Recommendations for Preschool Nature Books

My eldest granddaughter is now 4 and I want to start her on nature books asap, especially birding.

Amazon has lots of unknown quality "guides" for the 3-5 age range. I'm not able to go browse at Barnes & Noble, so I thought I'd ask my fellow nature-lovers here at LT.

Do you have a recommendation for nature books for a 4 year old? I especially want to get her a young birder's guide (USA) but haven't seen anything appropriate yet.

Suggestions?

I was going to say the Golden Nature Guides:
https://www.librarything.com/series/Golden+Nature+Guides

But looking at my collection, they may be too wordy yet for a four year old. But they are a nice size.

I have a couple of large format bird call books; I see they aren't cataloged, residing in KY.
Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song is a joy. Each bird gets its own page and you enter the page number and listen to the call.
(prices range from $10 to $1200. No, really!)

Nature play is a very big deal right now, and there are many books for young children to encourage outdoor play. Here is a list of books you could start with

also:

The Bird Watchers by Simon James

heres an interesting website https://backroadramblers.com/birding-with-kids/ What you need to know about birdwatching with kids

There may be a place where you live that gives guided walks to for birding (we have a riparian preserve in our area that has tons of migrating birds all year round)

I'll see what more I can find (I just retired after 30 years of teaching preschool; I need to go and look for the books I used! )

>3 cindydavid4: Congrats on your retirement! I'm trying to get there as well this year.

Thank you!

My mother started me early on a love of bird watching, but it never "stuck" with either of my children. I thought maybe I could pass on the wonder and joy of nature with my mother's namesake. :)

>4 2wonderY: its been a strange year; wasn't planning to retire yet but decided to when the district closed down our school and I didn't want to restart somewhere else. Missed the kids desparatly, but found volunteer activities to fill that need. Cant do any of those because of the shut down, but at least I am more settled now than I was before. All my colleagues are struggling with teaching online (with preschool?), Im at home doing gardening and stuff and generally being ok with it. Hope you get to retire this year!

>5 fuzzi: Thats very cool, good luck with that! Whereabouts do you live?

>7 cindydavid4: I was raised in CT, but now I'm in eastern NC, about a 90 minute drive from the OBX.

beautiful country! I'd assume there are plenty of places for birding there,

A few more books:

https://www.audubon.org/news/easy-ways-get-kids-birding

just released: https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/gear/books/new-bird-books-for-children/

cool article:
https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/beginners/getting-started/birdwatching-with-ch...

Have fun! (lucky granddaughter!)

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I wasn't the OP but I am saving all the info for when this is over and I can take my 4yo grandson "hiking" again. He loves to go to the creek and throw leaves in the water. His nature name is "Water Strider". I just have to think of a name for my 2yo granddaughter. Damselfly? Lark? She's coming along with us this year.

>10 perennialreader: I envy you, a bit. My granddaughters live almost 1000 miles away, so I've not had the opportunity to personally walk through nature with them, just their local playgrounds. But soon I plan to change that. I just bought the elder her first adult Peterson's bird guide, for when she's at least 6 or 7.

>11 fuzzi: I am lucky to be so close. Of course right now with social distancing, I can't see them except through a glass door. I hope we both get to see our grands soon. Before it gets too hot and humid for Grangie to go outside!

I’m an insect aficionado myself and since I got this link from the butterfly thread, try A Butterfly Is Patient. Not too wordy, beautiful illustrations done in nature study style with real species—lots of color.

She does the same lovely job with an egg is quiet and a nest is noisy she has more titles as well

>1 fuzzi: Ok, I have links for you!

https://www.audubon.org/news/ten-birdy-childrens-books-read-your-fledglings

https://www.naturalbeachliving.com/childrens-books-about-nature/

https://runwildmychild.com/beautiful-nature-books/

happy reading and exploring!

>15 cindydavid4: thank you!!!

de nada! I really like that Audubon website, it has several articles about birding with kids! (gosh now I wish I had a kid I could take birding!)

Or you could go with shock & awe, with Katrina Cook’s bird book. It’s 14 x 17” and is a collection of historic and gorgeous illustrations.

Well, touchstones and search are down again. I’ll post a picture tomorrow.

Katrina Cook
Birds

Nice Flamingo. Apparently our zoo has new baby flamingos. It would be nice to go see them. Two more weeks.

Thanks, MarthaJeanne!

Perhaps not for preschoolers, but I'd love a look at The Unfeathered Bird. BTW I have combined her pages, and she is now listed under her married name Katrina van Grouw

Strangely, someone has tagged Birds 'field guide'. Ruth, do you take yours with you when you go birding?

And, speaking of flamingoes, Look what I found at my garden centre last week.

>21 MarthaJeanne: Oh that is sweet!

Considering it weighs about 10 pounds - No!

>21 MarthaJeanne: Love the bag!

>21 MarthaJeanne: Im not a huge flamingo as art fan (too many in the yards of phoenix growing up) but that is a wonderful bag!!!

>19 MarthaJeanne: wow!!!! I want that book!

>20 2wonderY: ::drool::

>21 MarthaJeanne: clever.

>1 fuzzi: Not so much birding but nature books; have you looked at DK books? They cater to a wide range of ages so you could get something for older kids.

When I was five, we lived near a river (you walked to the end of the garden, sneaked through the fence and then walked through some grassland for five or ten minutes) so we had a lot of birds around. If we spotted one, my mum would identify it in our bird book and draw it out for me to colour as well as copy out the information about the bird. I still remember a lot of the names and can recognise some of the birds (though we don't live in that part of the world anymore).

Enjoy birdwatching with your granddaughter.

ETA: Not really useful for you in terms of birds but the book we used was Birds of the West African Town and Garden

>26 humouress: thanks for the memories and the recommendation.

That's cool, how your mom would draw the bird for you to color. Wish I'd thought of that before!