OUTDOOR MUMS NEWS
DECEMBER ROUND UP
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December was a busy month as we launched our Outdoor Mum's book appeal.
Outdoor Mums are teamed up with various organizations and authors across the UK to provide children the gift of a library - children in hospices, children fleeing domestic abuse and children who are refugees.
We are donating books directly to these organizations to support children through times of extreme difficulty and to help them connect with nature.
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When children read, they are transported to new worlds and can gain an understanding of the world. Reading is a gift that opens up so many doors for children.
We were thrilled by all the books and donations received which went to families most in need this Christmas! A huge thank you to everyone who took part. With your help we managed to donate over 100 books.
Special thanks to all our children's authors; Deborah Lambert, Emily Isfit, Ellie Jackson, Elsa Hammond, Anna Caughey, Jane Thomas, Roxie Braun & Ruth Snowden.
NOVEMBER ROUND UP
We have been honoured to accept the award for most highly commended not for profit organisation at the What’s On For Kids Awards.
It was a spell binding night at the Hogwarts Studios in London.
A huge congratulations to Young Carers, the winner of most beloved not for profit organisation and to all the winners and runners up who attended the event.
Thank you to all our local admin and volunteers who help our Outdoor Mums community grow and support our community projects.
OCTOBER ROUND UP
What an incredible month! You have been busy voting and we are absolutely honoured to say Outdoor Mums is in the final 3 for the What's on for Kids Awards!
We will be going live from the awards ceremony in November so everyone can join in the fun. It will be a thrilling night!
We were also delighted when Breaking Barriers competition winner to Goxhill Glampsite got in touch with photos of her weekend away. The winning family had a wonderful time!
Of course this month we have all been getting in the spirit of Halloween. It has been wonderful to see all your nature crafts, photos and ideas. We have such a strong inspiring community.
Keep following Outdoor Mums on Facebook for more competitions and exclusive, fun, nature content!
SEPTEMBER ROUND UP
September saw the launch of our wonderful new group Breaking Barriers!
Breaking Barriers aims to help individuals, families and carers with health barriers to access the outdoors and provide peer support with one another.
You can join the group here:
https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=469969767399277&ref=content_filter
We were so grateful to have the support of the Northern Trust Speech Specialist, Marie Barnes, who penned a blog on nature and speech development and the fabulous Jayne Haigh, a behaviour therapist who wrote a piece on animal therapy. Hop to the blogs to check them out!
We would love to hear from our community and hear your stories, experiences and challenges. We will continue to raise awareness of the challenges many families face and provide support, blogs and content. If you want to get involved with any of our projects, please get in touch!
We also teamed up with Rebel Botanists, the month of September and created some tree ID cards for our community. We posted these cards on our Outdoor Mums page.
Each card identifies trees has fun facts and activities.
Don't worry if you missed it! We hope to add these cards to our shop in the new year for download, so all our little explorers can enjoy nature when we kick off our Around the World in 80 Days Challenge for the second year running.
AUGUST ROUND UP
August Roundup
Wow, what an eventful August!
Outdoor Mums kickstarted the month by celebrating the blooming brilliant Allotment Week & sharing all our home grown treats. We are supporting green-fingered, Outdoor Mum, Leila (our Coordinator for the South East) with her own therapeutic allotment journey. Read Leila’s story here.
https://www.outdoormums.com/post/breaking-barriers-to-outdoors-leila-s-story
Or you can help sponsor Leila here.
https://bit.ly/3kCPKyh
Our Outdoor Mums community successfully completed our A-Z of the outdoors, which generated a wealth of engaging ideas for activities to enjoy outdoors with our families - hop over to the Outdoor Mums Facebook page to catch up!
https://m.facebook.com/outdoormumsuk/
August also saw the launch of our biggest competition yet - in celebration of our new support group Breaking Barriers.
A huge thank you to Goxhill Meadows, Eco friendly Glamping, for contributing to this exciting prize of a weekend family Glamping trip! Our lucky winner will be drawn on the Autumn Equinox and announced shortly after!
Hop on over to breaking barriers to join the conversation!
https://m.facebook.com/groups/469969767399277/
Meeting up with fellow Outdoor Mums and growing our community became easier this August, with the launch of our monthly meet up threads. On 15th of each month, our members are invited to post meet-ups planned for the following month - park trips, picnics, beach play dates, any outdoor adventures to enjoy together & make new friends. You’re all invited! Head over to your local group & join the fun!
