Back To Nature With Books

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Throughout lockdown the children and I have spent a lot of time outside

We have been walking daily and playing in the garden as much as we can

We have learned lots about lifecycles of minibeasts and plants

I wish I had made a time lapse of the orchards we walk through every day

We have witnessed the trees go from bud to blossom to apples

We have learned so much

Though life with four young children is never slow or quiet

We have developed a gentler family rhythm

And have made the most of our time that is usually packed with classes and outings

To explore our local area and make the most of our garden

We have really developed our connection with and enjoyment of nature

We have also fallen in love with some truly beautiful nature themed books

Here are a selection of our favourites

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Oh lockdown! A trial for us all that came out of nowhere but with all the stress and the worry, with all the heartache and fear, there has been love and learning and a chance to slow down and stay local. For the last 10 weeks we have stepped back from our busy daily life and we have immersed ourselves in our home, our garden and our local area. We have walked and talked and read ALL the books. This book … Slow Down written by Rachel Williams and illustrated by @freyahartas @magiccatpublishing, this book will always remind me of spring 2020 of lockdown. When we had a persistent cuckoo living in lit garden, when we raised tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies and adopted some stick insects. It will remind me of the spring we discovered the beauty right outside our own front door, crows attaching buzzards, orchards filled with blossom, rainbows, lambs, Fox cubs. The season when we walked in our local countryside every single day without hurry, with nowhere else to go. Finding fields of gold, woodlands with blankets of blue, waking with the dawn chorus. There has been much heartbreak and worry this year but we have also been blessed with a little time to slow down. Lockdown 2020, when we discovered that ‘The little things, the little moments? They are not little.’ This is a wonderful book full of the magic of nature and it is a book I think that everyone should read especially anyone who needs a moment to remember that we absolutely should take some time to stand and stare and breathe! And breathe x #booksaremagic #natureismagic #lockdown2020 #spring2020 #slowdown

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This brilliant bright and busy book is packed with information about wonderful winged creatures – butterflies and moths. From lifecycle to hatchery to feeding station as you explore The Butterfly House you can discover over 100 species of nature’s most beautiful insects. The illustrations are stunning and the text is fun and informative. This is a field trip inside the beautiful pages of a fabulous book. You are given a checklist for your visit as you wander through the pages seeing which species you can spot. @katyflint teaches us how to notice the similarities and differences between butterflies and moths. She introduces different butterfly and moth families describing their appearance and special features. I have learned so much from this book and the children keep returning to it fascinated by the facts and drawn to the stunning illustrations by @alicepattullo If your children love butterflies like mine do then this book will help them to learn so much more about these beautiful insects and help them become expert spotters out in the wild. The Butterfly House from @quartokids is a wonderful way to while away an hour or so and pretend you really are in the warmth of a butterfly house waiting for painted wings to land on your nose! Perfect!

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As lots of us begin #30dayswild I wanted to share this stunning book from @bigpicturepress Every picture is created with petals, leaves and seeds. This is a magical celebration of nature through the seasons. A beautiful wander through A Year In The Wild with all the illustrations created by @helenahpornsiri This book is a real treat for nature lovers. Each section details the seasonal changes for plants and animals. Butterflies and blossoms, birdsong, dandelion clocks, bare branches, tres waking and deer rutting are all here in this beautiful book. The words are poetic and each image an individual work of art. My children really like this book but it is me that has fallen in love with it. This would make the perfect gift for a nature loving bibliophile! Perfect for leading through during #30dayswild2020 #ayearinthewild #inthewild #naturelovers #booklove #booklovers #childrenspicturebooks📚 #childrensbooks #childrensbookillustration #picturebookblogger #picturebookillustration #picturebooksofinstagram #kidsbookstagram #childrenbookstagram #naturebooks #naturebooksforkids #raisingreaders #littlebookworm #booksforkids #booksaremagic

