The inspiration for this gift idea developed a couple of weeks ago when I was scanning the library shelves and came across the book called The Bluest of Blues about Anna Atkins and her use of cyanotype photography. That is one of her images above.
If you’re still looking for a gift for a great kid in your life, we may have just the thing.
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One of my goals for this year is to nurture seasonal rhythms with my family.
My focus for this goal is to increase our awareness of the role that the seasons play in our daily lives. I want to find ways to highlight for the seasonal shifts that occur in in the foods we eat, the activities we do, our celebrations, and even in how we feel.
Today I wanted to share the seasonal focus that we’ve added to our morning routine.
Continue readingTrees! Right now trees are all the rage at our house. I just finished reading The Overstory (more on that soon), and it left me feeling all sorts of feelings about trees. At the same time, I found myself playing a tree-centered game with the boys, reading them a few great books about trees, and we’ve been doing all sorts of playing IN the trees. Read on to see our latest tree-related recommendations. Continue reading
My 2020 reading has a very obvious theme: it’s all about nature and our connection to the natural world.
Braiding Sweetgrass was the first book that I finished this year. Then I read The Overstory; more on that in another post. This morning I started Nature Underfoot. And waiting in the wings is this Rachel Carson biography. It’s a theme, alright. So if you’re looking for a book about rediscovering our connection to nature, there’s no better place to start than Braiding Sweetgrass. Continue reading
Happy Earth Day! Come along for a little glimpse at why we love this book. Continue reading
We love good books. Who doesn’t?
Below you’ll find a running list of our favorite nature books for kids. Have something to recommend? Let us know in the comments!
If you’d like to learn more about some of the books on this list? Check out this post. And we wrote about our favorite kids’ beach reads here. And a tree focused post here.
Finally, you’ll find our full archive of book-related posts here.
We feel that it’s very important to have an understanding of and appreciation for the natural world, and we believe that both of those things should start as early as possible in a child’s life.
One of the easiest ways to help children learn about nature is to spend time outdoors. Most children are naturally curious, and as they play and explore in nature, they will begin to ask questions about plants and animals, the habitats and ecosystems where they live, and the larger world around them. This is a great time to begin answering those questions and to work together to research the answers when they are unknown to either of you.
And that leads to our second way to help children learn about the natural world and our relationship with it : books!
Books are obviously a great resource for teaching children. They are a reference when helping to answer a child’s questions, and they can provide insights into places and times that we’ve never been, which is awesome for awakening a child’s imagination. Of course, that will likely raise more questions, and the cycle continues!
Below are a few of our current favorite nature books for kids. Some of these are straight-up reference guides, while others provide that magical view into another world (because how many of us have actually seen the hidden world of animals under the snow or experienced the immense pressure and heat at the center of the Earth?!).
