Nature Study Guides

I sure hope you aren’t asking the impossible! We have a combination. None of them are able to stand on their own for us. We do have Comstock’s and love the verbage but the photos are poor. Then we have some Audobon because we like the size and some Peterson because we just like them. Then there’s the internet which is very helpful, though not very portable.

Blessings,

Cindy

OK. “Country Diary” is more of an example of a beautiful nature notebook. I love my copy, and it inspires me, but I don’t expect to draw much useful info out of it. When I get tired of nagg . . . uh, encouraging my children to do notebooks and wonder if it is worth it, I refresh my vision by looking over this lovely book.

HNS is a very very big book. I love my copy. I use it just like you mention–when something comes up, when we want more info, we refer often to this book. I don’t use it as a field guide–it’s too big for that. We use smaller field guides specific to our area to identify things. But then, when we want more info, we refer to HNS. We’ve loved reading the story of a pet squirrel when we were having fun watching squirrels. The author’s use of “Friend Downy” to refer to a downy woodpecker got our whole family naming our birds, so we have “Mr. Robin” and “Sir Cardinal” and “Missy Junco” and “Bully the Starling” etc. We’ve come up with lots of questions to ask as we observe from this book, it’s very useful for generating good questions and things to watch for.

For good inspiration on using this book and nature study together, you’ve got to see this blog. The author sends out weekly challenges. http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/

Hope this helps! I also like the “Discovering Nature” series, I have several, like Discovering Nature Close to Home, Discovering Nature in Winter, etc. They also have lots of additional info and many good ideas for study and observation.

Michelle D

I agree with the Stan Tekiela books: Trees of __(your state)__, Birds of _____, Wildflowers of _______. They are ID books, but he does have some more interesting facts than many, particular to your state.

Also, we have one we love, particular for our state (WI). We found it at our local nature center bookstore. You might try perusing through books at a nature center in your area — even if it’s a few hours from you. They might have some rather obscure books that would be real gems for your area. Or you could ask someone who volunteers there — sometimes those people are excellent resources for ideas like that, because it’s something they love.