A seasonal kit for families who want their children to fall back into the hours between things - outside, hands busy, head clear.
No. 01
Four seasonal kits a year, posted to your door - each one a considered collection of natural materials that draws children back to real play, outside.
No screens. No batteries. No plastic. Just the things a child needs to lose a few hours to the woods, the garden, the puddle at the end of the road.
The first kit launches autumn 2026. It's called The Forager.
Autumn 2026
A slow-looking kit for hedgerow and woodland walks.
Order · shipping from early September
Winter 2026/27
A kit for cold dusks, small fires and the night sky.
Spring 2027
Three plants, three timeframes - days, weeks, months.
Summer 2027
A kit for building dens and staying out longer than planned.
No. 02 · For the grown-ups
Every seasonal kit arrives with a printed companion for parents: an editorial exploring the philosophy behind the kits - what researchers, writers and poets have thought and how these musings have led to the objects in the box. With this, a seasonal poem to read aloud, pin to the fridge, or carry into the woods. Ideas for grown-ups, alongside the materials for the children.
From one of the essays
Once built, the den does what the philosopher Gaston Bachelard said all true shelters do: it protects the dreamer. Children inside dens don't really play in any active sense. They dwell. And when a child dwells, something happens to their attention that adult life has mostly forgotten how to allow - what the Kaplans called soft fascination. The eye rests on a moving leaf, the ear catches a wood pigeon, time loosens its grip. Keats was there first, urging readers whose eyes were "vexed and tired" to go and feast them on the sea. And it is exactly this loosening that Edward Thomas captured in Adlestrop - the express train stops on a hot June afternoon, the speaker leans out, and suddenly hears all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. A den is a small Adlestrop. The same hush, the same widening, the same gift.
Each seasonal kit includes a printed essay.
A poem
Yes. I remember Adlestrop- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop-only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Adlestrop - Edward Thomas
One essay. One poem. Every season.
No. 03 · About us
I'm Nicky. My partner Rachel and I have three children. Like most families, we've watched our older child's relationship with screens shift in ways we didn't choose.
We've been trying to give them something different in the in-between hours of their week - long unstructured stretches outside, real materials, the kind of play we remember from our own childhoods and don't always see in front of us now.
The kits are what we've made from that attempt.
The boxes are designed with Rachel, an ex-British Army officer, primary teacher and Forest School practitioner in training. The essays are written by me, a secondary English teacher.
A short film
No. 04 · The evidence
Decades of research from paediatricians, psychologists and educators all point in the same direction: unstructured outdoor play is one of the most under-rated inputs to a healthy childhood.
−50%
Decline in children's unsupervised outdoor play in a single generation.
Natural England, Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment
+ wellbeing
Time in green spaces linked to lower anxiety and better attention.
University of Exeter / WHO Europe reviews
We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.
Richard Louv
Last Child in the Woods
Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury; the time spent engaged in it is not time that could be better spent in more formal educational pursuits. Play is a necessity.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Exuberance: The Passion for Life
The decline in children's free play has gone hand in hand with the rise in childhood mental disorders.
Peter Gray
Research Professor of Psychology, Boston College - American Journal of Play, volume 3, number 4
Also · A small thing
A sage-green organic 100% cotton backpack, 3 lengths of string, a Lyra Ferby triangular grip pencil, a A6 notebook and 3 glassine collecting wallets. Made to be filled by the child who carries it.
£30 · free UK shipping.
No. 05
The first kit is ready for autumn. Reserve The Forager now - a hand-illustrated notebook, loupe, palm drill, clay, activity cards and more - posted to your door from early September.
Order The ForagerFollow along
We share behind-the-scenes notes, seasonal prompts and kit previews.
