Calling all children and their families — people of all ages are needed this July and August for the world’s biggest wildlife survey — the Big Butterfly Count! So, whether you’re a child or an adult, you can play your part. This is a great activity for under-fives too as it’ll be fun, educational, and incredibly worthwhile. What’s more, they’ll become little citizen scientists by taking part. The nature-based activity takes as little as just 15 minutes and costs nothing at all. Children don’t need any special abilities other than a little patience and good observation — both great skills for them to practise. Let’s take a look and see what the Big Butterfly Count is all about and how children can take part this year.
The Big Butterfly Count 2025
The Big Butterfly Count is a nature survey that anyone can take part in during July and August each year. For 2025, it takes place from Friday the 18th of July to Sunday the 10th of August, a period in which temperatures are usually warm and butterfly populations are likely to peak. In essence, all that is required is for butterflies to be counted during a 15-minute period (more detail follows later in this guide). The survey event is open to everyone and, indeed, the more people who take part, the better. So, if you, your child, your family, or your friends want to play a part in protecting butterflies and nature as a whole, please get involved.
What is the Purpose of the Big Butterfly Count?
Nature is under threat. Whether it’s from global warming, habitat loss, or the use of nasty chemicals in gardens and farming, there has been a marked decline in the number of pollinators like butterflies in recent decades. In fact, experts are now calling it a nature emergency:
“Following the results of the Big Butterfly Count 2024, Butterfly Conservation have declared a butterfly emergency, and we need your help more than ever before.” — Butterfly Conservation.
With this in mind, the Big Butterfly Count aims to monitor the populations of a select number of butterfly species over the years. By monitoring populations, trends in butterfly populations can be spotted over time and any problems identified. The findings are worrying, so continued monitoring is essential. Through the Big Butterfly Count, children and families can play their part in this important initiative. By helping to count butterflies in their area, families are helping to get the bigger picture across the nation.
Why is The Big Butterfly Count Important?
The populations of butterflies can be used as a barometer for the health of pollinator numbers and nature as a whole. With some butterfly species already disappearing from our gardens and countryside and others nearing extinction, there is no time to lose. Only by identifying the issues can we, as a nation, begin to reverse some of the decline. By reversing it, it will be good for butterflies, good for other pollinators like bees, good for nature as a whole — and good for humans too! After all, without pollinators, the supply of foods like cereals, fruit, vegetables and legumes would start to run out. So, taking part in the Big Butterfly Count is extremely worthwhile and we urge little ones and their families to take part.
“Counting butterflies can be described as taking the pulse of nature and we depend on you, our citizen scientists, to help us assess how much help nature needs.” — Butterfly Conservation.
How Families Can Take Part in the Big Butterfly Count:
Quick Overview
Taking part in the Big Butterfly Count is easy! To become a little citizen scientist, it takes just a few simple steps:
- Spend 15 minutes in a sunny spot outdoors and count the butterflies you see from the event’s list of target species.
- Submit your sightings at bigbutterflycount.org or log them using the free smartphone app.
- (Optional): You can do as many 15-minute surveys as you like, so long as the location is different each time.
Detailed Instructions
The steps needed in order to take part in the Big Butterfly Count are explained in much greater detail below.
Step 1:
First, ensure you have downloaded and printed out the Big Butterfly Count target species reference sheet — follow the bold, green link if you are taking part in England. (You’ll need to fill in a short form but no purchase or sign-up is necessary. Other areas and languages are available via the same link).
Alternatively, families can take part using the free ‘Big Butterfly Count’ smartphone app, which is available for Android and Apple IOS. Scan the QR code with your smartphone camera to download it.
Although there are potentially many more types of butterflies that can be spotted around the UK, for 2025, the survey and printed ID sheet for England focus on 20 different species of butterfly or daylight-flying moths. That said, in other parts of the UK, you may see a different number featured along with possible extras if using the smartphone app (space is not so limited on the app).
Step 2:
Choose a spot for your butterfly survey. It should be somewhere outside where butterflies are most likely to be seen. Sunny, sheltered spots are good, particularly where a variety of different sizes and types of flowers or blossoms are in bloom.
TIP! Why not prepare for next year by planning your own pollinator-friendly spot in your garden or nearby open space?
Step 3:
Sometime in the period from Friday the 18th of July to Sunday the 10th of August, you/your child should spend 15 minutes making a note of how many of each type of butterfly you can see. Concentrate only on the species included in the event organiser’s reference from Step 1. You must count how many of each single species you see at the same time. So, if you see three Painted Ladies at the same time, then record that as 3. However, if you see one Painted Lady on three separate occasions during the 15 minutes, that would only count as 1 — otherwise, it could simply be the same butterfly revisiting.
