Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars

Make leaf rubbings, learn the neighborhood bird songs together, turn an aquarium into a worm hotel, create a firefly lantern. There are garden projects, both for the outdoors—grow a container snacking garden, a pumpkin patch in a pot—and the indoors, i.e., how to use something called "indoor garbage gardens" to grow pineapple tops, sweet potato vines, peanuts, and more. Cooking projects, both in the sunshine—baking in a solar oven—and in the kitchen—what child will ever forget the time the two of you made Potato Volcanoes with Lava? And lots of rainy-day activities for times when nature's in a cranky mood.

Created by Sharon Lovejoy—a grandmother of four and the author of two classic books of garden activities for grown-ups and kids, Sunflower Houses and Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots—Toad Cottages and Shooting Stars is an ecologically inspired guide that combines more than 130 green activities with timeless grandparenting advice. Illustrated with Lovejoy's distinctive, delicate watercolors, it's an inventive resource for grandmother and grandchild to connect with each other through nature. It is the book to make sure an afternoon, a day, or a weekend turns into a memory that lasts forever.