Blind children explore the outdoors with Nature Detectives

Nature Detectives is a  Touch to See book in our Young Explorers: Forest School series for blind and partially sighted children aged 11 – 14 years. It’s an exciting guide to exploring four different UK habitats – ancient woodland, seashore, hedgerow and rivers and streams.

Young explorers will be given the confidence to go out into the countryside after feeling the beautiful tactile pictures and listening to the descriptive guides, which lead them on a walk through each habitat, describing the animals and plants which flourish there. There’s masses of useful information along with evocative descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells that they may come across.

With the Nature Detectives book, readers will discover the secrets hiding in ancient woodland including fungi, stag beetle and hazel dormouse. They will head out beachcombing at the seashore while oystercatchers feed in the shallows, and discover a sand lizard and adder in the dunes.

They can also tune into the song of the chaffinch with its nest of hungry young in the hawthorn hedgerow and learn about the amazing web-building feats of the cross spider. Finally they can meander along the river bank,  listening out for the plop of a frog leaping into the water as minnows dart in the shallows, an acrobatic swallow swoops above and a beautiful demoiselle rests at the water’s edge.

The fun doesn’t stop there. The book also includes suggestions for activities to try whilst adventuring, such as collecting driftwood and shells to make a beach collage, bark rubbing, recording a soundscape and pond dipping.

Other books in the Forest School series for Young Explorers which can be borrowed from our free library include On the Farm and Wild about Bushcraft.