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Today Edie and I read this book over and over again before sharing it with everyone else at tea. It is a lovely story about the love between a little girl and her grandma. The little girl has a list of gifts she would like for her birthday but instead of any of those her grandma gives her a lemon tree. After politely hiding her disappointment the little girl keeps and nurtures the tree. Seasons come and seasons go and the tree grows lemons. The little girl and her granny have great fun making lemon juice, this was Edie’s favourite part as we acted out slicing and juicing the lemons. The grandma then helps her granddaughter make lemonade and they sell it to their friends in their neighbourhood. The little girl earns enough money to go shopping for something that she really really wants. What do you think she buys? This is a wonderful book, one of the ones that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling in side. One that makes you grin from ear to ear. A story of the love between grandma and grandchild, of learning from our elders, a reminder to have patience, that things are not always what they seem, a story that tells you to make the best of what you have, that hard work pays off and a heartwarming reminder that the simple things are often extraordinary and everything is better shared with friends and with family. We are better together! The perfect picture book for #30dayswild, for #lockdown and at a time when many of us are wanting to fill our shelves with a wider range of diverse books. This would be a wonderful addition to any booshelf x @sterlingbooks @sterlingkids #whengrandmagivesyoualemontree #diversebooks #diversechildrensbooks #kidsbooks #kidsbookstagram #childrensbooks #childrensbookstagram #picturebooks #picturebook #childrenspicturebooks #picturebooksofinstagram #raisingreaders #littlebookworm #littlebookworms #booklove #kidsbookreviews #kidsbookswelove #bookstagram #booksaremagic #30dayswild2020 #booksforkids #booksforchildren

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Today our walk was filled with tiny, perfect things. Butterflies, ladybirds, new flowers, bugs and caterpillars, beautiful dragonflies, spiders webs, soaring birds. Tiny, Perfect Things is a beautiful book of a little girl and her grandfather going for a walk in their local area and noticing and appreciating the little things that they see. This is a perfect book for remembering these last months of lockdown when so many of us have stayed local and found footpaths we have never walked before though they lead from our own front door. I have seen more of the people who live in our village in the past 12 weeks than the many years we have lived here. We have slowed down and we have made the little things the big things, the ordinary the extraordinary and this beautiful book celebrates exactly that. Noting that there is magic and beauty all around us, we just need to look for it and appreciate it and share it with the ones we love x

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What a book to start the day with!! I Ate Sunshine For Breakfast from @flyingeyebooks is amazing! The design is striking. Bright stylised illustrations make each page a work of art. The colours are striking and just stunning. It is hard to find the words to explain the joy I feel holding this book in my hand. This beautiful compendium of fascinating facts is a celebration of plants around the world, sharing their beauty and their super powers. Each page tells us the importance of plants for earth and its inhabitants. It tells us why plants matter, what plants are, how they help us, how they are made, how they grow, why we need them and why they need us to care and help them and in doing so protect the planet and preserve plant life for future generations. This is a powerful book that packs a powerful punch in a way that appeals to all readers. I have learned so much about plant families, adaptation and how we use plants in our everyday lives perhaps without even noticing. Flowers are not just pretty posies that bring us joy. Do you speak plant? Packed with ideas for activities to further learning and understanding about our botanical neighbours. This is a brilliant book and would make a wonderful gift. A guide to discovering all we can about the green heroes that keep us and the Earth alive #worldenvironmentday #fornature

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I think My Friend Earth is one of the most beautiful picture books I have ever seen. There is something magical about this book. It feels gentle, warm and inviting. The pages wrap themselves around you like a cuddle. This is a book of comfort and joy that can be enjoyed over and over again. Earth personified as a child. A child who tends to animals, creates the rain and controls the wind, she sprinkles the snow and nurtured and protects tiny seeds. The words have a wonderful rhythm that beg to be read aloud. The words are as beautiful as the pictures and create wonderful imagery of their own. This is a beauty of a book and it casts a spell over those lucky enough to read it. The peep through pages and layered illustrations bring this book to life. Within the magic and beauty there is a call to us all to protect our friend Earth. To help her do her job. This book is filled with hope and the biggest hope is that with awe and wonder and poetry it can encourage us, inspire us to be a friend to our planet, our Earth. #myfriendearth @frencisan @chroniclekidsbooks #booksaremagic #booklove #savetheearth #savetheplanet

