Review- A Kid's Summer EcoJournal Toni Albert

A Kid's Summer EcoJournal With Nature Activities for Exploring the Season

This is a pretty cute book. The illustrations are lovely, thanks to Margaret Brandt. Each section is a two page spread. The left page contains beautiful, yet unrelated, illustrations which take up a good bit of space on the page. There are 10 lines for journaling which occupy approximately 1/3 of the page. Another 1/3 consists of the author's own nature journal entries. The right page contains related illustrations and a nature project or activity suggestion.

I like this book. But, I never would have named it an ecojournal.

It has a mere 10 lines for writing per section. (Anyone with a young boy knows this is simply not enough room to write.) There is no room for sketching nor is there anywhere to contain any small samples collected. A journal this is not. If the brief writing the student will do constitutes a journal than this book is actually more of the author's own journal as there is quite a bit more room for her own entries. (Although they are very nice entries.)

I am pleased with the activity suggestions. Most of them retain the goal of exploring the natural world for observation. (Versus a lot of nature books which only want to focus on cutesy crafts.)

I appreciate the Wildlife Checklist near the end of the book. The students have the opportunity to keep track of when/where they saw commonly spotted wildlife. (There is also a small line for comments.)

At a mere $9.95, I would recommend this book as a supplement to a separately kept nature journal. BTW- Now I need to find another nature journal. Anyone have any suggestions?