Sounds.

We were all sitting in the garden at the end of the day yesterday when we heard a mystery sound. This happens quite a lot in our lives. It's almost always some kind of machinery. The boys are totally tuned in to anything mechanical so as soon as we hear something, one or other of them insists we go to find out what it is.

"Is it a steam train!?"

Yesterday there was something slowly clattering its way down the main road on the other side of the house making a strange hissing/puffing noise and eventually a very intriguing toot. I opened the side gate and we all ran down the lane to find this just turning into the next door pub's carpark:
In fact there were two of these beautiful old steam tractors that were travelling home from a steam rally not so far from here and stopping for the night.
It was one of our more unusual finds, but we've also run down the road (on one occasion with the boys still in their pyjamas) to see the road sweeper in action, been on lots of visits over to the rec to see the tractor mower and had millions of expeditions to see the various diggers at work round the village:

One summer holiday began with a back-hoe loader making a new "route to school" right outside our back gate- hours of entertainment!

From our garden we are within earshot of the field beyond the rec, which is how we knew when they were using the forage harvester to cut the corn-on-the-cob plants.

And we've also chased tractors in the rain to find out what they're up to and where they're going.

But we honestly never expected to hear one of these trundling by!

So for a quick and easy activity, stand outside, listen for an interesting sound and then go and investigate!