Family lockdown activities for half-term: chosen by readers

Travelling the world one dinner at a time is proving popular, but readers also have outdoor ideas involving oaks, fairies and common-or-garden weeds

Noticing the enormous oak trees in the local woods started a conversation about how old they were. Arm-spanning the trunks to measure the girth (your arm span is the same as your height), we used this table from the Woodland Trust to work out their age. We began to talk about the events these trees had lived through and created stories about their lives. The planes that flew over in the second world war; the disappearance of the red squirrel and the arrival of the grey; how fashions and land use have changed since they were an acorn. Fuel for inquisitive imaginations!
Vanessa Wright