Forest Magic for Kids: How to Find Fairies, Make a Secret Fort, and Cook Up an Elfin Picnic

(Hardback)

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Your enchanted guide to 50+ magical activities for everything from finding hidden flower fairies in your own backyard and making a special wizard staff to creating a tiny woodland village and making your own forest potions.

Come discover the wild magic tucked into the nooks and crannies of forests, thickets, and meadows. Search for fairy dusted glow-in-the-dark mushrooms. Find secret worlds hidden in trees and uncover the tunnels, trails, and dens of gnomes and trolls, and mice and moles. Learn to listen to the forest, make sun-warmed pine tea, and wear an evergreen crown to an elf picnic.

Look inside to learn how to:

• Keep a secret notebook filled with maps, notes, and pockets for all your discoveries
• Go on a quest for wild treasures
• Follow a queen bumblebee to her castle
• Make your own forest teas and potions
• Become best friends with a tree
• Create tiny gnomes and build cozy gnome homes
• Seek where mushrooms grow after a fairy dance
• Carve a walking stick wizard staff
• Build your own hidden forest fort

Reviews

Gr 2-6Children are guided through exploring the natural world with more than 50 activities, including making a secret notebook for all their discoveries, finding a mushroom circle where fairies danced, and turning sticks into dowsing rods or wee fairy companions. Each chapter begins with the science behind natures wonders, then leads to activities like going on a tree walk and recording information on the trees discovered. Spikol carefully describes each of the steps needed in the crafts, including when an adults help is required. Respecting nature is a consistent message whether children are using sticks to make magic wands, plants for special tonics, or constructing a hidden fort in their backyard. Chapters end with a Quest Festa scavenger hunt list of things to find in nature. The notebook is text-heavy, intended for nature enthusiasts, and is to be read not in one sitting but rather as a companion on various outdoor adventures. Metallinous soft drawings complement the pages, with the final chapter including illustrations of craft projects. It lacks step-by-step drawings or photographs to guide younger children in how to better accomplish the tasks. VERDICT A delightful outdoor handbook to ignite curiosity and a passion for nature, this is a great resource for nature units as well as hands-on activities to bring a creative writing program to life. -- Heidi Dechief * School Library Journal *

Author Bio

Susie Spikol is a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, New Hampshire. A lifelong animal lover, Susie now helps people of all ages connect with the natural world. She is the author of The Animal Adventurers Guide (Roost Books, 2002). You can find her at www.susiespikol.com.