Outdoor Mums May Roundup

It has 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 incredibly talented 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.

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/home school 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. Click here to enter

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

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 a 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

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

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. Outdoor Mums local groups helped by growing flowers and inspiring one another to create bee hotels and run fun challenges.

"Show the bees you care,

As I'm sure you are aware,

We need more flowers and weeds,

So get outside and plant some seeds!"

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.