OPTIONAL: If your child likes, they can do more than one 15-minute butterfly survey. The only proviso is that they change location each time.
Step 4:
Submit your butterfly survey counts. This can be done easily within the phone app or, if you/your child used the physical ID sheet, submit online at bigbutterflycount.org noting that you will not be able to submit surveys until the event opens on the 18th of July. You can submit surveys up until the 31st of August 2025.
Congratulations little ones — you are now citizen scientists! By taking part in the world’s biggest wildlife survey, you are playing a part in helping nature and making the world a better place — well done! You will also be helping your own knowledge, health, well-being and even grades by getting closer to nature. Learn more about the benefits of nature to children here.
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Did You Know?Little Acorns Nursery, Hindley Green
Nature and outdoor play feature significantly in children’s time at Little Acorns Nursery in Hindley Green. We have extensive grounds with wild zones, nature areas, and lots of opportunities for playing and exploring in the fresh air. We also know how important spending time around nature and outdoor play are to children in their early years — and they enjoy it hugely! Of course, we have fabulous facilities and resources indoors too, with a warm, home-from-home environment where children have fun and thrive in readiness for school as they approach the age of five. Free childcare funding options are available for eligible children aged from just 9 months too.
If you are looking for high-quality weekday childcare in the Wigan area and would like your child to benefit from everything our Hindley Green nursery has to offer, please get in touch using one of the options below:
Little Acorns Nursery, in Hindley Green near Wigan, may also suit families living in nearby locations like Atherton, Leigh, Ince-in-Makerfield, Platt Bridge, Westhoughton, Bickershaw, Tyldesley, and Bolton.
Outdoor Safety
Young children should always be supervised by a responsible adult while playing and exploring outdoors, with potential hazards and dangers of many kinds explained to them.
Wherever you look, nature’s flowers and trees are bursting with life during spring and summer. This got us thinking about the many nature-based activities that are possible for children and under-5s to enjoy at this time of year — under appropriate supervision, of course. One of them is a simple leaf-hunting activity that’ll get little ones exploring the outdoors, enjoying the fresh air, having some fun, and learning about the natural world. With this in mind, we’ve put together a Leaf Scavenger Hunt reference poster for children and families. It can serve as inspiration for some common leaves to look out for during the warmer months of the year. The poster is free to download, right here today, and highlights 16 different types of leaves. Included are oak, sycamore, beech, lime and many more. Children will probably be familiar with some — especially oak leaves with their wonderful little acorns — while others may be unfamiliar. However, all of our examples were sourced on a single morning’s outing, so it’s feasible to find all 16 kinds with a bit of eagle-eyed persistence! So, download the poster for your children, print it out, and explore the outdoors to see how many of the 16 leaf types your little one can find. See if they can identify the differences which make each species of leaf/tree/plant unique — and learn their names if they can. The free identification poster and some help from an adult should help. Have fun out there!
Some of the leaves will be easier to identify than others. For example, Horse Chestnut (a.k.a. ‘conker tree’) leaves are quite distinctive with their fan of multiple sections (see the 2nd row, last image on the right on the poster for our example). In contrast, hazel and lime leaves are quite similar to one another. One easy clue to tell them apart is that lime leaves are slightly shiny, whereas hazel leaves are extremely matt. And, of course, they have very different seeds once those appear (the lime seed clusters are quite beautiful as you can see on the poster in the 3rd row, 2nd image from the right).
