We suggest that you don't give your child that shiny new phone or the new SLR camera you treated yourself on your birthday... This will lead to tears (And they will be all yours!!!)

So dig out one of your old mobile phones or compact camera's which are now redundant ... Plug them in and charge them up.

Make sure you have enough memory free on the device as guaranteed they will become snap happy...

While the phones/camera are charging we now need to set out the objectives of the safari to turn it into a game and to keep them focused.

If the Safari is in your own garden then this will be easy, peer out of your window and try and think of things with varying levels of complexity to find ( see examples below ).

If the Safari is in a park or something your less familiar with then you will have to make some educated guesses on what is likely to be there.

Some examples for your list :

• Garden: Flower(of various types), leaf, flower pot, bird, ball, cat, shed, Spiders web, snail etc..
• Park: Swing, sign, dog, roundabout, lake etc..

If you want a template for your list why not print out this one here: Safarichecklist.pdf

For younger children, we recommend creating a picture based checklist as they may not know the difference between a Daffodil and a Daisy for example.

We always find that kids react best to things when they know exactly what about to happen so we suggest the following :

• Show them the form and say its a game that they have to find the most things on the list
• The show them how to use the camera inside before going outside into the bright sun ( Not the British summer then )
• Start with the easy one and get more difficult
• Praise always helps