Postcards Home

Postcards home is a Victorian way of sending home the plants and items that Victorians would find when on holiday around the country. It is quite simply a collage of your journey or adventure through the countryside, park or remote Amazonian rainforest showcasing the latest ‘finds’.

A collection of postcards home

Take a piece of scrap cardboard about the size of a postcard and stick a line of double sided tape (or sticky tape rolled over) down the middle of the cardboard.

Scrap cardboard with double sided tape.

Then go on your adventure, around the house, garden, street or park. collecting and sticking your found items to the tape. Please remember to respect the environment and try to only stick things that are abundant or already fallen from plants or trees. Certainly don’t stick anything live to the tape, like insects etc. It might be worth taking a ‘sample’ pot with you just in case you little ones want to stick a worm to it. use the sample pot instead (egg boxes work well).

once you have collected your specimens, you can go home and look up the types of plants (leaf snap and plant ID are good ones). Or post to a friend or family member with a letter all about your adventure.

Have fun!

Don’t forget to check out some of the other articles that might keep you occupied.

Minibeast Discovery

It’s that time of year when all the insects and the like start emerging from hibernation or their warm place of safety in search of a good bit of wood to munch, reproduce or emerge as a flying insect. So, It is also a great time to go looking for them.

Here are a few links to really useful websites for ID sheets that you can print or use on an iPad etc. Just click on the pictures.

When you are collecting your minibeasts please remember to replace moved logs or detritus and gently place the minibeasts back to their homes gently, i mean, imagine someone 1000000 times bigger than you dropping you from a great height. Also a key tip is some insects are predators, try not to mis predators with prey, or little Jimmy will wonder what happened to Francis the Fly…

Look under logs, leaves, stones (if you have stepping stones in your garden, lift one of them), under flower pots, in corners of sheds, under mats, and in bushes.

Most of all… have fun!