Books
🌿🌻Together by Mona Damluji (illustrated by Innosato Nagara)
In this brightly illustrated board book, simple text describes individual things like stars, animals, & people and how many things together make something greater than their sum. Bees together make a hive, stars together make a galaxy, birds together make a flock, and waves together makeup a sea. The book highlights social justice and the power of activism with joined voices.
🌿🌻Little Naturalists: Ansel Adams and His Camera by Kate Coombs (illustrated by Seth Lucas)
This board book tells the story of a young Ansel Adams, who photographed the U.S.A.’s national parks with his camera, inspiring generations to see the beauty in our natural landscapes and helping to preserve more of our wild spaces.
🌿🌻Little Naturalists: Georgia O’Keefe Loved the Desert by Kate Coombs (illustrated by Seth Lucas)
This board book introduces children to the story of Georgia O’Keefe, a famous artist who loved to paint the landscapes, rocks, plants, and even sun-bleached bones of the New Mexico desert where she lived.
🌿🌻Little Naturalists: Rachel Carson Cared About Our World by Kate Coombs (illustrated by Seth Lucas)
This board book introduces children to the work of Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who observed the effect of pesticides on ecosystems and wrote a book, Silent Spring, that moved people to save birds, and other wildlife by restricting the use of poisonous chemicals in agriculture.
🌿🌻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.
🌿🌻Big Ideas For Little Environmentalists: Preservation with Aldo Leopold by Maureen McQuerry (illustrated by Robin Rosenthal)
With long sentences and simple art, this board book describes Aldo Leopold’s role as an environmentalist who explored people’s connection to the land and encouraged others to reconnect with nature through wilderness preservation and the visiting of natural spaces.
🌿🌻We Share this Earth: A Community Book by Dan Saks, illustrated by Brooke Smart
This illustrated board book uses simple rhyming text to describe how our experiences on earth are connected to everyone else who’s ever lived and how we are connected to our world. Rain affects our picnic plans, we rely on pollinators, and our actions affect the earth in ways that affect others in turn. The illustrations of this book are captioned with the cities and countries they depict.
🌻Clive is a Nurse by Jessica Spanyol
🌻Clive is a Teacher by Jessica Spanyol
🌻Clive is a Librarian by Jessica Spanyol
🌻Clive is a Waiter by Jessica Spanyol
🌻Clive is an Artist by Jessica Spanyol
In these simple board books, Clive plays pretend with his friends, exploring different professions that interested boys are too often redirected away from. Spanyol provides Clive a diverse recurring cast of friends who play with him.
🌻We Share this Neighborhood: A Community Book by Dan Saks, illustrated by Brooke Smart
This illustrated board book uses simple rhyming text to describe the connections between different people in a neighborhood talking and playing together that make it a community.
🌻 We Care by Megan Madison
This board book is an introduction to transformative justice, focusing on how a healthy community cares about making sure everyone’s needs are met. It explores how communities stay healthy by listening to all of its members, how lack of equity hurts the whole community, and how to respond to conflicts in healthy ways.
🌻 My Vote by Megan E. Bryant and Daniel Prosterman, illustrated by Micah Player
In this board book, Citizen Baby explains the importance of learning about local candidates, sharing your voice on issues important to you, and making sure you (and others) are registered to vote, and making sure you make it to the polls, seizing your chance to influence the leadership of your community.
🌿We’ll Make Things Better Together by Ben Gundersheimer (Mister G.), illustrated by Dow Phumiruk
Pairs of siblings getting ready for the day help their families at home before going out together to clean up the park with other neighborhood famileis. They visit and support an injured neighbor, collaborate in a community garden, and play and sing and dance together at a neighborhood barbecue. This rhyming book pairs best with the tune written by its grammy-winning author.
🌿I Like the Outdoors: What Jobs Are There? by Carron Brown
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.
Firebears by Rhonda Gowler Greene
This story follows the bears of fire station number 8 through three different emergencies including a cat in a tree, a burning store, and a house fire. I like to add a series of siren “wee-oohs” after the phrase “siren wailing up and down” as the firebears respond to each call.
