We’ve been making the most of this great weather we’ve been having lately.  Paddling pools have been full of Rhosllan kids, a cheeky afternoon pint sat outside the Duds, the bois have played out until late and probably my favourite, long evening walks.

On our last evening walk, the kids {as in all 6 Grandchildren…} weren’t very enthusiastic about it.  Probably a mixture of the heat and all of the above that I’ve just mentioned.  As we got to the top of the first hill, we’d already had squabbles over who was going to take the dog, who was in the lead of whatever race that was happening and “why won’t Pokemon Go work up here, Mam?!”… And then I had one of those light bulb moments.  They don’t happen very often, but still.  I told them all about The Nature Explorer’s Scrapbook; part album, part manual, part nature guide, “as you are guided through the world of nature and invited to search for, explore and gather things as diverse as skulls and shells, tadpoles and trilobites”.   We may not have got skulls and the like, but this is how it went;

I was taken back to my childhood when the kids started asking about “popping” Foxgloves.  I’d completely forgotten about doing all that.

Between all 6 of them, they soon got a good collection of grasses, leaves and wildflowers together.  Not forgetting Alf’s mushroom that he found…

A good hour and a half later, {this walk usually only takes around half an hour, that’s how much they got into the whole “gathering”}, we started to make our way back home to take a closer look at what everyone had got.

There are 3 main sections to this book; Earth, Air and Water.  With pages full of information on them.  Information on bugs, clouds, feathers {plus more} and something they all got excited over; Owl pellets!

There are pages where you can display your findings.

…and a section on skulls.  There was mention that someone {one of the young ones} had seen a ram skull, but decided to leave it there…hmmm, I’m pretty sure if one of them had seen it, there would have been a lot more noise about it.  ;)  {still can’t get rid of that competitive streak even when they are getting on…}

We may not have kept everything that we’d gathered or stuck them to the scrapbook pages, but if there’s something that I loved about this book, it was how all of the kids were enjoying running around, gathering everything around them, comparing with each other, laughing with each other {no more squabbling!}, learning and reading through the book to find out more about what they had discovered together.  It was great to witness it all.

Apparently, we’re off hunting for tadpoles next and I think I know just the place to take them…

More information on this book and the other titles can be found here.

{serious face; we were kindly sent this book for the purpose of this review but all thoughts and words are my own…including those squabbling kids ;) }