About Us

I’m updating this about page in 2019, almost 7 years to the day to when I first wrote it.  Of course, lots has changed since I first wrote the blurb with regards to us as a family and the website itself.

 

Get Kids Outside first and foremost a site aimed at encouraging kids to experience, learn and enjoy the natural world around them.  If you’re a frazzled mum, a home educator or even a childminder, I hope you will find ideas and encouragement to get out and explore nature.

As well as sharing nature ideas and activities for kids, we also love to share just general ideas, toys and activities that will get your kids more active.  You’ll find product reviews about toys we have enjoyed over the years, especially as our kids have turned in to teenagers and it gets that little bit harder!

 

Nature is special

Nature is everywhere, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t special or that we can’t learn from it.  From the simple pleasure of jumping in puddles to doing a scientific experiment in the back garden, it’s all good!  Kids can learn in their own time, when they want and it’s always available to them.  Whether you live in the countryside or you’re in the heart of the city, you’ll have opportunities.

Nature also needs us to be there for it.  I believe it’s our responsibility as parents to encourage a love of our natural world, to encourage learning about it and to encourage caring for it.  Kids are sympathetic to the world as a general rule so it’s really not difficult to get them to enjoy this and to instill this love.

 

Nature is free

One big reason we started to enjoy nature so much is that as a young family we didn’t have much money.  Going for a nature walk was a free way of spending our days while still having some direction.  We began to appreciate the small things and learn so much more than a weekly swimming lesson, that we couldn’t afford, could give us.  Perhaps spending money on days out and clubs wasn’t the best option anyway?

And exploring books in the library about science, seasons, ponds and much more gave us the encouragement we needed to try to see more.  Nowadays with the internet often being our library we can expand that and include sites like Get Kids Outside to give us encouragement to see nature, while still being on a budget.

If you’re struggling for cash and looking for ideas – I’m aiming to provide more and more resources for you!

 

About me and my family

 

I’m Kirsty and I live in Yorkshire with my family.  We home educated our kids until college age so my entire days were spent trying to make sure that their education was being facilitated.  This was especially tricky in our early years when we had little money and just couldn’t do all the activities our friends were doing.  Nature definitely came to the rescue!

My kids are so very nearly fully grown now and it’s wonderful to see the effect our early nature study and explorations had on them.  They are kind, thoughtful kids and they both have a respect for nature and for other life on this planet.  They love to recycle and to reduce our plastic consumption – mostly it comes from them and they drive the efforts.  My daughter continues to love nature and is contemplating a career in Geology or Earth Sciences.

I have always loved nature myself and I’ve loved dabbling in learning bits and bobs from so many areas.  I’ve studied geology and natural history, volunteered at the RSPB and other local nature groups and I have been known to get a bit obsessed with buying kids books about nature!  I like to draw in my nature journal, just sit and watch the clouds go by and I challenge myself to learn the birdsong (I’m not too great yet!)

 

 

My commitment in 2019

As my kids get older it would be really easy to let this site go and leave the space for younger mums but every time I write in here I get excited about sharing nature with other people and so I feel I want to keep going.  Enthusiasm about a subject is never a bad thing – but please expect lots of posts about books I loved buying for my kids!!

As Get Kids Outside grows it’s begun to make money and I want to put that to good use.  My commitment in 2019 is to donate 10% of the profit that the site makes to local or national nature charities.  This is just the start.  I have big ideas in this area!  Watch this space…

 

For now – do enjoy getting out, don’t fret about the mud and explore always.

 

Kirsty

Founder of Get Kids Outside

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Our about page from 2012

 

My name is Kirsty and I run the Get Kids Outside website.  I have two children aged 10 and 12, one has a passing interest in nature, the other is very much interested!

I’m setting up this blog to encourage and inspire others to do as we have done and also to try and encourage ourselves to keep it up as we enter the teenage years!  I hope to include ideas for nature activities and projects, ideas for recording finds, and resources to help foster the hobby if it becomes a new found love!

I want nature and wildlife to be accessible to all so the ideas here will hopefully stay simple, cheap (or free!) and doable whether you live in the centre of a city, on the edges of moorland or beside the sea.

You can expect a post around about two times a week or perhaps more when it’s the holidays or if the weather has been good!

If you’d like to stay updated to the blog you can subscribe to our RSS feeder or you can find us on Twitter and Facebook.  I’d love to hear from any readers so do get in touch!  You can also get in touch using our contact form.

So, a little bit about us as a family.

We all had an interest in nature, but really started with very little actual knowledge. In our quest to get out more but spend less money we spent 2010 and 2011 looking for free days out and so ended up going along to lots of events which happened to coincide with nature and wildlife.  Our knowledge expanded so much and we have a new found appreciation  and interest in the outside world and the life that exists there. We’re not experts by any means, but we have enthusiasm!  We’ve even taken the kids travelling to explore more of the nature round the world – you can see our travel blog here.

I think that getting outside in nature is one of the greatest things we can do for our kids and best of all it is FREE!  Some people seem to think that as a whole our kids are growing up with some sort of Nature Deficit Disorder, I say ‘let’s prove them wrong!’  I come across kids and parents all the time who love spending the time outdoors, we just need to provide access, inspiration, freedom and encouragement.

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