About the Holiday

Warm weather + the kids home from school = the perfect recipe for getting outside to play, garden, hike, swim, explore and even bring the outside in! Nature’s bounty provides so many opportunities for trying something new, and that’s what National Great Outdoors Month is all about! Today’s book supplies plenty of ideas from contemplation to crafts to cooking not only for summer but to make you look forward to all the seasons of the year!

The Nature of Play: A Handbook of Nature-Based Activities for All Seasons

Written by Delfina Aguilar and Clare Aitken | Illustrated by Sabrina Arnault

If you’re a nature-loving family excited for the summer season to begin or you’d simply like to learn how to engage more with everything the outdoors has to offer, The Nature of Play provides an exciting guide to discovery all year round. Each chapter opens with four easy activities—Eat, Do, Look, and Read—to jumpstart the particular season. While prompting participation, these short paragraphs also contain eye-opening facts. For instance, do you know where the word “pumpkin” was first named in English?

These kinds of fascinating asides as well as in-depth explorations of the topics presented elevate The Nature of Play from a simple activity book to a resource you’ll find yourself returning to again and again. As part of each activity’s description, Delfina Aguilar and Clare Aitken define its historical and global significance in their “From the Archives” paragraphs, while in “Dear Grown-Ups” they reveal their long-term benefits. For example, the seemingly casual pastime of stone skipping “exists across cultures and throughout eons—[and is] probably one of the oldest games on Earth.” And it’s benefits? Stone skipping is almost a full day of school on its own, incorporating motor skills, tenacity, physics, and more!

Delfina Aguilar and Clare Aitken make sure that kids and adults get plenty of fresh air with more outdoor activities matched to the season, including making small rafts to float on rivers or ponds, building an outdoor den, and navigating like old-time explorers. Aguilar and Aitken don’t forget about indoor time, either. They’ve included lots of games that are perfect for car, plane, or train travel as well as games for rainy or snowy days. Spy and sleuth fans will love learning how to outwit the opposition with an ingenious secret code.

Crafters, budding scientists, and plant aficionados can create and learn to their heart’s content with the abundance of ideas here, such as making petal paper, pinhole cameras, terrariums, ice ornaments, and so many more useful and whimsical objects. Each section also includes scrumptious recipes that take advantage of seasonal ingredients. Other captivating elements are interviews with John Collins (aka the Paper Airplane Guy), natural navigator Tristan Gooley, theoretical astrophysicist Dr. Anna Lisa Varri, and spy Anna Gram as well as poems by Billy Collins, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Louis Stevenson that open each chapter.

Sabrina Arnault’s charming ink-and-watercolor illustrations, rendered in warm earth tones, set a mellow, laid-back air to each page, echoing the simple pleasures of the text. Each chapter opens with a stunning full-spread scene that welcomes the new season, Pencil sketches clearly demonstrate step-by-step instructions for making the crafts.

A gorgeous book created with much thought and love, The Nature of Play: A Handbook of Nature-Based Activities for All Seasons is a companionable resource the whole family will use. The book makes a joyful gift and is a must for all library collections and home bookshelves.

Ages 6 and up

Greystone Kids, 2026 | ISBN 978-1778403088

Delfina Aguilar is the founder of Fanny & Alexander, a brand devoted to analogue toys and books that invite children—and the adults who love them—to play more thoughtfully, encouraging imagination, curiosity, and screen-free wonder. She is the co-author of The Nature of Play, Hiccup Makes a Leap, and The Acorn Who Hung On.

Clare Aitken is an author of books for children. She is passionate about nature, community and food and has co-written several books including The Nature of Play.

National Great Outdoors Month Activity

Whose Shoes? Maze

There are all sorts of ways to enjoy the great outdoors! These kids all want to do their favorite activity. Can you help match them to the shoes they’ll need in this printable Whose Shoes? Maze?

You can purchase The Nature of Play: A Handbook of Nature-Based Activities for All Seasons from these booksellers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

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