The Five Senses
I recently started a new series inspired by other family travel bloggers – “What we are reading”. Just like the last book I shared, Five Little Fingers and Five Little Toes, today’s book is also for very young children. Written by Leslie Bockol and Illustrated by Jillian Phillips the book, The Five Senses encourages children to engage with the beauty of nature.
The Five Senses
I love a few things about this book. Firstly, children are encouraged to engage with nature in and around their own home. We are not constant travelers and our own home is where I spend the majority of time with my baby and three year old while I am on maternity leave. My three year old really delights in nature as we discover it around our own home be it watching an ant crawl across the floor, or smelling the different plants in our garden. Engaging with nature around the home is a good practice in mindfulness for adults too, I just don’t think I would do it if I didn’t have young children.
The Five Senses
The five senses also encourages children to engage their senses in a variety of settings away from home, and in the type of places that we have explored together as a family when traveling. For example this page encourages kids to taste fruit straight off the tree. We had a major food success in our own family recently when our fruit phobic six year old tried an apple for the first time when we were staying at an orchard farm stay in Tasmania’s Huon Valley.
The Five Senses
On grey Melbourne days it is also a good prompt for remembering the wonderful times we have had on sunny beaches in the past.
The Five Senses
The book finishes with practical suggestions for sustainable living that are useful for adults (eg apparently keeping your tires inflated improves petrol efficiency by more than 3% – news to me). They also act as a prompt for discussion with older children.
The Five Senses is published by Innovative kids and can be purchased on their website.
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*I have no relationship with Innovative Kids – I just stumbled across this book in an eco-toy shop and loved it.
Looks like a sweet little book.