Brilliant Books: 365 Outdoor Activities You Have to Try!… A DK Book!!!

Today is Earth Day and the perfect day to review this glorious book. I loved it before I even opened it and all our kids have spent hours poring over it as well. This is the kind of book that I wish I had grown up with… packed, just packed… did I say packed with fantastic and wonderful things to do in the great outdoors. There are crafts, there are games, there are adventures, there is science, and wonderful explorations. There is a lovely mix of activities and really something for everyone… wild things for wild days and quiet things for quiet days… summery things for summer days… and well, plenty to do on wet days too. Our kids play outdoors 365 days of the year… and even though there were plenty of familiar things that they might have tried spontaneously, there were still heaps and heaps of things that they had never done before…

365 Outdoor Activities You Have to Try

There is everything to love about this book. It is set out well, there are about four activities on each page… so there is always a choice of inspiration. We love that it isn’t categorised into anything, whatever the season, whatever the day – open up and somewhere on your double page spread there will be something to do. The projects are explained and of course it is a DK book, so photographed appealingly. There is plenty of direction, but also scope for kids to be their creative selves. I noticed that while my kids have been browsing this book for a couple of weeks… they have just naturally incorporated some of the ideas into their play. We have new bird hide in the garden and stone stacking has been the favourite game to play at the beach for a while now. Our littlest person is wild about making herb ice-blocks and this has kept him busy day after day after day…

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What can I say, the more book marks the better. Each activity has a list of what you need, a short snippet on “the how and why,” how long it should take as well as directions to follow. There are stickers… stars at the back of the book, to mark off the activities that you have done, they neither add nor detract from the book… my kids haven’t noticed them yet. However if you were to work your way through the book as a project, then this would be useful for keeping track. There are also some wildlife stickers and they have been very popular for decorating notebooks and things – so stars, not so much… wildlife stickers get a galactic “YES”!!! Otherwise, it is the size of a typical guide book and a sturdy softcover, so that it and can easily be popped into a child’s backpack for a day out in the wilds.

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22 Activities from the Book, for 22 April, Earth Day.

  1. Build a birdbath
  2. Make a study of scat
  3. Build a bird hide
  4. Make herb ice-cubes
  5. Stack a stone tower
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  7. Toast marshmallows
  8. Play hoskotch
  9. Pebble Dominoes
  10. Grow beans
  11. Make mini-planters
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  13. Plant a pizza garden
  14. Create a fairy ring
  15. Make a bug-hotel
  16. Make leaf skeletons
  17. Make a nature memory card game
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  19. Create a spider web catcher
  20. Climb trees
  21. Hunt for space rocks
  22. Grow a bean teepee
  23. Make a sand face
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  25. Make a frog home
  26. Create an ice-lantern

There are still 343 more activities to do in this book… You can take a look inside the book at the DK Website.

This book was given to us by Penguin Random House, South Africa, for review purposes. This is not a sponsored post and the opinions expressed are as usual, entirely our own.

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