Welcome to the latest in our Small Fry series of books.

We hope that reading this will reconnect you to the magic of your inner-child and that in some small way, it inspires you to help create new childhood experiences and memories for your children.

L-R Katrina with Saskia and Aiden, Susie with Phoenix and Oliver

Photograph by Elise Lockwood

As with our first offering, Small Fry: Inspiration for Cooking with Kids, we want Outdoors to be accessible to parents, grandparents and carers who are looking for ideas for the precious time they share with the children in their lives. It’s important to remind ourselves that the outdoors is a place of wonder for children.

In a world of over-structured time, organised play, and truly frightening levels of childhood obesity, stress and depression, the outdoors provides a much needed break from the rush of everyday life. By literally encouraging our children to stop and smell the roses, we can help them unwind and recharge their batteries. So they can simply be. By providing solo, unstructured outdoor time, we help them develop confidence, a sense of spirit, independence and creativity–and that gives them a

sense of their greater environment and their place within it.

Children learn through their senses. The taste, sight, touch, smell and sounds of the outdoors are vast and tremendously exciting to a young child. The simplest of plants and creatures can provide extraordinary lessons on concepts such as the passage of time, the seasons, colours, shapes and literacy and numeracy.

The outdoors is where their imaginations can truly roam free. Wild things are hiding and it’s a place of high adventure, where they can get down and dirty with bug  catcher and magnifying glass in hand. They can become conquering explorers, artists, amateur botanists, pirates, fairies or Robin Hood–all in the blink of an eye! 

We encourage you to celebrate the great outdoors with your children whenever you can. Splash through puddles, help find fairies and trolls, lie under a tree and daydream, or just do nothing. Whatever the outdoors means to you and your child, you’ll find something to delight you both.

For Katrina and me, Caro has been the perfect partner to write Outdoors on many levels. You’ll find her horticultural background and her passion for the outdoors as educational and infectious as we have. The three of us met at our community mothers’ group, in those first few foggy weeks after the birth of our first children, and our friendship has continued and developed.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on the book, so please send them to us at info@smallfryfun.com. The third book in the Small Fry series, Inspiration for Creative  Play with Children, will be on the shelves in 2009, in the mean time please visit our website www.smallfryfun.com for updates.

Susie and Katrina