Field Guides for Tiny Explorers
Good Morning. With the sun making a regular appearance these days and our NeighbourWood Walks finally started back up, we are spending a whole lot more time outside right now.
My scientist kid told me the other day that she wants to be a paleontologist (actual use of the word, which makes my jaw drop) when she grows up because rocks and bones are cool.
Not having expected a dinosaur lover out of my seafaring tiny person, I was ill prepared for the whole thing about why dinos are dead. Apparently it’s a combination of “lava that melted them”, “ice that made them into cubes”, and “giant planets that blew up and made the dinosaurs explode.”
Whatever the reason for their disappearance, we are in the middle of some serious rock exploration around here in an attempt to find our very own ancient animal and I needed something in the realm of a guide book to lend a hand with the huge gaps that sleeping through freshman geology left in my life.
She actually could care less about the dinosaur part in terms of information. But, whoa can that kid quiz the bark off a tree about rocks.
Why? Where? How?
That’s all I get these days.
So, about a month ago I was at Blue Heron Books in Comox and discovered A Field Guide to the Identification of Pebbles by Eileen Van der Flier Keller.
This coastal British Columbia-focused pull-out guide is just the speed for a curious kid with a rock fascination.
It’s got what kind of rocks may contain fossils (oh you can bet we are currently on the hunt for Mudstone), lots of cool things to look for when identifying types of rocks and really gets at it from a kid perspective.
I love it because it’s laminated (major bonus since anyone who has met our daughter has seen her soaked from head to toe in the middle of water). She loves it because it has put her on course to find those elusive dino bones that will bring her current life plan within reach.
Right next to it in our map box in the truck is A Field Guide to Seashells and Shellfish of the Pacific Northwest by Rick Harbo.
Also published by Harbour Publishing, this kid-friendly guide is a great resource in the tide pools. Getting the chance to figure out what kind of creature each shell used to contain is a great way to get kids thinking about the sea.
We have literally spent hours on the beach with this guide spread out collecting as many of the shells in it as we can find. It’s also great for keeping kids busy who would otherwise require fishing out of the deep water (only if you’d worn jeans and your good shoes though, never when you are in shorts and Crocs. That would be too easy).
I pretty much consider them an invaluable addition to our hands-on nature learning collection.
You can pick them up at Blue Heron Books in Comox or you can leave a comment here about your major obsession as a kid and get entered into the drawing to win both of these guides.
Winners from our last giveaway are Danielle, Jen Dodd and Charmaine
Covers courtesy of Harbour Publishing
Category: ARTS & LITERACY, Rainy Day Book Club
About the Author (Author Profile)
Robin Rivers is Our Big Earth’s Publisher and Sr. Partner. Able to survive on coffee alone. Often can be found leaping tall buildings with the help of great friends. Predisposed to odd hats and the color orange. In love with imagination, her kids and that crazy guy who married her.Subscribe
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Sunday Morning Walks - Quinsam River Trail | Our Big Earth | May 31, 2009
- Eco Crafts - Egg Carton Shadow Boxes & Rock Gardens | Our Big Earth | June 9, 2009
- Book Review - Child of Faerie and What Do You Dream | Our Big Earth | August 28, 2009
My grandparents lived in the country and had a backyard pool. If I spent the night at their house, one of the first chores in the morning was to empty out the pool’s filter basket. Usually there were a couple of dead bugs and a couple of leaves to be emptied out. One morning there were thousands of tiny, live frogs (or maybe 25). It was so exciting! That morning started 2 obsessions. The first one was emptying the filter basket at my grandparent’s house. The second one was frogs in general! I still love frogs and have a First Nations mask of a frog. It gives me great comfort. As long as the frogs are croaking, the forest is in balance
As a child I had a major obsession with rocks! I have collected “special” rocks for as long as I can remember. When my now 6 year old daughter came up from the creek at my parents house with her “coolest rock she’d ever seen” I was ecstatic to know the love had been passed down, and immediately went home to pull out my collection that I kept from my childhood (which now sits on my fireplace mantle to be enjoyed daily). We still love to pour out all our rocks to share with each other which are our faves and why we think each one is so special (even if to everyone else it looks like a plain old rock). We really know nothing about them, just that they’re loved.
