Make Every Week Wild

This attractive book works along the lines of a scrapbook for children aged 6 years upwards. It is brimming with 52 activities about our natural world, one for each week of the year. The young person is encouraged to make the book their own using scissors, paint, glue etc. and collecting natural objects as they spend more time outdoors. It is a follow-up publication to the successful Make This Book Wild.

There are some delightful features of this book: ‘My Wild Week Calendar’, on the reverse of the front cover, where the child can log activities which they have completed, and their own bookplate/dedication on the first page. The aim is that the student takes the book outside with them, sticking in pictures etc. and making the book their special memento. Forest bathing is introduced to the youngster on pp.10-11 and is explained thus: ‘Forest bathing is about taking time to slow down, relax and let nature wash away your worries’.

Original ideas for pursuits can be found throughout: a Maths Challenge with a measuring stick (pp.19-20), creating memory jars (pp.65-66) and painting snail spirals on pp.84-85. Wild games, scavenger hunts, bark rubbing and bird spotting are all here to keep the youngsters entertained. It was the blackberry picking (pp.104-105), flower pressing (p.61-62) and the interviewing an older person (pp.74-75) which took me back to the 1970s when children played outside all the time.