Learning Though Adventure: Foraging for Brambles

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Do your kids like to go on adventures? We love to go on outdoor adventures as a family at the weekends. This is a great way to connect as a family after a busy week and it provides the perfect opportunity to teach the kids about the world around them. Here we are sharing our most recent adventure with you, Foraging for Brambles.

learning through adventure foraging for brambles 600

Learning Through Adventure: Foraging for Brambles

I grew up on a farm in rural Yorkshire and I have vivid memories of hedgerows bursting with brambles around our family farm as we headed into autumn each year. I would go out with my sister and we would pick the best of them and bring them back for our mum to turn into a delicious Bramble Crumble, for our pudding that night. I now live over on the coast of Ireland with my own little family. I have been sharing these memories with my own kids, as we now enjoy heading out into our own local countryside to forage for brambles.

We headed out together at the weekened in search of our favourite crumble filling. The kids popped on their wellies, we all grabbed a bag each and we set off on our family foragaing adventure. I was just hoping that we would come back with enough brambles to fill our crumble dish, as last year the kids managed to eat most of them up before we got home! I couldn’t really blame though, as I’m sure I was just the same when I was their age.

We found a our ususal spot (sorry I can’t tell you where, as it’s a family secret!) and we were greeted by an array of different autumn fruits.

We have also been busy writing Animal Reports. This is another great way to teach your children about their world.

learning through adventure autumn berries

Brambles were what we came for though, so it was brambles we were gong to pick. And we did in abundance. The kids even managed to restrain themselves and only eat a few handfuls on the way round.

learning through adventure foraging for brambles picking

The main aim of our family adventure was the have fun and gather some tasty fruits to eat, but the adventure offered the kids so much more as well:

  • Picking brambles gave their pincer grips a fine old work out, so a tick in the box for giving their fine motor skills a boost.
  • Negociating the thorns around the brambles was a great problem solving exercise for the kids to work out for themselves (I was on standby though to pull out the inevitable thorns in fingers and soothe scratched hands).
  • It was a great opportunity to teach the kids about autumn and for us to look for other signs of the season around us.
  • We chatted about being responsbile whilst out foragaing. We would only pick what we could use and eat as a family and would make sure to leave plenty behind for others to pick as well.

When we arrived back home we washed and sorted our brambles into bags for freezing for eating later in the year and kept plenty out to make a delicous Bramble Crumble for our pudding that night.

I really hope that my own children remember these times, as well as I do from my own childhood.

If it’s too cold or wet to go outside for a family adventure, why not set up a Messy Play Activity indoors instead!

learning through adventure our brambles

We are sharing this post as part of Bambini Travel’s Learning Through Adventure Series.

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1 thought on “Learning Though Adventure: Foraging for Brambles”

  1. What a delightful adventure! Thank you for sharing it in the series. I love how you are sharing a piece of your childhood with them even though you are a country away. I have similar fond memories of going to strawberry and pumpkin farms with my dad growing up.

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