Lift-the-flap and Colour: Forest
Lift-the-flap and Colour: African Animals
Alice Bowsher
Frances Lincoln Children’s Books
Pens and crayons ready? Alice Bowsher has added two new habitats to her activity books series, which are published in collaboration with the Natural History Museum.
In Forest we meet deer, squirrels busy collecting nuts, a family of dormice, owls and even howling grey wolves.
On the African savannah – elephants and their calves soak up the sun, springboks graze, lion cubs leap, a cheetah chases some ostriches, giraffes graze and as the sun sets, zebras stroll down to the waterhole …

Each book has five playful spreads to colour; and there’s a final information paragraph that gives some additional facts about each habitat.
Fun, interactive learning that might inspire children to go on to create their own natural world dioramas.
For slightly older readers is:

Drawing in Space
Harriet Russell
Princeton Architectural Press
Part activity book, part information book, this stylish and engaging offering takes readers through the solar system.
It begins, appropriately, with the Big Bang and proceeds to the planets, the moon, stars, galaxies and beyond, telling readers, ‘… there are many other solar systems besides our own.’
There’s a wide range of activities, (over thirty in all) one of my favourites being in part, a humorous dialogue between two stars, one round, the other with five points.
Equally amusing is an unhappy Pluto speech explaining how its status was downgraded from planet to dwarf planet; and then meeting with another dwarf planet and discovering it’s one of five known dwarves.
Other possibilities include games, puzzles and lots of drawing, including drawing a galaxy based on star-shaped objects – some examples are given …

and it might be fun to go out searching for suitable items, or perhaps, creating some in 3D.
Fun, educational in the broadest sense, and a jumping off point for further exploration of the topic.

I’ve signed the charter