Customer Reviews

Nature Smart: Awesome Projects to Make with Mother Nature's Help

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This is an absolutely wonderful book. W have used it as part of our homeschooling curriculum. There are so many projects and all are reasonable to complete and to fund.

The emphasis on conservation is clear, and this shows more than anywhere in the way in which the projects are laid out. They do not require expensive tools or ingredients, and often use items found around the house. I am overly pleased with this book, and can not emphasize enough how much I think it teaches kids to respect the earth.

I would also recommend other books by Gwen Diehn. We have checked these out from the library and have been very pleased.

This is a great book to have around your home. It contains lots of hands on, easy projects to make. My kids love it. Order it and your family will love it too.

The projects in this book are fun, easy, and have plenty of room for one's own creativity. They also work well with just one or a small group to a large classroom. When we go out for a day trip, we almost always find a project (or we create a variation) to get the kids excited about being on a hike. It really helps encourage their process of discovery! After using this book heavily over the summer, our child's friends now want to come over to our house and our son leads his friends outside collecting so they can do many of the projects in this book! Well done!!!

I was at the library the other day looking for craft ideas when I stumbled across a book entitled Nature Smart. The cover of the book showed eight really neat projects that appeared to be earth friendly, with some even utilizing recycled materials. I checked it out immediately and eagerly awaited a chance to read through it. After getting the little ones settled down for the night, I opened up this book and was immediately impressed. This book provides parents and teachers with ideas for projects that will help children learn more about the world around them while giving them opportunities to be creative.

As a homeschooling mom, I'm always looking for projects to do with my children that will be fun for them as well as educational. Looking at the craft section at the local bookstore or library can be overwhelming! Too often I find crafts which are cute but don't really provide my children with the opportunity to learn something new. I strive to teach my children about Earth-friendly living, so I was happy to find project ideas that incorporated the use of recycled materials as well as items from nature such as leaves and twigs.

The authors of Nature Smart have compiled more than 150 nature and ecology inspired projects for children. Each craft description includes a list of items to gather in advance, easy to follow directions, and colorful images and diagrams that make the more difficult projects easier to understand. Most of activities in the book are also accompanied by background information on the topic which is a really great feature. For example, the pages that describe how to make a butterfly hatchery with your children includes diagrams of butterflies and moths and information about their life cycle. This content can be read by parents as a refresher before they begin a project with their child or it can be read independently by an older child. Of course, parents of non-readers could read aloud to their children in order to further their understanding of the topic.

Here are a few projects from the book that I plan to try with my children:




Rustic Wren House

Butterfly and Moth Hatchery

Seashell Wind Chime

Wild Flower Candles

Corn Husk Flowers

Bat House

Tin Can Marionette

Bean and Pasta Mosaic


This book is truly fantastic. Nature Smart is designed for school-aged children but many of the projects could be modified to meet the needs of preschoolers. This book is an excellent resource for the eco-conscious parent or teacher who is looking for nature-inspired activities to do with children. I highly recommend it.