Another interesting factor to point out to children is that some of the leaves come in different colours. Beech leaves, for instance, can be green or deep burgundy, brown or dark purple depending on which variety of beech a child locates. It’s similar for acers, which can be green, yellow, red or a deep purple/maroon. Acers however, are more likely to be found in gardens and parks than in the countryside. Some are a little like miniature sycamores, only rather more delicate and fancy! And, come 
This activity is a great opportunity for children to open their eyes to the natural world. By looking at nature more deeply, they’ll see the finer details that may have been overlooked. Nature is incredibly varied and interesting when you take the time to look closely and discover it properly. It’ll teach children about the natural world, the seasons, the changes in plants and trees at different times of the year, the circle of life, and so much more. Getting out, close to nature, is also incredibly beneficial to children. From busting stress, improving well-being, supporting the EYFS and boosting exercise, to improving concentration and even academic grades, 
Once children have collected them, leaves can inspire various other creative activity ideas for children. For example, has your child ever tried leaf rubbing (putting a leaf under paper and scribbling over it to reveal the leaf structure), leaf pressing (pressing leaves between pages of a heavy book to allow them to dry and flatten), or leaf printing (painting a leaf with paint then pressing it onto paper to offset the leaf’s form as an image)? These are just a few of the fun activities children can do with leaves. We plan to write a more detailed post about such activities in the future, so regularly revisit 
With World Bee Day arriving on the 20th of May and National Children’s Gardening Week arriving on the 24th, it’s an excellent time for a flower-growing activity for children — including under-fives. More specifically, the growing of bee-friendly flowers — from seeds — will be an excellent way to celebrate World Bee Day and support these adorable little creatures. Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators are incredibly important for the world, being largely responsible for pollinating the crops, including nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables, that we rely on for food. Yet they are under threat with numbers dwindling severely in recent years. Without bees and other pollinators, the world’s animals, plants, trees, and flowers would be in real danger. Today’s bee-friendly flower-growing activity is therefore an incredibly worthwhile one for children to get involved in. It’s fun, highly educational for little ones, and will help to make the world a better place! Little ones, let’s get growing!
Unless seeds are available from friends and family or harvests from previous years, parents of under-fives will need to source them. However, that’s easy and can be incredibly inexpensive. Most supermarkets sell seed packets and, if not, there is a whole range of online stores to choose from (
If children are going with our recommended second option, they will first need to read packets to ensure their timing is right. For seed trays, they can use inexpensive, commercially available seed trays or use smaller options like flower pots. Another free alternative is to use repurposed margarine tubs, yoghurt pots, or similar. Whichever option they choose will need drainage holes added underneath by supervising parents plus a drip tray of some kind. Whether that’s a commercial one or something as simple as a saucer is up to families.
Once the soil is layered into the seed trays or pots, to a level an inch or so below the top, children can indent the soil/compost for the seeds to go into. Seeds can be manually spaced out into these indents so that, once they grow, the individual plants will be easily separated. We suggest scattering a shallow layer of sieved soil or compost over the seeds once placed into the indents and given a sprinkling of water.
Children should continue to water the seedlings regularly, when needed, and may also have to thin out any ‘clumps’ or plants that are too close together, otherwise, several plants may get tangled and have to compete with one another unnecessarily.
Once flowers appear, children can expect pollinators like honey bees, bumblebees, butterflies, and hoverflies to appear. It’s going to be magical for children when that day first arrives! Bees and the other pollinators truly are delightful and adorable. Children should look but not touch*, after all, bees have important work to do!
This activity will raise awareness of bees and pollinators in children of all ages. It’s not only a wonderful way to introduce children to these adorable creatures, but also a great opportunity to raise awareness of the plight bees and pollinators are facing. They are under severe pressure from habitat loss, global warming, the use of harmful pesticides/weedkillers, pollution, invasive predators, and many other threats that have made their populations plummet in recent years.
Families, set your diaries for the wildlife event of the year, which happens this January from Friday the 24th to Sunday the 26th inclusive. It’s free, takes just one hour, and allows children and adults to be part of the world’s biggest garden wildlife survey. During the event, families and individuals across the nation simply count the birds they spot in the garden, park, local green space, or even balcony over the course of 60 minutes. The results of hundreds of thousands of these surveys are compiled by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to build a picture of the health of the nation’s bird populations. It’s important scientific and ecological work and children can become citizen scientists if they simply take part. Learn more about the Big Garden Birdwatch and how to take part in today’s guide for families with children.
Children will love being involved in this important nature-based activity. They’ll not only play their part in helping birds and nature, but they’ll also have fun and learn something along the way. They will discover some of the many wonderful feathered visitors who live in their neighbourhood and learn about some of the important issues affecting the natural world. They’ll begin to grasp the impact of humans on Britain’s flora and fauna and learn the importance of conservation and looking after the natural world around them. Through this endeavour, they’ll learn how they can make a positive difference. They will also become little citizen scientists! It’s fun, educational, and will give them a wonderful sense of achievement too. It may even change their outlook over the long term and help them think about their own impact on the planet, which is a wonderful outcome. And last but not least, 
Once the chosen time and date arrive, all you/your children need to do is monitor birds landing on your chosen patch. Count those that actually land rather than any flying otherwise there’s a danger that one bird could be counted multiple times. What you need to record for the survey, though, is the largest number of each bird species that have landed at any one time during the hour. So, for example, if you spot two blackbirds that have landed at the same time in the first half hour, but later in the hour you can see 4 that have landed at the same time, then you need to record “4” for blackbirds.
