

Sudocrem’s Brand Manager, Georgina Fotopoulou said, “Outdoor play is important and whilst children might scrape their knees and elbows, it is an important part of a child’s learning and development process. We’ve been healing skin for generations and we’re proud to promote the spirit of adventure with Play More.”

As part of the campaign, Play More are offering the chance for community nurseries across the country to win either support for Playground Regeneration or a mural painted by an award-winning artist.

Mummy H

Giveaway

Sudocrem are also offering a “My Little Adventure Pack” as a giveaway prize. The pack is worth £40 and contains:

– Play More t-shirt

– Play More sun hat

– Bug Pot

– Frisbee

– Butterfly Net

– Magnifying glass

– Trowel or fork

If you would like a chance to win, just enter the Rafflecopter giveaway form below.

We really do appreciate & personally read every single comment that you leave us. It means a lot to us that you take the time to interact with us, so please continue to do so.

The mandatory question must be answered in the “Leave a comment here” box at the bottom of this page to make any further entries valid. No answer means no win! Please try to use 8 words or more in your comment.

Ends Midnight Sunday 26th August 2018.

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Don’t forget to check out our other giveaways.

Question is “Tell us about a time you spent in the outdoors with your child/children.”

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*All nurseries must be based in the UK and nominations close on 31.08.2018. For full Terms and Conditions, please visit www.sudocrem.co.uk/social-hub