Not sure where your local group is? Check out our frequently asked questions for a full list of local groups and find them on Facebook.
https://www.outdoormums.com/faq
As Autumn dusk fell, our Outdoor Mums community came together to join the Stories by Moonlight campaign. We enjoyed taking our bedtime stories outdoors, experiencing new adventures under the dimsy skies.
We’d like to say a special thank you to those Outdoor Mums who contributed to the storytelling magic.
JULY ROUND UP
This July, Outdoor Mums launched our ‘Plastic Free July’ campaign.
Every day, approximately 8 million pieces of plastic pollution are thrown away in the UK.
This is a huge problem for marine life, which mistakes plastic for food, and consumes it. It is estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish.
One in three fish caught has plastic in it’s stomach; which can then have huge impact on human health.
We challenged our community to help tackle this and we were blown away once again by your response. Everyday in July we posted easy swaps and alternatives to plastic and asked you how you go plastic free.
It was wonderful to see the community come together; inspiring, educating and supporting one another.
Previously, Outdoor Mums launched our ‘Beach Bucket Challenge’ which saw over 1000 families sign up and pledge to bring home a bucket of rubbish each time they went to the beach. You can still join in the challenge by joining our group here:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/238355987077036?group_view_referrer=search
We also hosted a competition to win one of our plastic free Summer boxes - congratulations to Katherine Ashby our winner.
Don't worry if you missed out this time - ‘My Box of Summer’ is on sale now!
Hop over to the Outdoor Mums store to grab an activity box before they are all gone. All profits raised helps towards our projects.
https://www.outdoormums.com/product-page/my-outdoor-box-of-summer
Outdoor Mums would also like to thank Charlotte Myers for her incredible effort putting together ‘Plastic Free July,’ and all of our admin team who work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep Outdoor Mums going.
That's all folks until the next round up!
JUNE ROUND UP
Let’s dive into our June Roundup with our incredible celebration of World Ocean Day. So many of our Outdoor Mums took the time to share their seaside adventures, tips and game ideas - thank you! We posted some of our own resources too, which are free to download from Outdoor Mums UK Facebook group… from crosswords and nature hunts, to seaside safety tips.
Outdoor Mums are always on a mission to highlight how plastic can affect our oceans. In June, we’ve been inspired to take action with our Beach Bucket Challenge, which challenges families to clear a bucketful of rubbish each beach visit. We are delighted to see photos of everyone taking part and making a positive impact on our beautiful coastlines.
We also spotted some important plastic-free tips for the seaside, inspiring us to go plastic-free this July, so check out our Facebook or Instagram for daily tips how to reduce plastic in your life.
On World Ocean Day, we were joined by ‘Lark The Shark’ Author, Natalie Newman for a wonderful retelling of her popular children’s story. You can listen to it here. Everything you think you know about sharks will change forever…
We were also delighted to collaborate with Deborah Lambert, Author of the National Curriculum Outdoors. Two very lucky schools won free books, encouraging them to take their lessons outdoors. Congratulations to our winners!
If you missed out on winning the books, Outdoor Mums have an exclusive offer for you. Until 31st July we are offering all our families 30% off all the books in the series with the discount code NCO30. Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for this special offer. Order your books here.
At Outdoor Mums we love to support local communities and causes and so we held a virtual online celebration to mark the Summer Solstice. It was wonderful to see the response from our OMs Community, engaging with local shops and businesses and supporting their products. We’ve been inundated by emails from business owners who wanted to take part, but sadly missed out, so we have decided to run another virtual marketplace at the end of July - this time focusing on plastic-free items - so everyone has a chance to join in. Please get in touch if you would like to advertise your business on the day - again, spaces are limited!
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Last but by no means least, Outdoor Mums are thrilled to be ‘runners up’ in the Community Movement category of the Surfers Against Sewage Awards. We’d like to offer a huge congratulations to all those who were nominated and thank them for making a difference in the quest to be plastic free.
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And that’s it for June, except to say we’re still nominated for the What’s On For Kids Awards and if you have 3 spare minutes we’d love your vote - you can vote here!
