Nature in a Nutshell for Kids: Over 100 Activities You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less Paperback – 23 Jan. 1995

I bought this book to help with home schooling my son and we've had lots of fun learning about nature by doing the simple experiments! The explanations of how and why things happen are simple and to the point and easy enough for my 7 yr old to understand!

An interesting and informative book full of ideas for entertaining the children and introducing them to nature's wonders.

needs considerable prep for demonstration of group work

This is a great little book full of great activities to do with kids, the only let down is that it is American, so not all the activities are appropriate for the UK as we have slightly different "nature" to the US.

Excellent value. Plenty of activities diveded into seasons. Looking forward to working through it with our grandchildren ages from 4 to 8.

lovely little book to help me with Forest school ideas.

Good book

Great little book, grabbed eagerly by my youngest daughter who is very 'into' her mud pie making at the moment. The book has a host of things to try based on the seasons. There's loads to explore and enjoy and its great for encouraging a more curious approach to what's in your back garden. Excellent.

I am a parent who belongs to a parent cooperative preschool and I've used this book with my own children and as a reference for setting up science experiences for young children at the school. While some of these projects are for the older set (5-8), I'd say at least 90% could be done by 4-year olds and more than half by 2 year olds. Any of them could be adapted to the preschool setting with little effort.For instance, take the experiment "Soil Creation". I placed the materials--sheet of white paper, two rocks, magnifying lens out in four places around the table and when the children came to the station, we'd say "rub the rocks together and see what happens". They rub the rocks, they create dust, they look at it under their magnifying lenses.For me, the best part are the very simple scientific explanations. I think these make it easy for other parents who feel intimidated by science (or who are just so tired they can't think of an explanation!) to explain what's happening to their young children. For instance, the soil creation explanation is as follows "Soil is made up of plant and animal debris and of tiny pieces of rock. Sometimes rocks are broken by ocean waves or by river and creek water washing over them. Sometimes the wind blows across rocks, loosening the top layers. Sun and rain slowly cause rocks to crumble. The dust you made by rubbing the two rocks together could be one component of soil." You could change "component" to "part" to aid the 2-year old comprehension, but for the pre-k set, the word "component" could be an interesting talking point in and of itself.

Sometimes the simplest things amuse kids, and way better doing these fun science projects than letting them mindlessly play on a tablet, only to become like the rest of the brain dead kids in our society that can find 100 apps to tell you how to tie your own shoes, but can't figure out how to tie their darn shoes!!

We first got introduced to this book using Wee Folk Art Simple Seasons preschool curriculum for kids ages 4-6 as part of our nature studies. We are a homeschool family and it was an awesome introduction to nature studies. I loved how simple and non intimidating the experiments were for me as a mom to pull off and that they were totally appropriate for early elementary and preschool age kids. I used it when my oldest two children were 4 & 6 and it was great for both kids science. I plan to use it again with my littlest three again and am looking forward to using it again!

This is not my daughters favourite science book. But she still loves it.As the parent, I LOVE the seasons and nature theme throughout!!I will reference this one for ideas first.

All black and white. Color would of been nice