If you know kids who love reading, animals and being outdoors, then combine their interests with ecologically focused material.
Perfect for warmer months that navigate children toward outdoor adventures, literature that ingrains a natural sense of wonder will stay with them much longer than just hearing a story.
Jean Craighead George is an award winning American author that has contributed widely to the world of environmentally focused children’s literature. She was a profound naturalist who seemed to live a life that often lent to the subject matter for her books. Born to resourceful parents who modeled self-sufficiency, including an entomologist and ecologist father, a respect for nature was cultivated along with an avid interest in conservation and wildlife at a young age.
She wrote over 100 works that revolved around nature themes and wildlife preservation. Her well researched reads, clear informative text and thorough, carefully chosen illustrations invitingly draw children into the natural world.
More than entertaining on a page, there are countless activities that can be performed around her stories to increase reading comprehension.
One free book, the Everglades Wildguide is available from the Ebook and Texts Archive. It is about the Everglades National Park and its rich habitats, plant life and importance of conservation. Younger children may enjoy the information packed illustrations and older readers who are hungry for new sources of learning will appreciate the way she does not dilute the material, but intelligently presents it.
ScienceLinks has an overview of her significant impact on the scientific world, including links to pages of reviews and audio clips. There are also lesson plans, book extension activities and resources. Litwits Workshops has information about the author and her works. Appropriate for middle grades, learner.org has a literature link to go along with one of her books, an ecological mystery called Who Really Killed Cock Robin?
A video interview with the author from 1991 can be found on Internet Archive.
Perfect for reading and then heading outdoors to improve understanding, books that discuss nature and offer topics that can be expanded upon by eager learners are great ways to offer knowledge based activities.
If you read this far, we assume you found this post interesting. Please help Blackle Mag thrive by sharing it using the social media buttons below.Tweet
What did you think of this post? Let us know in the comments below.