MAY ROUND UP
It has to been an incredibly exciting month for Outdoor Mums, which started on a high as we kicked off our Outdoor Mums May Day festival.
Joined by some incredible talent live acts, entertainers, story tellers and the phenomenal Surviving December band. It really was a day to remember!
If you missed all the fun, you can catch up on all the acts on our new Outdoor Mums YouTube channel.
After the festival, we dived into Ocean Awareness month, providing free educational resources, videos, blogs and places to visit to all our coastal lovers in the lead up to World Oceans Day on 8th June 2021.
We were lucky to be joined by Ellie Jackson, Author of the Wild Tribe series, whose books address issues like plastic pollution and global warming, in an accessible way for young children.
Immerse yourself in one of her wonderful tales here.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=500303217685200&id=1623406954626550
May also saw the start of our Beach Bucket Challenge. Over 1000 families across the UK & beyond are taking part in the challenge!
All have pledged to do their part, big or small, to collect bucket of beach litter.
This important act can help save oceans, which unless we take serious action now, are estimated to have more plastic than fish by 2050.
Alone we can do so little, but together we can move mountains! (of trash) Find out how your family or school can get involved here.
https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=238355987077036&ref=content_filter
More and more teachers are beginning to value the mental, emotional and physical developmental opportunities offered by Mother Nature.
This is why Outdoor Mums have teamed up with Deborah Lambert co author of the National Curriculum Outdoors to offer 2 copies of her book to a lucky teacher/homeschool family to celebrate Outdoor Classroom day!
To enter this competition, tell us why you or your child’s school deserve to win a copy.
The winner will be announced on 21st June. To enter click here.
This is not the only prize up for grabs! Outdoor Mums have been nominated for two awards!
We have been shortlisted for the best Community Movement in the Surfers Against Sewage Plastic Free Awards!
This honour would not have been made possible without our Outdoor Mums’ community and your efforts to reduce plastic use in your daily lives.
Thank you for supporting us and each other to accomplish this. It is wonderful to see how day to day you are all raising custodians of nature and teaching children to take care of the planet; sharing tips to ‘go green’ and inspiring other families to make small changes to help our children connect with nature.
So, thank you to each and every one of our members for continuing to support one another. We hope we can also rely on your support for the What’s On For Kids Awards.
Outdoor Mums have been nominated for best non profit/charity. We would be grateful if you can vote for us here.
https://whatson4kids.co.uk/awards/vote
We are positively buzzing from our nominations and also from our recent Bee Celebration! Bees are essential pollinators.
Most of our food relies on these remarkable insects. We were thrilled and delighted to see the community working together to help raise awareness.
Members of Outdoor Mums ran successful petitions to introduce more council wild areas to help nurture bee populations. We received some bee-autiful art, poems and stories.
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Outdoor Mums local groups helped by growing flowers and inspiring one another to create bee hotels and run fun challenges. But that wasn't the only challenge!
This month, Outdoor Mums Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire launched the Outdoor Mums A-Z challenge. A 26 day challenge to connect children to nature, with one theme a day based on each letter of the alphabet!
Over the Summer, we will be rolling this challenge out to all local groups, as well as our exciting new subscription box, packed with Summer activities for your little ones to enjoy.
So spark their imagination and make this a Summer to remember with "My Outdoor Box of Summer" Best of all, all profit goes directly towards our fundraising efforts so every purchase can help other families in need.
Hop over to our store to pre-order yours NOW!!!!
And that’s it folks! That is our May roundup, phew! What a fantastic month! Thanks everyone for contributing to our community, we couldn’t do it without you.
APRIL ROUND UP
April was off to a cracking start with our #EggstraNature challenge for Easter!
This saw children across the country heading outdoors with our egg shaped templates & snapping beautiful nature scenes.
OMs were on a mission to encourage everyone to get outdoors more & enjoy nature & judging by the photos we’d say it was a great success!
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#OMExplorer was next as we took the opportunity to head out and explore new places over the Easter holidays.
Many of these places were on our own doorsteps; exploring locally can be just as EGGsciting as venturing further afield. No special equipment needed - take a different route to the local park, walk rather than drive, look up high to spot new scenes above the eye line, what nature can you see on the road where you live? Take time to notice.