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As July begins and lockdown begins to ease I am realising how much I have loved our isolation and our time to reconnect with the wild. While we have missed friends and family we have also loved our daily walks and our nature studies. We have heard cuckoos, seen owls and buzzards up close, listened to noisy nests, searched the farm fields for poppies. We have raised tadpoles for frogs, caterpillars to butterflies and we have our very own stick insects. The wild has wrapped around us, we have indulged in it and now I hope it will stay in our hearts and our family rhythm forever. This beautiful book, The Keeper of Wild Words, has been one of our favourites. The story of the love between a little girl and her grandmother. The grandmother is sad as many of her favourite words are disappearing from the English language. She wants to pass them on to a special wild word keeper and she chooses her granddaughter Brook, who was named after the wild. Together they explore and experience the wild savouring the simple words and saving the things they stand for. The illustrations are beautiful and show the connection between grandma and child and between gentle humans and nature. Words disappear if we don’t share them, speak them, read them. The list of words in this book are familiar to my little wildlings but the book is American so there are some things we cannot see in the wild here in the UK. All the same we have taken the words to our heart and we will not let them be lost and forgotten. My children love the page about mint. The granny and child pick a leaf and rub it, smell it and then taste it. They tasted the wild! If you are looking for a book to inspire your family to fall in love with nature, to experience nature with all your senses, this is it. We sent a copy to our Granny during lockdown and the children were delighted that she loved it too. At the back of the book there is a special envelope for you to collect your own wild words. We have three Edie words in ours that we never want to forget. Wizards, piggies and hedgestands. These were Edie’s words in early lockdown for buzzards, pigeons and stiles. We are a little sad that she says the words properly now x

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This book is a beauty and it suits my wildlings perfectly. They have lost this whole weekend to imaginary play. Their play has been inspired mostly by Peter Pan but this brilliant book showing a tribe of children having an adventure could have been written about them and their adventures in imaginary worlds. The tale us told through a series of collective nouns which really appealed to Esther and William. The illustrations are fun and the children love to tell the stories of what is happening in the pictures on each page. A colourful adventure through the natural world, celebrating how children’s curiosity can spark their imagination and influence and inspire their play. The story promotes a wild childhood full of nature play, discovery and adventure. Beautiful illustrations, fun text and space for every little wildling to bring something of themselves to the story x

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I bought this book a year ago, for Esther and William’s 9th Birthday. I read it to them on their special day and cried my eyes out. This book is an explosion of colour and joy and potential. It is a celebration of all children, their dreams, their potential. It is a love letter from a parent to their child. The books passed on three lessons. Number one the world is full of marvellous things waiting to be explored and enjoyed. The world is full of possibility and adventure. It urges children to follow their dreams and work for their goals. The second lesson warns that things will sometimes be hard, that life will not always be easy, that no one can win everything and be the best at everything. That life can be scary and confusing. Lesson number three is a guarantee that no matter what, above all else, a parent loves their child and want them to do wonderful things, want their children to be happy and healthy and safe. The story ends saying ‘go and play and live and learn. It’s your world now. This is your turn.’ This beautiful book with fun vibrant illustrations is a love letter, is a reassuring cuddle, is a nudge of encouragement to be brave and be bold and be too and know that we will always love you … no matter what x #childrensday #nationalchildrensday #itsyourworldnow @pavilionchildrens @barryfalls

