It was another very reasonably priced day yesterday walking around Ecclesall Woods, with friends ranging in age from 4 to 12 (well 43 if you count me). It can be hard to keep everyone entertained on what is essentially a nature walk especially when your group’s legs vary considerably in length. I’ve learnt from experience it’s good to have a focus other than looking for squirrels so when we don’t go geocaching we’ve often taken to doing a photo challenge.

Before setting off I wrote out ten matching words each, with a bonus personal one for luck. Yesterday

Yesterday’s words were obviously a bit too easy as they finished them pretty quickly and we had to add more, but everyone embraced the idea no matter their age. Next time I might try being a bit more abstract for the older ones and throw in the odd proverb.

The kids were daft, as expected:

Creature – they took a photo of the boy in our group.

Colour – they took pictures of the littlest person’s wellies.

Love – they took a selfie while pouting. In fact the four year old learnt a lot about selfies yesterday.

Dead – one of them took a picture of the four year old’s polar bear on the floor. Dark.

They also filmed each other leaping off things in slow motion and at one point tried to watch something on You Tube which was pointed out was not the point of the exercise.

I tell you what though, they had genuine fun. I’ve looked through some of the photos and there are stunning pictures of all sorts including “light”, “spiky” and “footprint”. They also really didn’t struggle with depicting the word “friends”.

Most people have a camera or a phone so this activity can be absolutely free which is a big win by week four of the holidays. Of course it wasn’t free yesterday because I had to buy several hot chocolates and biscuits to keep us going. I can recommend the Woodland Coffee Stop if you have a few pounds to add to the day out.

As a grown up Sheffield holds a Photomarathon in the Autumn which always books up straight away, but there’s nothing stopping anyone doing this anytime. My youngest has a book called “Go Photo” by Maggie Prendergast and Alice Proujansky that’s filled with other photo based ideas. We particularly like taking a photo on the hour every hour which, if you plan it on a day when you aren’t watching back to back Harry Potter movies can be quite entertaining.

So there you go. Get snapping.