Books
🌿🌻Birding For Babies: Backyard Birds by Chloe Goodhart, illustrated by Gareth Lucas
This counting board book uses rhythm and rhyme to introduce children to ten different species of backyard birds native to the USA.
🌿🌻Prairie Mamas and Babies by Stan Tekiela
This photo-illustrated board book shares facts about forest animals native to North America, including sandhill cranes, killdeer, bison, prairie dogs, badgers, & coyotes. For a quick read, just learn the names for each baby animal (like colts, pups, owlets, and calves). For a longer read, you may learn about the number of babies, where they are born, how parents care for them, and how fast they grow.
🌿🌻Who’s Hiding in the Woods? by Katharine McEwen
This lift-the-flap board book features two dozen short facts about forest animals we might see in our backyards or in the deep woods. Learn about deer, foxes, squirrels, and many more in this beautifully-illustrated book!
🌿🌻Baby Owls by Martin Waddel, (illustrated by Patrick Benson)
In this classic board book, three young owlets wait and wish for their mother owl to return to their nest in the tree. As they wait on a branch, they try to reassure themselves that she will be back soon!
🌿🌻Slow Down… in the Park by Rachel Williams(illustrated by Freya Hartas)
This board book is full of cute & soft illustrations of baby ducks, squirrels, mushrooms, woodpeckers & lilies. Three-sentence pages use lovely rhythm and rhyme to describe things you might encounter in a park.
🌿🌻F is for Fox (illustrated by Marc Pattenden)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about foxes from around the world, including the red foxes and grey foxes of the United States.
🌿🌻T is for Toad (illustrated by Marc Pattenden)
This illustrated Animal Alphabet board book features alliterative facts about toads from around the world, including American toads.
🌿🌻City Critters by Antonia Banyard
In this board book, simple text invites children to explore wildlife outside their doors, including squirrels, frogs, pigeons, rabbits, and ducks. Photo illustrations feature closeups of wildlife alongside pictures of children interacting with nature.
🌿🌻Deer Babies by Donald M Jones
This simple little board book features photo illustrations and short and easy text for young readers learning about fawns!
🌿🌻Big Ideas For Little Environmentalists: Restoration with Wangari Maathai by Maureen McQuerry (illustrated by Robin Rosenthal)
With long sentences and simple art, this board book tells the story of Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, who helped her struggling tree-barren community by planting new trees which provided wind shelter, firewood, & erosion control that restored their land.
🌿Over in the Forest by Marianne Berkes (illustrated by Jill Dubin)
Like other books in this series, Over in the Forest is sung to the tune of “Over in the Meadow” and introduces ten animals found in or around woods across the USA, including deer, turkeys, skunks, and opossums. It’s also available as a board book!
🌿You Are a Garter Snake by Laurie Ann Thompson (illustrated by Jay Fleet)
This book features cute, simple illustrations and follow-along actions as readers are taught about the life of a tiny newborn garter snake with impressive accuracy including live birth, growing diet, defense mechanisms, thermoregulation, and winter dormancy. This is an excellent learning book for those who already love our native snakes and those who are still uneasy with them.
🌿Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes by John Cage and Lois Long
In case you’re wondering, yes– it’s written by that John Cage. This beautiful book features hand-written recipes and instructions for making mud pies and cakes in the timeless ways that children do.
🌿Nuts To You by Lois Ehlert
In this collage-illustrated backyard tale, a curious and often-destructive squirrel finds his way into a child’s home through a screen hole in an open window. The child lures the squirrel back outdoors with nuts on the sidewalk. Dandelions and goldfinches are also prominently featured in the illustrations.
🌿Plant a Pocket of Prairie by Phyllis Root (illustrated by Betsy Bowen)
Easy reading at two sentences per page, this cute book describes the different types of native wildlife that utilize each type of prairie plant you might plant in your yard. At the back of the book there is more information about prairie restoration efforts that support native bugs and birds, plus several more pages of more detailed information about native prairie animals. Phyllis Root lives in Minnesota and has written quite a few books about people and nature.
🌿Fox Explores the Night by Martin Jenkins (illustrated by Richard Smythe)
This “First Science Storybook” exploring concepts of light and dark is set in a city, where Fox searches for food by night in the urban landscape, utilizing and reacting to different sources of light. She returns by moonlight to the safety of her den before sunrise.
🌿Robin Builds a Nest by Martin Jenkins (illustrated by Richard Jones)
This “First Science Storybook” explores mechanics of “push and pull” as Robin builds a nest of twigs and grass and fluff, pushing and pulling each piece perfectly into place until the nest is ready for eggs.
🌿I Like the Outdoors: What Jobs Are There? by Carron Brown (illustrated by Roberto Blefari)
A book for older children about different outdoor professions. The information is presented in a primarily linear fashion, walking you through what a day might look like in that job. Professions include scientists, conservation officers, recreation instructors, people who grow plants, and people who design, build, or maintain outdoor structures. At the end of the book there is also a flow chart to help people determine which outdoor jobs their personal strengths are best suited to.
Mole’s Hill by Lois Ehlert
Mole has dug another hill, and fox has sent raccoon and skunk to make sure she gets rid of it so it doesn’t obstruct their planned path to the pond. As the season goes by, Mole just makes her hill bigger and bigger and covers it in seeds at the full moon. When the other animals return in the fall, they see the big hill covered in beautiful flowers and decide that Mole’s hill can stay.
Creative Art Opportunities
🐿️Make collages using leaves, grass, and twigs from your yard or the park
🐿️Painting with goose feathers (commercially collected)
🐿️Collage with wildflowers
🐿️Paint with dandelions
🐿️Paint with sticks
🐿️Painting with mud
Hands On Experiences
⛅️Play with backyard animal plush toys
⛅️Explore with backyard animal figurines
⛅️Explore with mud in a sensory bin
⛅️Explore with toy salamanders, snakes and bugs in a sensory table, providing cover objects for them to burrow and hide under
🌿Watching for backyard birds and squirrels using binoculars
🌿Set up a bird feeder to observe birds (and squirrels) eating
🌿Checking carefully under backyard furniture and debris to find frogs, snakes, or salamanders
🌿Catch backyard bugs with a net for hands-off observation
Songs to Learn and Sing
“If You Want to be an Owl” (Tune: “If You’re Happy and You Know It”)
If you want to be an owl, say “Who Who”
If you want to be an owl, say “Who Who”
Then you get to sleep all day
And at night you get to play
If you want to be an owl, say “Who Who”
“Raccoon Sits in a Hollow Tree” (Tune: Kookaburra)
Raccoon sleeps in a hollow tree
While the sun shines on you and me
Sleep, Raccoon
Sleep, Raccoon
Warm and cozily
In the darkest part of night
Raccoon has the best eyesight
Look, Raccoon
Look, Raccoon
My, your eyes are bright
Raccoon doesn’t make a sound
When he prowls all around
Hunt, Raccoon
Hunt, Raccoon
Find food on the ground
“Busy Squirrels” (Tune: When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again/Ants Go Marching)
Squirrels are busy running ’round today, today
They are hiding all their nuts away, away
In the trees, in the ground
Hiding nuts all around
Oh, they work so hard so later they can play
“The Little Skunk’s Hole“
I stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole
And the little skunk said, “Well, bless my soul!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Remove it!”
Well, I didn’t take it out and the little skunk said
“If you don’t take it out, you’ll wish you had!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Take it out!
Pssssssst!”
… I removed it.
NIYN – Backyard Nature on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.
Nature In Your Nurture 