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Wow I found today hard! I really struggled with just being today. Everything felt rubbish and hard and I just felt like a terrible mother and person. Tonight we read this book, The Kingdom of Nothing, and it reminded me that we do not need things, we do not need specific places and days jam packed with plans. We have each other and we are enough. We have love and laughter, cuddles and tickles, stories and play. We have blue skies and sunshine, moonlight and stars. We have green grass and birdsong. We have our health and our home. I love my children ‘more than anyTHING in the world AND that is the most important THING of all.’ Tomorrow is a new day, I am going to make sure it is a better one x #booksaremagic @quartokids #thekingdomofnothing

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We absolutely love this series of books from @chroniclekidsbooks We dip in and out of them all the time for our nature studies and they inspire our home education and help us to learn about the world around us. The last few evenings I have been walking in the evening with Esther and William. We have seen and heard some very noisy nests. Baby squirrels playing in a nesting box, a family of chicks calling out for food. We have raised frogs from spawn this lockdown and heard their bubbling. We have raised stick insects from tiny eggs and caterpillars too. These books by Diana Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long have given so much knowledge about the things we see in nature and beautiful poetic language to describe what we find and observe. The books are beautifully illustrated and packed with information. They present facts in an inspiring way that fires children’s curiosity and imagination. They encourage children to use rich vocabulary in their own descriptions of the world around them. The books do not simplify information and make it dull, these are books begging to be read aloud and to be returned to over and over again. Perfect for mini scientists and curious little explorers. We love every book in this series and cannot recommend them highly enough.

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I am a huge fan of information books. Beautiful books with colourful pictures and clear text that present facts in a simple and fun way. This collection of @alain_gree books are stunning. We have them on display in our home and dip in and out of them all the time. They are sturdy hardback books with beautiful vintage styling. The illustrations remind me of books from my own childhood. The pictures are life like so that the children can identify plants and animals and relate what they see in the book to what they discover in the real world. The books are interactive and easy for children to navigate. They inspire and encourage discussion and action and research so they are perfect to read together as a family and are a staple in our home learning routine. Edie and Bea adore these books but Esther also returns to them time and time again. They are classic, whimsical. They are darling! Perfect picture books for little learners and curious explorers x #alaingree #buttonbooks

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“You cannot tame something so happily wild…” I am a proud mother to two little girls who are wild in every sense of the word. They do love nature and are happiest outside but they are also a whole host of hurricane with a generous dollop of sunshine. Wild by Emily Hughes tells the story of a little girl raised in the forest, happy in the trees, speaking with the birds, feasting with the bears and playing with the fox cubs. This little girl is a happy creature wild and free until some humans find her and try to tame her. It does not go well. And while the story is about trying to cage a wild creature from the forest it did make me think of me trying to help my rainbow wildlings for harmoniously in with family life. At the end of the story the little girl of course returns to the forest and peace returns for everyone. At the moment I am reading about returning my children to the wild, making our home education more nature based, finding a slower pace and a more gentle rhythm to our days. There is something so calming about getting outside and enjoying the wild. Something so motivating and inspiring being out in the wild. This is a fun picture book with brilliant illustrations that we have very much enjoyed. The front cover makes you want to grab this book and read it over and over again. Perfect for a time when more people are realising education does not have to happen within the confines of a classroom and we should all spend more time on the wild side @flyingeyebooks #wild #emilyhughes #emilyhughesillustration #30dayswild #wildchild #raisethemwild #letthembewild #wildling #childrenspicturebooks📚 #childrensbooks #childrensbookillustration #childrensbookstagram #kidsbooks #kidsbookstagram #kidsbookswelove #picturebook #picturebooks #wildschooling #raisingreaders #littlebookworms