Fire Truck by Ivan Ulz
A singalong book to Ulz’s catchy Fire Truck song. There are two editions with wildly different artwork, and the tall white high-contrast version is much more difficult to obtain (as I found when my first copy mysteriously vanished from my classroom).
In the Neighborhood by Rocio Borilla
In this story, a series of assumptions keeps the neighbors of one street from getting to know one another. When one neighbor is forced to ask another for help, it sparks a chain reaction of neighbors meeting that turns them into a true neighborhood–a community of people leaning on one another that improves all of their lives.
Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy
When Mable’s baby brother is swept away in a bubble that floats away across town, the whole community comes together to seek a solution as the baby drifts higher and higher. This rhythmic tongue twister is one of my absolute favorites to read aloud.
The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway
The town of Itching Down is faced with a crisis one summer when four million wasps invade. The town holds a meeting to discuss the problem and rid themselves of the nuisance, and then the whole community works together to build a giant jam sandwich in which to trap the wasps. This classic story has excellent rhyme and rhythm schemes.
Delivery Drivers by Julie Murray
In a time of online orders for goods and food delivery services, delivery drivers are a regular part of our lives and the community workers that children are most likely to see, whether in their neighborhoods or at their front door. Murray’s book includes short descriptions of different delivery drivers with high contrast photos that make for easy reading with toddlers.
Grocery Store Workers by Julie Murray
The community building that I visited most frequently as a child was the grocery store, and I think that’s still true for most children. This easy-reading book talks about the different work that workers in our grocery stores do every day to get the food ready, help us find things we need, and assist us in our purchases.
Helpers in Your Neighborhood by Shira Evans (National Geographic Readers)
This book features community helpers all over the world, including workers in a local restaurant who serve the food when a family goes out to eat. I loved that this book presented community workers who are often overlooked alongside those who are frequently celebrated as community heros.
Other common community helpers to seek books on for children include garbage collectors, construction workers, snow plow drivers, librarians, and postal workers.
Creative Art Opportunities
🧑⚕️Draw on envelopes with crayon, colored pencil, or markers
🧑⚕️Paint on a paper grocery bag
🧑⚕️Add stickers or rubber stamps to paper, envelopes, or cardboard boxes
🧑⚕️Collage with heart confetti and bandages
🧑⚕️Use rulers or stencils to make lines on blue paper
Hands-On Experiences
⛅️Use a toy doctor kit with dolls or stuffed animals
⛅️Reorganize a bookshelf together
⛅️Paper bag with real or toy groceries
⛅️Rubber stamps with envelopes
⛅️Make a cardboard mailbox to drop mail into
🌿Walk to a local library
🌿Walk to the grocery store together, especially if the child normally stays home or has grocery delivery
🌿Mail a letter or postcard to the child’s house and visit a blue postal box to drop it off
🌿Watch neighborhood trucks and cars
🌿Set up a play house or cardboard box house in the front yard to watch the neighborhood
🌿Deliver letters to neighbors (just not in their mailboxes)
🌿Visit the center of town and take a walk around major community buildings
Songs to Learn and Sing
“Community” – Kira Willey (excerpt)
“Hurry Hurry Drive the Firetruck” (Tune of “10 Little Indians”)
Hurry, hurry, drive the fire truck
Hurry, hurry, drive the fire truck
Hurry, hurry, drive the fire truck
Ding ding ding ding ding
Hurry, hurry put the ladder up
Hurry, hurry put the ladder up
Hurry, hurry put the ladder up
Ding ding ding ding ding
Hurry, hurry squirt the water out
Hurry, hurry squirt the water out
Hurry, hurry squirt the water out
Ding ding ding ding ding
“The More We Get Together“
The more we get together
Together, together
The more we get together
The happier we’ll be
With [doctors] and [librarians]
And [firefighters] and [drivers]
The more we get together
The happier we’ll be
The Doctor’s Song – Origin Unknown (Tune: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”)
I use a stethoscope
To listen to your heart
To help you be a healthy child
And heal you when you’re aren’t
“These Are My Glasses” – Laurie Berkner (and apparently this excerpt is sung by librarians everywhere)
These are my glasses
This is my book
I put on my glasses
And open up the book
Now I read, read, read
And I look, look, look
I put down my glasses
And -whoop- close up the book!
NIYN – Neighborhood 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 