Often when we take the children out in the fresh air to teach them about the outside world, we head for the local park or nature reserve.  Our towns and cities are often overlooked as places to take children when in fact there is a wealth of opportunity for them to learn in built up areas.

So, how does an excursion around the town provide opportunities for learning?  Excursions in and around towns can help in the following ways:

• It builds on children's everyday experiences
• It helps create a sense of community
• It helps teach about the different cultures that might exist around where you live
• It promotes the idea of being out in the open air taking walks, keeping healthy and staying active
• It can help children gain confidence about being out and learning about road safety
• It helps children learn about how seasons can effect the environment in which they live

Things to look out for:

• Different styles of buildings (cottages, old office block, modern houses, old shops)
• 'Street furniture': street lamps, phone boxes, ride-on toys, post boxes, benches, display signs etc.
• Road signs
• Letters and numbers on shop fronts
• Road and rail networks
• Different vehicles (colours, styles, types)
• Building materials: concrete, bricks, wood, glass, metal
• Sounds and smells
• The people around and what they do (bus drivers, road sweepers, children, adults doing gardening etc.)

How can you enhance the experience?  Here are a few ideas:

• Talk about what you see as you go along your walk.  If you see a bus, look at it's wheels, the colour of the paintwork, how many people are on it, adverts on the side etc.
• Listen to noises and discuss smells.  Try and name all the noises (pedestrian crossing 'beeps', diggers, car horns, sirens, shops blaring music)
• Ask questions: where is the red car?, what's in the tree?, who can see a bus?
• Spot different materials used in towns and talk about how strong they are: iron railings, wooden fence, plastic door, brick houses etc
• Look at signs and talk about them.  What might they all mean?
• Stop to watch a building site or a dustbin lorry collecting bins.  Chat about what they are doing and what happens.
• Look at road signs and the symbols used eg speed limit numbers, construction signs, house numbers; discuss different colours used - blue/white for information, red/white and yellow/black for warnings, green/white for environmental information, bright colours for shop fronts etc.
• Look for shapes: square garage door, rectangle front door, round letter box etc.
• Take some photos of your trip and turn them out as a map.
• For older children and pre-schoolers, you can couple the outing with other activities when you get back home
• Ask them where they want to walk to?  Involve them in the planning of the trip and supplies they will need (eg. snack, drink)
• Make a map of the trip and follow it, draw in any landmarks you pass
• Ask them to remember things they saw on the trip and draw them when they get home

Have fun and enjoy your environment!

Shapes and colours are amongst the first concepts that babies learn and learning them helps to stimulate connections in the brain that will continue to serve your baby as they learn throughout their childhood.  Learning both shapes and colours with your baby can be fun for both of you.  Here's a fun idea on how to familiarise your baby with both.

Take two potatoes and cut them in half so that at least one of the cross sections makes a circle.  Now carve the other faces into a rectangle, square and triangle. You now have four large stampers!

Dip the face of the potatoes in finger paint and stamp different coloured shapes onto a large sheet of paper.  Practice the stamping and discuss each shape with your baby - count the sides on the shape and point your finger around each shape as you show them.  Start with a single colour and state the colour with each stamp: 'red circle', 'red square', 'red triangle', 'red rectangle'.  Wipe the paint off the face each time and then start on another colour.

When you have played with these for a bit, show the effect of mixing colours; demonstrate how two colours mixed together create a different colour.  Try mixing various combinations of colours to create a varied array.

Playing with shapes and colours will help to cement these concepts in your child's mind and start them on a learning path that will set them up well for school in a few years!

It's never too early to introduce your toddlers to science - you don't call it science, of course, but there are plenty of fun activities that you can do to help build an understanding of the world around them.  Here are a few ideas:-

Weather: Create a series of card pictures for different types of weather, and a picture for each of the seasons.  Each morning look at the weather and put the appropriate weather and season pictures up on the wall.

Faces: Create a large picture of a head and then create a series of different eyes, noses, mouths, ears, eyebrows, hair and pairs of glasses.  Have your toddler create faces, placing features in the right place.  Discuss different coloured eyes, different shaped features and talk about what glasses are for.

Planting: Buy some cress or mung beans, plant them in a plastic pot, water them and watch them grow.  Have your child chart the progress each day as they germinate and shoot up.  Discuss the ways that they change each day, draw how they look and at the end, make a sandwich and enjoy them!  Talk about how healthy they are and that good food makes you grow.

Colours: Show how mixing finger paints creates different colours.  Create swirling patterns on paper by pouring on generous amounts of paint and swirling with your finger.

Growing: Use a wall to mark the height of your children.  Have them stand against the wall, make a pencil mark at the height they stand and measure how tall they are.  Add a date, and repeat on the first day of each month.  Sometimes you'll see almost no difference, other months you might notice change.  Over a prolonged time you will see how they grow.  Discuss what makes you grow and the concept that your little ones are growing into big children.

These are just a few ideas, there are hundreds more activities that you can undertake with your toddlers to get them used to the concepts of science, and to spark an interest in the world around them.