Bush Buddies Kids' Club - Bush Heritage Australia

School Holiday Activity Pack

Summer holidays means plenty of time to explore outdoors. Learn to make a backyard sundial, a bush cubby or how to catch some backyard bugs for an insect audit.

Learn more about the echidna (Australia's most widespread native mammal), find out how our friends in the Kimberley, the Wunambal Gaambera people, use fire in a special way to protect their Country and discover just how far a kangaroo can hop!

There's a desert animal word find, some jokes to enjoy and a chance to add summer colours to beautiful illustrations.

Kids' activities

Daisy chains

Spring means wildflowers and many local parks and backyards will be in bloom, which means it’s the perfect time to dust off your skills at making Daisy chains!

The walking water experiment

Plants need water – everyone knows. And they can draw water up from their roots into their leaves at the top through a process called capillary action. We can see how this works using a simple paper towel.

How to attract lizards to your garden

Wherever you are in Australia, when the weather's warm, chances are there are lizards that you could encourage into your garden. Skinks, dragons, geckoes and blue-tongues all make great neighbours – not only will they protect your garden by eating up insects, some can take care of slugs and snails as well.

Compost in a bottle

Healthy soil is a very important part of nature. In this science experiment, we’re going to compost food scraps to create nutrient-rich soil. It will take about three weeks.

Dirt track detectives

Take a quick quiz and see if you can figure out which animals left these tracks on our conservation reserves.

How do rainbows work?

Where there’s sunshine and rain together it usually means a beautiful, clear rainbow! Why? Let’s find out by making a rainbow of our own.

How to make damper

Exploring, hiking or camping in the bush is a sure way to build up an appetite. There are loads of delicious foods you can cook over an open fire but one of the simplest and best known to make is damper. It’s so easy, everyone can have a go.

Decorate your devices

With these desktop wallpapers we'd like to share with you some of the landscapes, plants and animals that we protect together. We'll add new photographs from time to time and let you know through our newsletters and Facebook page.

Online jigsaws

Aussie Koalas sleep up to 20 hours a day! How fast can you piece together this online jigsaw of a sleepy Koala photographed by Steve Parish? Race the clock and try to beat your friends!

Get crafty

Face masks

Do you know how some of our Aussie animals behave? Dressing up is lots of fun and it really gets you thinking. What are some things these animals can do that people can't? Print off and cut out face masks of an ant eating Numbat, cheeky Fairywren or sleepy Koala.

Make a face mask

Bedroom name signs

It's not just animals that are territorial – kids can be too! Choose the first letter of your name, then download and print off the matching animal room sign. Mark your name on it and hang on your bedroom door to let everyone know who the room belongs to.

Find your sign

Alwal origami

The world needs more Golden-shouldered Parrots - only between 700 and 1,100 of these beautiful turquoise and green birds remain in the wild on Cape peninsula in far north Queensland. Make your own unreal origami parrots with these simple instructions. Simply print and fold!

Get started

Colourful creatures

Talented volunteers have created colouring sheets of native animals that live on our different reserves. Discover which creatures live in different parts of Australia and use our species spotlight pages to discover their colours and markings (or give them all spectacular new colours).

Get colouring

Work sheets

Free, fun and educational work sheets. Solve our maze to reconnect a mother possum with her joey. Join the dots to draw a Burrowing Bettong or complete a word search to help us find animals from our Carnarvon Station Reserve.

Work sheets