This is what we have collected the last 2 years: (my boys are almost 5 and 7 and they use the first bug book one all on their own – they Love bugs, butterflies, beetles, etc and this book has it all:
National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America (this is our favorite!) Nice waterproof jacket too.
The Backyard Birdsong Guide (for our region) plays their songs also; 2nd favorite, and is used 1-2x wk
We also have a nice easy one on flowers by color: A Falcon Guide: Rocky Mountain Wildflowers that is great when we go on a hike
A Golden Field Guide Birds of North America (this is also used by the kids about 1x week or so) Helpful to add tabs to it.
There are others that we just don’t seem to use much unless I make a concerted effort to make it into a study: Plant Guide, one on trees, I don’t have one on mammals of our area, but we can find lots of fun animals picture books at the library for that.
We use our insect field guide the most out of all of our field guides. We have the same guide that heatherma has. We have also used guides on birds and trees.
This site has lots of state-specific guides. We have most of the MN ones, and we LOVE them! We use them all the time. We also have many of the Golden Guides, and we have the National Audubon Society Bird book. We don’t use that one as often, but we do like it when we do need it.
My young children like the Fandex guides. They are not exhaustive, just the more common varieties but they are easier for littles to handle than the giant National Geographic birds of north America we have!
We have the wildflower and bird Fandexes. We also borrowed a butterfly guide that was fun. I definitely want a tree guide next. We also search online for things we do not have guides for.
We have an insect guide. Ours is by Houghton Mufflin. We also have an amphibian and fish ones. My oldest is enthralled by fish and has many of them memorized. So, I was looking to see what I needed to add to our collection.
We will definetly add a tree guide for our region. I just need to figure out which one. I am also thinking a bird one would be helpful and maybe wildflowers.