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Discover a treasure trove of exciting nature-based building, engineering, and artistic ideas for children in Sticks and Stones. This comprehensive guide features tools, toys, and games kids can create right outside their door.
Kids will love building cabins, bridges, dams rock gardens, and more. They’ll discover that creating art is more fun outdoors as they learn to make making stone pendants, ochre paint, and weaving. A variety of large and small-scale activities boost engineering, creative, and problem-solving skills, all while promoting fun. With simple tools and materials a branch becomes a fishing pole, and logs turn into a simple seesaw.
Opportunities and materials for productive play exist everywhere in nature. Author Melissa Lennig (of the blog Fireflies and Mud Pies) introduces today’s screen-overloaded kids to a world of exploring and adventure. Whether camping in the woods or hanging out in the back yard, children will marvel at the wonderful, useful tools and playthings they can create with natural objects. They’ll also learn about STEAM principles, campfire chemistry, why building with blocks is so powerful, and how mindfulness techniques can reduce stress.
The book also includes: Ideas for taking activities further, with fun variations and ideasSafety tips for kids and adultsDesign challenges that can be done solo or in groupsStep-by-step instructions and helpful photosSticks and Stones was named to the longlist for the 2020 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the Hands-On Science Book category. The prize honors outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults. This book is an essential resource for every junior outdoor adventurer.
From the Publisher
How to Use This Book
Research shows that a daily dose of unstructured, outdoor play is essential for the physical and social-emotional health of kids. But the keyword there is unstructured. So let this book inspire play, not dictate it.
This book will introduce your family to thirty outdoor science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) projects that center around the use of sticks and stones.
Each activity includes a description, design challenge, list of materials, and an easy-to-understand explanation of the process. Many of the projects include enrichment activities designed to pique curiosity and inspire kids to develop more creative ideas of their own.
An essential resource for every junior outdoor adventurer:
Section 1: Create and Build with Logs
From remarkable play forts to luxurious bug hotels, there is so much you can create and build with logs! In this section, you’ll engineer a log survival shelter (page 15), play with friends on a log seesaw while learning about simple machines (page 49), and invite birds to a backyard feast by building a rustic log bird feeder (page 36). Get outside, be inspired, and enjoy creating and building with logs.
Section 2: Sticks: The Original Wooden Toy
From helpful tools to fun toys, there is so much to make and do with sticks. In this section, you’ll learn how to make a functional stick fishing pole (page 71), engineer a rustic stick catapult (page 93), and amaze your friends with DIY stick bubble wands and our top-secret monster bubble formula (page 63). So get outdoors and start collecting sticks from your yard, the park, and your neighborhood. Sure, you may look weird hauling bundles of sticks around town, but like Thatcher, you know where the real fun is!
Section 3: Easy Rock Projects
Rocks are all around us, and have been for billions of years! Rocks give geologists (scientists who study the Earth) clues as to what our planet was like in the past. In this section, you’ll engineer a stone bridge (page 139), practice mindfulness while creating land art (page 131), and crush sedimentary rocks to make an ancient earth paint called ochre (page 134). So pull on your creeking shoes, grab a bucket, and then get outside to collect, create, and learn about rocks.
Project 22: Your Design Challenge: Build a dam outside in a creek or shallow stream to stop or change the flow of water
Team up with friends and family to haul large rocks to your desired location, and then line them up straight across the creek.
Fill in the large gaps of the dam foundation with medium-size rocks.
After the large gaps are filled with medium-size rocks, scoop up small pebbles and gravel from the creek bed to fill in smaller gaps.
Building dams in creeks is a classic activity that is loved by kids of all ages.
Publisher : Quarry Books (May 7, 2019)
Language : English
Flexibound : 144 pages
ISBN-10 : 0760362564
ISBN-13 : 978-0760362563
Reading age : 3 – 9 years, from customers
Grade level : 3 – 8
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 8.75 x 0.65 x 8.75 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book has great project ideas with instructions. They also appreciate the beautiful photographs and descriptions that make it easy to understand. Readers say the themes are inspiring and easy to find ideas for kids of all ages. They mention the book provides useful tips about how to talk to kids and is fun for outdoorsy kids.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