Week 3 of our Easter Campaign led to some #EggstraordinaryOM action - everything ranging from 5 minute beach cleans, peace awareness, nature collages to planting happy bee flowers, to outdoor kits being produced for children and families in need. What an extraordinary community we’re blessed with!
At the start of 2021 Outdoor Mums fundraised for Outdoor kits for children living in refuges. Our Around the World in 80 Days challenge started in Belfast, home to our first sponsor & it was only right that the first kits were distributed across North Belfast too - home to one of the areas with the highest deprivation levels in the U.K. Our U.K. Coordinator, Ciara, headed off with a big smile to Smile Sure Start & delivered our first big bundle of outdoor kits, designed especially for those children who are living in refuges, having fled homes due to abuse, violence or war.
These were so well received & we hope they go some way towards spreading more smiles.
If you’d like to donate a kit directly, these are available in our OMs Online Shop. Wow, April was incredibly eventful for our lovely community & we also found time to plan our May Day Festival!!!
Watch this space for details in our May Roundup!
MARCH ROUND UP
We have had some amazing things happening over the last months so let’s get right into it!
We started the year with the #OMs80 ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ challenge and wow, did you smash it!
We started in Belfast (home of our first donor & NI facilitator, Ciara) and by the end of the first week, we were storming along! We had a little dip a few weeks in, but we came back strong as a community and were back in Belfast by Day 72!
That is 24,901 miles!!! A truly incredible achievement and testament to what an amazing community like OMs can achieve when we work together.
We also raised an incredible £404 so far for ‘Operation Outdoors’, creating outdoor kits and resources for families, with children in hospices and refuges.
The first of our kits are under construction and getting ready to go out soon.
Thank you to everyone who has donated or shared our appeal. If you would like to donate, there is still time, our fundraising link can be found here:
https://uk.gofundme.com/f/outdoor-mums-around-the-world-in-80-days
We had an incredible response from our guest zoom sessions and raised well over our target. You joined us for sessions with subjects ranging from risky play, to yoga and willow weaving.
Thank you to all of our amazing OM contributors and content makers.
So what’s going on now that you can get involved with? LOADS!
We have released initial plans for our online May Day Family Festival which will include some exclusive content for you to enjoy, as well as music and dancing, stargazing and camping.
Hop on over to our local groups or our main facebook page to join in our easter #eggstraordinary Challenges and even enter our competitions to win some EGGstraordinary prizes too!
Instagram - have you seen our instagram page?
https://www.instagram.com/outdoormumsuk/
We would love you to tag us in your outdoor adventures there too.
Check back with us again for more news and round ups of what’s going on in all things OM.
FEBRUARY ROUNDUP
Welcome to our new monthly Roundup where we will bring you all the latest scoop of all the exciting things that is happening with Outdoor mums.
We are fast approaching the end of our end of our around the world in 80 days challange and the race is on to get back home in time with just one week remaining
So far our families have walked an incredible distance for project outdoors and raised an incredibe amount of money for Project Outdoors.
A huge well done to all the families taking part in the challenge. Will the families hit the goal of 24,901 miles? Keep watching our Facebook page to find out!
We hope you enjoyed our exciting range of support and parenting and toddler zoom events over February. We had an absolute blast organising them. Which is why we couldn't let the fun stop!
This May we are going to be staging our most ambitious outdoor mums event to date. The first Outdoor mums festival. One whole day of live events to thrill your los. With performers, crafts, competitions, cooking, camping and much much more. This is one virtual event you dont want to miss!
We are also very excited to announce our local groups will start to organise local meetups in April. We know many of our parents have been feeling the strain of recent lockdowns and want to connect with other members in their community.
So please join your local outdoors families for a zoom night of games and outdoor themed fun. For more information on virtual events in your area!
We can't wait to make a start to our community funded projects for project outdoors. We have already started preparing boxes for tree planting projects and to support hospice and refugee projects.
If you want to get involved personally with any of our projects or have an amazing idea to help your local area ; Why not volenter to become an outdoor facilitator and help make it happen! We have roles for all skill sets! Please contact us to find out more how you can change someone's life today.
As always we would like to thank you our reader and all our wonderful families and facilitators for helping us grow and for all your support and continually inspiring us with your outdoor adventures.
With love Outdoor mums x