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With the coming week set to be warm and sunny we are going wild! With the help of this amazing book from @lonelyplanet we are going to be making magic sticks, fizzy potions, magic dairy dust and dandelion wishes. We are going to explore flower fairy fashion and make weapons and armour for elves. We are going to make journey sticks and nature treasure hunt bracelets. There is so much inspiration in this book for getting creative outside with children of all ages. From making and decorating crowns and butterfly wings to making dragon eggs and baby dragons. There is also a gruesome troll and goblin nature scavenger hunt which my children are going to love! A brilliant book packed with ideas, step by step instructions, lots of illustrations and photos. Nature is so magical! We cannot wait to have a week being wild! #magicalnature #magicinnature #natureplay #letthemplay #letthembewild #wildlings #getoutside #letthembewildandfree #curiouslittleexplorers #outdoorplay #wildplay #naturalworld #wildthings #lonelyplanetkids #playfullearning #letthemplayoutside #forestschool #nature #naturekids #kidsinnature #earthweek #timetoplay #timetoplayoutside #imaginativeplay #creativeplay #sensoryplay #edspireedventures #bookishplay #childrensbooks #kidsbooks

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Have you read this? There’s A Tiger In The Garden. The perfect book to inspire children to get out in the garden and use their imaginations. Will they find a tiger in the garden? Or perhaps a grumpy polar bear. This story finds Nora out in her grandma’s garden disbelieving her granny’s story that there is a tiger in the garden. As she explores the garden with her toy giraffe she comes across giant dragonflies, hungry plants and a grumpy polar bear. But will Nora find the tiger? And what will happen if she does? We set up a tiger watering hole in the garden for some imaginative play of our own! @quartokids #thetigerinthegarden #bookishplay #bookbasedplay #bookinspiredplay #childrensbooks #childrensbookstagram #kidsbooks #kidsbookstagram #kidsbookswelove #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebook #picturebooksaremyjam #picturebooksofinstagram #childrensliterature #childrensfiction #tiger #tigers #imaginativeplay #raisingreaders #letthemplay #play #getoutsideandplay

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We have been busy learning with @usborne_books and puzzles from @djeco_toys and @laurencekingpub Edie is full of questions. How, why, what questions and do I am trying to answer them through books and play. Usborne question and answer books are perfect for curious little preschoolers, full of bright illustrations and interactive sections. We have been learning about animals, their babies and their homes. Our @djeco_toys puzzles are from when Esther and William were two. They are much loved, well used and still in great condition. The matching puzzles ask little ones to match animals to their homes and to their babies. The animal and baby memory game from @laurencekingpub is great for all ages. Can be used as a matching puzzle or a memory game. I only use half the cards with Edie while I would use the full set with the older ones. Puzzles and games like this are brilliant for #playfullearning, they are great for learning new things and revising known things, perfect for starting conversations and extending vocabulary. Together with themed books they make great gifts for children #somanywaystoplay #playandlearn #playislearning #playtolearn #bookishplay #bookinspiredplay #childrensbooks #kidsbooks #kidsbookstagram #childrensbookstagram #raisingreaders #curiouslittleone #staycurious #usbornebooks #interactivebooks #preschoolplay #preschoolathome #learningathome #homelearning #homeeducation #homeeducationuk #isolationinspiration #lockdown

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I love to use books as part of our learning. As a teacher I used to start all my lessons with a story. Something I learned from an incredibly inspirational tutor at university. Punctuate your days with stories. I am certain the reason my children are all so articulate and eloquent is because their days are filled with books upon books. Yesterday Edie and I did some bee themed maths activities and we also read this beautiful @britta_teckentrup book about nature’s tiny miracle, the bee. The truly beautiful painted pages are a joy to lead through and the rhyming text tells us of the vital role bees play in the lifecycle of plants and flowers. This is a stunning book with peep through and cut out pages and the prettiest illustrations including rich colourful end pages. This is a book to treasure and enjoy. It gives you a warm buzzy feeling inside and reminds us that the littlest things can have the hugest impact in the world. #savethebees @littletigerbooks #bees #beesofinstagram #childrensbooks #childrensbookillustration #childrensbookstagram #kidsbooks #kidsbookstagram #kidsbookswelove #bookrecommendations #bookrecommendation #booklove #booklover #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebooksofinstagram #picturebooksaremyjam #picturebooklove #childrensliterature #kidlit #raisingreaders #booksforkids

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I regularly share our books on Instagram

Along with play ideas and our home education journey

We would love for you to come and join us

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