Oh Robin, I love you! I need to go out and get both of these. I have a 6 year old who LOVES rocks and shells, I am forever carting around pockets full of stuff for her collections. They are all considered treasure and all have their own story.
As a kid growing up in the Middle East picking up rocks was definitely forbidden – you never knew what was lurking under them and scorpions were plentiful. Coming to BC and discovering the beach was an amazing revelation. One of my favourite memories though is of salamander hunting with one of my oldest and dearest friends. We still talk about it today.
Oh! I won a prize! I didn’t know
Thank you!!!
These are just great – I love that I can’t keep up with the book suggestions that you give on here!
Since we are on the other side of the country I won’t enter the giveaway but wanted to say how much I enjoyed your post.
My daughter is a dino/rock lover. This winter we went to Joggins here in Nova Scotia and she was in fossil heaven! We have a fossil guide and found a Dino’s of Canada book at the library just today… We are lucky that her Dad works in geology so she has a living rock guide! He brings extra cool ones home from work sometimes too! Great fun!
Thanks!
I had an obsession with moving my limbs (and No I don’t expect to win a prize for this, although it did take me far in my athletic career later on in life!!!!). Actually, my Mom said I was obsessed with getting out of my high chair, way back in the 70s. Apparently, at quite a young age, I mastered getting out of the harness. This was heart-breaking to my Mom, who was already up to her ears in children – a 3, 5 and 8 year old. Like any gifted Mother she re-arranged the harness clips to tie them backwards and upside down (so much for safety regulations). Little did she know the obsession it would creat, but she didn’t care because it kept me occupied for hours, or days, as she likes to joke! She said, I would spend great energy twisting and turning in the chair trying to figure out the new harness system…one day it pooped me out and I fell asleep, to my Mother’s delight
Hmmmm…..I had so many things I was into but not really obsessed with …that I can remember. I’m sure my Mom has more stories to tell
I know I loved playing in the mud. My mom would find me down the back of the garden covered from head to toe, shoes off, in my hair and some in my mouth. Good times. I still head straight for the biggest puddle I can find when I’m mtn biking and when its a rainy day the kids and I are out there making mud cakes and jumping in the puddles.
Ooh, just what I was looking for. I bet the kids would like them too…heh heh.
They look great Robin. A must have for all Vancouver Island kids.
Kathy
My 9 year old collects so many shells every summer, she would go crazy for this book.
Oh my gosh-My husband,son and I are all rock and shell lunatics. I think that there is something behind people who love rocks and pebbles as much as we do-what that is I do not know.but it is some common denominator. these books would be lovely. Thanks.
My major obsession as a kid were Roly-Poly’s — honestly, I loved them and spent hours looking for them, collecting them, observing them, giving them names, making up stories about them and then letting them go. What’s funny is my kids love them too
When my mom and I would visit my grandparents in England during the summers, we would always go to the beaches. But the beaches we went to didn’t have sand; they were covered in pebbles. I used to collect the ones that had holes worn in them and make them into necklaces.
My major obsession as a kid was collecting wacky packages cards. I had notebooks full of them. I also was a collector of stuffed animals. I had a zoo (don’t tell but I still have most of them, they look cute on a bench in my computer room).
My major obsession as a child was small, glass blown animals. I had a whole collection of them and would rearrange them into different groupings.
madamerkf at aol dot com
I was completely obsessed with tide pools and searching for crabs under the rocks. Hmmm, come to think of it, things haven’t changed all that much! hehe
I collected Archie Comics.
Thanks for the giveaway!
Kimspam66(at)yahoo(dot)com
My obsession as a child was the outdoors – thanks to my parents. From canoeing down rivers on our way to St. Joseph’s Bay (yes – I remember tipping once) to camp in plastic tents put together with drift wood, hiking through the woods to drink water in caves, to visiting one of the last pioneers on the northern Island in his log house, to watching my father run with the garbage when we went to the dump and examining the bear prints on our hood when we got back home, to hiking up the “big” mountain out back up to the “big” stump, to eating raw oysters off of log, watching my dad feed the deer out of the back gate…what a lucky childhood I had old time CFB Holberg style.