Foraging With Kids

A fun, informative guide to safely foraging with kids—featuring beautiful illustrations, plant facts and profiles, and 50 family projects for making the most of your wild edibles In today’s world of increasingly sedentary lifestyles and a growing detachment from the food that we eat, it has never been more important to encourage children to put down their screens, get outside, and engage with the natural world around them. Foraging with Kids is a fun, practical book for parents and their children that encourages families to interact with their environment and gain a practical understanding of the natural world through exploration and play. Featuring projects based around 50 easy-to-identify plants common in parks, forests, and hedgerows worldwide, Foraging with Kids makes the challenge of discovering functional flora just as achievable to those who live in the city as in the countryside. Once they have foraged their plants, children will be amazed by the diverse practical uses of their discoveries—from making soap from conkers or setting a delicious egg-free custard with plantain, to stopping minor cuts from bleeding with hedge woundwort. Children will take great pride in seeing their gatherings forming part of the family meal, and parents will be amazed at how even the most vegetable-averse child will develop an enthusiastic appetite for a meal that they have contributed to. Featuring beautiful hand drawings, essential information on plant facts and identification, and a diverse range of engaging family projects, this is the perfect book for anyone who wants their children to get outside, connect with nature, and have a lot of fun in the process.

The founder of Wild Food Adventures presents the definitive, fully illustrated guide to foraging and preparing wild edible greens. Beyond the confines of our well-tended vegetable gardens, there is a wide variety of fresh foods growing in our yards, neighborhoods, or local woods. All that’s needed to take advantage of this wild bounty is a little knowledge and a sense of adventure. In Edible Wild Plants, wild foods expert John Kallas covers easy-to-identify plants commonly found across North America. The extensive information on each plant includes a full pictorial guide, recipes, and more. This volume covers four types of wild greens: Foundation Greens: wild spinach, chickweed, mallow, and purslane Tart Greens: curlydock, sheep sorrel, and wood sorrel Pungent Greens: wild mustard, wintercress, garlic mustard, and shepherd’s purse Bitter Greens: dandelion, cat’s ear, sow thistle, and nipplewort

There’s food growing everywhere! You’ll be amazed by how many of the plants you see each day are actually nutritious edibles. Ideal for first-time foragers, this book features 70 edible weeds, flowers, mushrooms, and ornamental plants typically found in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Full-color photographs make identification easy, while tips on common plant locations, pesticides, pollution, and dangerous flora make foraging as safe and simple as stepping into your own backyard.

From Darwin to David Attenborough, many naturalists built their careers on a curiosity which began in early childhood. However, in this digital age our children can all too easily become isolated from meaningful contact with both the natural world and the people around them. Foraging for wild food can help refocus them and a day gathering edible plants, picked in the wild, can be a great way to reconnect with family and nature. With clear information, instructions and illustrations, this book looks at 30 edible plants commonly found in our parks, woodlands and hedgerows. It shows you how to identify them safely and gather them to make delicious recipes that are easy to create and tempting and nutritious for young children. The plants are organized by season and there are scrumptious things to make throughout the year including puffball kebabs, sea beet huff-a-puffs, staghorn sumac lemonade, sweet potato & chestnut burgers, and hazelnut chocolate spread. Once you've caught the foraging bug, you'll soon be looking for chestnuts to roast, hazelnuts to crack, or the best wild apple trees. Foraging is for life!

The Ozark Mountains in Missouri and Arkansas have had a long history of foraging since indigenous tribes such as the Osage, Quapaw, and Kickapoo sporadically inhabited the area and utilized the rich natural resources. Settlers from the Appalachians came later and survived on what they could find, trap, and hunt. Foraging remains a major activity among the Ozarks’ outdoor community, supported in large part by established local restaurateurs and other buyers of wild herbs, berries, and nuts. Foraging the Ozarks, written by local wilderness expert Bo Brown, highlights about a hundred commonly found edibles in the Interior Highlands, from ubiquitous herbs to endemic species. With sidebars, recipes, helpful tips, and toxin warnings throughout, Foraging the Ozarks is the only guidebook the Ozark outdoor enthusiast will need to pick it, cook it, and eat it.

The perfect companion book to Play the Forest School Way, this activity and learning guide offers more seasonal games, crafts, and skills to encourage kids to get outdoors come rain, shine, or snow The Forest School ethos of nature-based play and learning encourages children to develop confidence, self-esteem, and emotional intelligence—and it’s exactly what’s needed in an era when childhood problems such as obesity and anxiety are on the rise. Building on the success of the bestselling Play the Forest School Way, here is a brilliant selection of brand-new games, crafts, and activities to get kids developing new skills and exploring the natural world all year round. Structured around the four seasons of the year, each chapter is full of step-by-step games and activities that harmonize with the weather and seasonal nature patterns, including nods to seasonal festivals such as Easter and Christmas. At Forest School, children return to the same location again and again, building a lasting connection with a specific part of the natural world. Each of the four seasonal chapters in A Year of Forest School includes a description of an extended session (combining active and quieter activities, plus an idea for foraging/cooking), capturing this key part of Forest School play and providing iinspiration for parties, themed learning days, and outdoor adventures. Woven throughout are stories from the authors’ own Forest School classes, as they make a passionate case for the importance of ensuring children’s access to nature and the incredible benefits they will gain from being outside, even in the heart of a city.

Discover the flavors and uses of common wild plants with this herbalist guide featuring recipes and tips on foraging right outside your door. When we think of wild plants with medicinal or culinary benefits, we typically think of something exotic and obscure. But many of the plants growing in our own neighborhoods can be just as useful and tasty as anything sold in a health food store. In Herbal Adventures, herbalist Rachel Wolf reveals the properties and uses of ten common plants—including chickweeds, dandelions, catnip and others. With the tips and recipes in this book, you can enjoy delicious homemade soda, flower petal pancakes, chickweed pesto, or your own herbal tea. Plus you'll be able to make a soothing balm for cuts and scrapes, syrup to quiet your cough, a rejuvenating herbal hair rinse, and much more! "A real gem . . . a perfect beginners' book no matter your age." —Rosemary Gladstar