A Year Of Nature Craft & Play Book Review

Disclosure: I was gifted this book for the purpose of this post.

52 Things To Make and Do!

I’m very excited to review the new book ‘A Year of Nature Craft and Play‘ from Becky Goddard-Hill and Catherine Hughes. Their book is filled with tons of brilliant nature craft ideas for each season. It’s also not just crafts, but science, art and gardening projects that can keep the kids interested too.

This is perfect for anyone with primary school aged children and a great resource for home educators like us!

You can also find my review of their latest book A Year of Nature Walks and Games here

Not Just a Typical Craft Book

This really isn’t your typical craft book with pages of strict instructions to follow to create a pretty craft. Instead it’s more relaxed, giving you ideas of what you can use materials or themes for. Creating lovely items that have plenty of room for individual creativity to take hold.

There are 52 different title pages to choose from, split into the 4 seasons, which makes it easier to work out what you can do when! Although there are some activities that can easily overlap into other seasons. Activities are eco-friendly which means upcycling and recycling are in.

Although it’s advertised as 52 activities, you will actually find that there are plenty more activities in the book too. At the beginning are ideas to help preserve leaves and feathers alongside craft gift ideas. Each different activity has other tips or ideas which can give you even more activities to try. For example the Earth day pages lists 15 different ideas to help celebrate the planet and there are several different activities explained on the Easter age section.

The activities can be enjoyed by children of all ages, although I would give it a rough age range of 7-11 years old. Younger children will need more help and older children can have some amazing fun with it on their own or with friends.

Sneak Peek!

So now you may be wondering just what type of activities to expect? Well I thought I would give you a sneak peek of what’s in the book!

I particularly love activity number 43 – A Wishing Tree for a New Year. It’s a lovely idea to hang up lots of wishes on the twigs found in the woodlands. I would also add to it and get each person to make a thankful star too. To help spread a little gratitude and thankfulness in my children!

Another favourite of mine is the tree experiments page. Lots of great ideas to work out how tall or old a tree is. It’s great that some of the activities include science experiments too, my children especially love science activities!

Nature Clay Pressing

Finally, here is one of the crafts we chose to make! The children chose to make some clay impressions from their finds over the last week or so. The images in the book show plants and twigs, but my two also decided to use shells and feathers that they recently found.

A ball of air drying clay was rolled out flat and a small hole made at the top of the circle to hang it from once dry. The children then gently pressed each of their treasure items onto the clay to leave an impression. Once dry they could paint the items and hang up for everyone to see.

It’s a lovely craft and something that professional artists often use in clay artworks. So it’s great to get kids to look at other artists work for other ideas to extend this further.

Other Nature Craft Posts

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