Bring Nature To Your Home
February 04, 2014 By: Amruta Kshemkalyani

Tribe, as part of natural parenting, I have been introducing baby Ruhaan to nature. However it’s difficult to spend outdoor time every day during hot summer months, so I decided to bring nature to our home so that he can see and observe it every now and then and it is not limited to only the outdoor time.

Many times people living in an apartment think that it’s difficult to bring nature home. But do you know that biophilia or connection with nature brings significant wellness benefits to adults and children? Read more about urban gardening research here. Especially in urban places like Dubai, where because of hot humid weather in a few summer months, you are mostly confined indoors, it’s very essential to create your slice of nature at home. This way you make your home more healthy and livable as well as enhance your family’s wellness.

1. Plants

If you have a private outdoor space like a terrace or balcony or backyard then it’s much easy; you can create a container garden like this one. You can also enhance your garden to attract some birds, bugs if not wildlife.

container garden

However, if you don’t have a balcony or terrace, you can still create a natural haven. It can be just a small window seal garden, a tiny slice of nature for Ruhaan. Plant some beautiful, colorful plants in small pots inside or outside the window. If it’s outside, make sure to secure the pots by fixing to avoid falling down.

Even the indoor garden with indoor plants is a great idea!

Indoor garden

2. Bird Feeder

My grandma used to keep grains and seeds in a specific window of our old house for birds. One day, as a little girl I noticed lots of birds making noise in that window, so my grandma rushed to bring their feed and told me that she forgot to keep it there that day. Since then I started noticing the birds more regularly. So it’s not a surprise that I like to feed birds, like my grandma. Some grains and seeds are great bird feed, but the plants add more food for birds and insects. Once you start keeping feed, within a few days you can see more birds visiting your window, balcony, or backyard than before.

Watch here my DIY birdfeeder tutorial out of a milk carton,

Nature and Kids, our Green Parenting experience:

Keeping feed for birds in the window is working great for baby Ruhaan. Lots of birds like common myna, laughing dove, house sparrows are visiting our window and sometimes make noise. Ruhaan loves observing them, their behavior, what they do, and how they fly away. He points to a window to make me show him birdies outside and also started waiting for them. Sometimes he wants to see them in our window at night, we then tell him birdies are sleeping.

His morning starts by looking outside. When a flower blooms in our garden he gets excited looking at different colors. It rained a few times so I tried to show him rain from the same window, but he didn’t understand much. But when it was too windy, our small plant was swaying vigorously and we could hear the whistling of the wind. After that, we had a big discussion in some unknown language with lots of surprised expressions.

Flower in a window garden

I can see Ruhaan is learning about surrounding Nature and connecting with Nature. He is interested in knowing what is outside our home and he wants to observe it; explore it.

window seal garden

Here is a list of Birds in the UAE, where you can find more about native and migratory birds and birdwatching places. If you are keen to know some fun learning natural activities to do with your kids, here you can find some Eco-activities for kids.

Also, have you already read our articles from the Green Parenting section, you will get a lot of ideas and tips there.

Inspired enough to make your home more sustainable?

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