Free Printable Nature Bingo for young children Plus 100+ non-toy Christmas present ideas

Hannah here: Emilie, our new Seeds and Stitches contributor, and I are delighted to share with you a very sweet, non-toy, and almost free Christmas present idea. I am always pinning nature bingo ideas, but many of them use American flora and fauna, are a little too specific and detailed for very young children, and often, lets me honest, look a little bit rubbish too. So we have designed our own, and mightily proud we are of it too. Our Nature Bingo baby, you could say.

To gift, simply print out on to 300 gsm A4 card (4 on 1 page is the best use of the card), carefully cut around them, and pop into a little fabric bag with some twig pencils. I bought my Fairtrade twig pencils from eBay, and you can find a very simple tutorial to make a fabric bag on the Purlbee. The bag is used to contain the bingo card and pencil, but also doubles as a little sack for the kids to carry treasures from the woods home too. If you don’t fancy the sewing, simply wrap the pencil and the card up with a bit of ribbon. Of course this is usable all year round.

I have been thinking a lot about how we can reduce our consumerism this christmas and one of the key ways we are doing it is by asking for 1 big present for Frankie, using the wonderful Patchwork Present service (not sponsored!) I have also been researching some other non-toy gift ideas and have put together a Pinterest board to collect my own and other peoples ideas. My favourite ideas are the experience based ones: a voucher for a fun swimming session (rather than a lesson) or a baking session to make whatever the kid wants to bake (with a few proper baking tools of their very own). There are also some pretty nifty non-toy ideas in there too, from axes, to banana’s, vegetable peelers to novelty plasters, sparklers to camera's. I'm planning on making another photo book for Frankie and a DVD of all the video's I've taken of her this year. Theres nothing she likes more than watching herself. Heh. This board has been so much fun to put together! Please do leave comments below with any other ideas.