This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Chicago-Area Forest Preserve Nature Programs Connect Three Books With Reading Goals

Chicago-area forest preserves offer family programs from nature trails to outdoor movies to fishing tournaments.

The Chicagoland area forest preserves offer family programs from nature trails to outdoor movies to fishing tournaments. No matter where you live, you can take advantage of forest preserve programs in Cook County, DuPage County and Will County. For families looking to tie a nature adventure with add-on learning, three new books connect your child's natural curiosity with more information about favorite topics.

Searchlight Books' "In Action" series helps students understand "key science questions." Designed for students from 8 to 11 years old, the two "In Action" books we reviewed were Lake and Pond Food Webs in Action and Forest Food Webs in Action. We tied our local resources with the books by taking a forest preserve hike after reading the books. Our daughters were able to identify many concepts discussed in Lake and Pond Food Webs in Action as we walked around a small lake. They were especially interested in telling us all about the creatures that eat mosquitos.

Each "In Action" book follows the same, easy to follow, format. One of the first pages is a food web illustration. In Forest Food Webs in Action, the illustration shows how everything from the sun to honey mushrooms to turkey vultures to red foxes are connected. As you'd expect, interconnectedness is woven throughout the stories.

Find out what's happening in La Grangewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Author Paul Fleisher writes compelling stories that give kids the right amount of information, no matter what their reading level. For those kids interested in more details, there is a glossary of words children might not know on sight and a page with book and website resources.

After a hike at the Little Red School House, our girls wanted to learn more about the honeybee hives. Luckily for us we had The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees: A Scientific Mystery waiting to be read. Author Sandra Markle wrote an important book about a topic garnering more and more press.

Find out what's happening in La Grangewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees: A Scientific Mystery helps tweens from 9 through 12 years old understand the important role honeybees play in our world. From the explanation of what honeybees do for our food chain to a global resource list to help honeybees, the book has something to interest every reader. It's a scientific mystery which has not been solved yet, so after reading the book, kids can follow the story developments.

Disclosure: I did receive free, review copies of each book. My words and opinions are my own.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?