Caro and Co. Helping Kids Find Wonder in the Everyday

With these imaginative ideas from an award-winning blogger, children can find magic in the world outdoors. The outdoors is where nature and imagination meet— and these marvelous activities reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary, magic in the mundane, and enchantment in the everyday. From creating sparkly shadows with reflected light to gardening in a can, collecting rocks, and making beach art, award-winning blogger Caroline Webster has devised simple, ingenious, and inexpensive ideas to help parents and children find wonder in everything they see.

Caroline ‘Caro’ Webster is a freelance writer, author and founder of the award-winning blog Caro & Co. She is one of five children (two brothers and two sisters) and grew up on your typical ¼ acre block in suburban Melbourne. They were ‘free range children’ and she believes this is where her love of the outdoors was formed. They had a plethora of animals including cats, dogs, mice, chooks, rabbits, a galah and at one stage a Shetland pony. Nearly every day was spent outside doing chores (which her mom made fun) or just simply playing. They were lucky enough to go to a farm every school holidays near the town of Henty in rural Victoria.

“Days were spent riding our horses bareback, swimming in the dams and helping with stock work. We’d get up early in the morning before sunrise and find our horses by torchlight. We would make and pack raspberry jam and banana sandwiches and be off – not returning until dusk. It was a magical part of my childhood.” Caro remembers.

Caro believes that it is essential to keep children engaged with the world around them and vital to foster creativity, imagination and resilience in all children. She is a fierce advocate of child’s right to enjoy regular, unstructured play and experience responsible risk-taking. She’s also passionate about the slow-life method of parenting, encouraging community and supporting Aussie farmers. Her writing focuses on getting kids into the kitchen; food and food sources; gardens and gardening; nature and outdoors; animals; photography; travel; technology and how to effectively balance a child’s use of that technology with real-life experiences. She became a World Vision ambassador in 2013. She is married and lives in Sydney with two children who perplex and delight her in equal measure.