Making time for a visit to the Zoo or the Museum or even just a nature excursion to the bush, can be a way to fill an afternoon but what if it could set you up for many more hours of children busily learning and creating and playing even once they are back home?

I used to be a teacher at a wonderful primary school in South Auckland, and now am a  mum to a very busy little four year old so am very used to capitalizing on any moment of interest and curiosity that can turn into something bigger! It's not just great value for money in terms of creating more from one off experiences, but it also is so wonderful for tamariki to be able to get curious and follow those little questions and moments of wonder that can be triggered during the school holidays. 

Below I've given a few ideas for little outings that can be enjoyed over the school holidays, or just on a weekend, and then some ideas and suggestions for ways to continue to engage and learn more. 

I am a bit biased as I used to work at the incredible Auckland Zoo but we spend a lot of our time there and each visit yields a new animal we want to learn about (or at the moment a new enthusiasm for dinosaurs thanks to the incredible Dinosaur track that is open over Winter!).

To help extend one zoo visit into something rich I recommend reading about the zoo before you go (you could even look at the map for which ever zoo you are visiting before hand to plan the animals you want to visit). Get curious, gather questions, get out the zoo figurines to design and build your own zoo (I love the amazing Schleich ones for their realisim and durability!). 

After the visit come back and write zoo-inspired stories, do a zoo themed puzzle together, draw your own zoo creatures, or use animal encyclopedias to learn more about the animals you visited! 

The museum is our go-to on a rainy day and I can never quite tell which random room is going to be her favourite but currently we are really obsessed with volcanoes so I've been buying volcano books and volcano science sets to keep her enthusiasm going and capitalise on what she's naturally drawn to (a sense of peril and danger?). We are loving Danny Go so when I saw that there was a Danny Go Volcano book that immediately had to come home along with one of the 4M Table Top Volcano kits! 

Use the museum as a starting point, then go deep! Pop to the bookshop or the library after, turn it into an art activity or science experiment, and let their curiosity lead the way!

Recently my four-year old and I spent a day out at Arataki Visitor center in the Waitakeres and it turned inito the most beautiful day out and a chance for us both to connect to nature and fill our cup with plenty of sunshine and time together. Whether you're exploring West Auckland, visiting Zealandia in Wellington, or just wandering through the bush in your local neighborhood, getting outdoors can be a cheap but just as fun as an expensive day out.

We started off exploring at the visitor center itself, and then used that as our base for going off on several expeditions into Te Ngāhere. There we slowed right down (necessary when hill hiking with a four year old anyway) to examine all the different mushrooms we found, feel the textures of the moss and lichen growing on tree trunks, and listen out for the manu (birds) that were following us amongst the thick leaves. 

Once home, we got out all our bird books and our all time favourite, The Observologist, to look for the things we'd noticed. We read our favourite new picture book that night, B is for Bird, and recognized all the birds we'd seen on our day outdoors. It was a beautiful way to reflect on a day of adventures together. 

I also highly recommend one of the Hape Bug Jars for outdoor adventuring! We use it to look at little bugs (gently!) up close as it has an amazing in built magnification, but also just for examining leaves or cool things we come across. It's the perfect size too for chucking in the back pack along with all our snacks and water!

One of our other favourite 'free' adventures at the moment, even in the middle of winter, is to rug up warm and head out to the rockpools at low tide. Here in Auckland we've been slowly finding our favourite spots, and each time we go we discover new fascinating creatures! 

It's not only wonderful being by the ocean and getting some Vitamin Sea, but it's also such a fabulous reminder about the intricate nature of the tiniest parts of the planet. My little one could spend a whole day happily clambering over rocks and gently examining what's within. One of our favourite rockpool books we first got out from the library and then had to buy our own copy of, In The Rockpool. It's a great one for connecting what we've seen with what's in the beautiful illustrations.

To extend a rockpool visit, I love getting out all the art materials. Draw a big circle and let the tamariki get creative filling their rock pool with all manner of creatures and shells and plants. You could also do some water play with food dye to colour the water and creatures and rocks to set up a play scene together. 

Staying home doesn't have to mean just watching TV or slowly going crazy while the kids cause chaos! Here are some of our favourite things to do at home on a day when leaving feels like too much effort, or when the energy is a little lower.

Being in the kitchen can be not only fun and delicious, but a great way to learn together. Whether it's tamariki learning more about numbers and measurement, learning about making mistakes (there's always at least one spillage), getting curious about nutrition and different ingredients, and just feeding each other with love, cooking together is a really special thing to do and easy to set up with a little help. 

If the idea of cooking together for real does not sound like fun, do some imaginative play! We've got some fun things to help with kitchen play and my daughter has been obsessed with her play kitchen since she was 2 so it's been a very worthy investment and keeps her busy while I'm whipping up dinner.

Lizzy's Top Tips:

- Choose the right recipe! There are so many fabulous kids friendly recipe books. I've created a list of some of my favourite ones here that have really nice simple and nutritious recipes to make together, but it can also be great to make something you know well and is very familiar.

- Take 5 minutes to set up! Getting the ingredients out (and making sure you do in fact have all the required ingredients!!) can make the actual process a lot more enjoyable and reduce the stress.

- Clean up together! Part of cooking and baking is the tidy up phase. It's great for kids to be involved in this too, whether it's helping pop ingredients away in the cupboard or wiping down the benches (they may need a second go but it's all good practice!).

- Let go of any sense of perfection. Cooking with kids is never going to be the most relaxing experience, and the mess is always going to be exponentially worse ... and that's okay! Clean up will just become the next activity (see above). 

I couldn't not give kid-friendly board games a shout out - so many customers are popping in to pick up games for the holidays and I love that whānau game time is becoming a thing. It's the perfect option for a rainy afternoon, and so fun to make a bit of an event out of it - buy some special snacks, create a leaderboard, let each person choose one game each and so on! We also love a themed spotify playlist to match the vibe of what we're playing.

Below are some of our favourites - starting younger and moving to the older appropriate board games!