As winter settles into most of the country – be it a rainy season or a very snowy season – sometimes it’s hard to come up with ways to get your kids out of the house to enjoy the great outdoors. Yes, there’s always sledding and snowball fights if you live in the snowy tundra (which many of us are in this year), but isn’t there anything else to do?
Of course, there is. Why not go out with the kids and take some photos. We love how accessible photography is these days. You don’t even really need a camera – everyone has a cell phone, right?!
We remember the days when when our parents gave us a camera, and we had nothing better to shoot than our stuffed animals on our bed, but our parents generously took the rolls of film to the drugstore and paid to have them developed. Photos of stuffed animals. I can’t imagine paying for that today, but we sure are glad our parents did it back then. We still have some of the photos and get a big kick out of looking at them. But we digress…
photo courtesy of kfjmiller at stock.xchng
Taking photos during the winter gives your kids a new perspective of nature. There aren’t pretty flowers to shoot so you have to get creative in what makes an interesting shot. Maybe dog tracks in the snow look cool or bright orange finches at the bird feeder really stand out against a grey sky.
screech owl at Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge
A couple weeks ago, it was very foggy in our neighborhood, so we got inspired to take one of the boys out to the wildlife refuge near our house to take photos. We had a blast looking for animals that might not come out on a bright sunny day. We saw a screech owl up in a tree that was camouflaged to the point that someone had to point it out to us – we took lots of photos!
It was so much fun getting outside together and taking photos. When we got home, we downloaded the photos right away to see if we got any good ones. There were a few keepers – and, boy, are we glad we didn’t have to pay to have 90 pictures developed at the drugstore!
If you want to have a goal, there are lots of photo contests that you can enter. Some of them have specific categories for kids entries. Check out this site for lots of links to contests for kids.
What kinds of activities do you do with your kids outside during the winter? We’d love to hear!
Pingback: Inspired to Connect with Nature | Color Me House
Pingback: Hobbies for Mommies | Color Me House