CHILDREN'S ACTIVITY BOOKS

I found an article on The Independent on 'The 10 Best Children's Activity Books', available here: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/the-10-best-childrens-activity-books-7973155.html

Although the books on this list aren't all geared towards encouraging children outdoors, their approaches may be well suited to that cause. Here are a few selected books:

DOODLEPEDIA

This book combines some aspects of an encyclopaedia with a creative edge, which encourages the reader to finish the page illustrations with their own ideas. For example, a spread gives a few beginner's facts about the television and encourages the reader to complete the illustrations of television sets with their favourite TV shows, and another about sharks where you must draw in the shark's dinner in his belly.

I love the idea of this book, which isn't far removed from 'Wreck This Journal' but geared towards children and combines inspiring creativity with interesting facts. From a design point of view I love the simplicity of the page design, which is very understated and allows the child to overshadow the illustrations with their own. This aspect of interactivity in the book is something that I would look to include in my own, and encouraging the child to get outdoors and also get creative and involved in art is something I would look to replicate.

THE USBORNE HOLIDAY ACTIVITY BOOK

This book is designed for travelling when on holiday it seems, whether by car, train or plane, and features similar activites to Doodlepedia as well as puzzle sections. It also includes activites to try whilst on holiday such as games to play and recipes to make. Again, this would be an approach that I could easily adapt to fit the needs of the brief.

100 THINGS TO MAKE AND DO

This is again a very similar design, with an approach which encourages children to engage in craft activities. From the design of the cover it seems to be aimed at quite a young age group as the colours are mostly pastel shades and is very easy on the eye.

THIS BOOK IS TOTALLY RUBBISH

On a similar theme, this book again encourages children to engage with arts and crafts but with a view to recycling and teaching them about sustainability. This is something close to the heart of Naturesbase and something that I will have to keep in mind when designing my book.

INITIAL IDEAS

Having spent the last lecture looking into additional elements and paper engineering, I decided to begin my ideas by looking into which aspects of this that I could include in my work.

This sketch shows a design for a sort of cross between 'Wreck This Journal' and 'The Dangerous Book for Boys', with a mix of traditional line drawings and paper engineering, in this case tear out strips to create kindling. On the left hand side of the spread is the information about building a fire.

This is an identification style book aimed at a younger audience, making use of lift-the-flaps and could also use pull tabs and other paper engineering techniques. In this example the child is asked 'what lays an egg like that?', and when they lift the flap that bears the picture of the egg it reveals the animal that laid the egg.

This is a sort of combination of the two styles above. The first spread takes an informative, reference-style, approach to an activity, in this case how to build a treehouse. The second features a pop-up showing the finished article.

At the moment these are very rough ideas just focused on bringing extra features into the book, and as I need to pitch the idea to the client in a few weeks I will need to research more around the subject to decide on the approach to take and the age group to aim at.

INITIAL RESEARCH

'White Noise', by David A. Carter

White Noise is marketed as a pop-up book for all ages, due to its abstract content and elaborate pop-ups. As you turn the pages, the pop-ups rub against the pages and create the white noise, while the accompanying text seems to mainly be there to add rhythm as there isn't a narrative.

This is obviously very advanced for a pop-up book, and has taken some time and skill. This book could keep anyone entertained, although it seems that it could be easily damaged by a young child, and so could be a viable style to use for the main brief as it adds a level of interactivity and difference.

'Wreck This Journal', by Keri Smith

'Wreck This Journal', while not necessarily a book for children, features some interesting additional features. Each page encourages the reader to wreck or embellish it in a different way, with text such as 'poke holes in this page using a pencil', 'write one word over and over', and 'climb up high - drop the journal'. This gives it an extra element and encourages creativity from the reader. I thought about perhaps bringing some element of this into my designs for the brief, but the problem is that the book can only really be enjoyed once.

'The Dangerous Book for Boys', by Conn and Hal Iggulden

'The Dangerous Book for Boys' is a guidebook that encourages children to partake in outdoors activities such as building treehouses and markets it as for boys aged eight to eighty, featuring things that every boy should know. There is also a pocket edition, as the original is a large hardback, which gives an added dimension.

HOW CHILDREN LEARN / ADDITIONAL FEATURES

John Holt, 'Children learn best when the learning experience is pleasant and free'

Babies:

• Once thought that their minds were a blank slate
• Studies indicate that they respond to and influence surroundings
• Black and white books - high contrast
• Expectation/association - similar to 'Pavlov's dog' experiments

Auditory learning - learn through listening

Visual learning - ideas are learnt through image association

Kinesthetic learning - learning through doing

'I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand', Ancient Chinese Proverb

Self motivated and self directed learning, eg. building blocks

3 approaches:

• building on pre-existing knowledge - using familiar to explain unfamiliar
• transferring knowledge - eg. toy ovens
• memory strategies - repetition or rhyme, summarising, grouping

'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle uses just 225 words and teaches about:

• Counting
• Days of the week
• Food
• Nature

Additional features

• paper engineering
• pull tabs
• flaps/fold outs
• pop ups
• die cuts
• textures
• special inks
• sounds
• stickers
• crayons
• wipe clean

NATURESBASE

Naturesbase is a summer camp based near Aberystwyth in Wales, 'where education becomes a living adventure', run by Gyles Morris.

Naturesbase


Their website describes the camp as,

• Helping out: feed the pigs, collect the eggs, record the weather forecast, make lunch

• Warm up games

• West Wales Adventure: discovery journey around the farm, with map-reading, sound maps, haiku poems, Native American map lines, making paint

• Survival in the Wild: tribes, shelters, fires, tea, dream catchers

• Developing a Sustainable Future

• Outdoor Pizza Making

• Art in the Landscape

• Wilderness Woodland Crafts

• Farmers in Training

• Bugtastic

• Obstacle course

• Celtic safari

• Rivers and Streams

• Forest Skills

• Aberaeron Harbour

• Crab fishing

• Raft building

'A wonderful outdoor and environmental education experience.We have created an inspirational residential camping environment for primary schools providing unparalleled learning experiences for every child who comes to stay. One of the best ways to describe it is a 24 /7 forest school experience where we live and learn outside, but with the comfort of our large stone barn for eating, teaching, relaxing and playing in if and when we need to.'

The staff include Gyles Morris and Jim Langley, experienced adventurers and expedition leaders, Alison Morris, who runs the farm kitchen, Tamsin Young and Em Munn.

Activities

The camp provides a very hands-on experience for the children, allowing them to not only experience playing out in the wild, but learning wilderness skills and sustainability issues. A lot is packed into the week's schedule, and there definitely seems to be something for everybody.

Other Summer Camps
http://boldearth.com/
This company offers summer camps around the world, where teenagers can experience many different extreme sports, cultures and locations. The 'Epic England' summer camp includes London tours, climbing Mount Snowdon, and rock climbing and surfing in Wales. However, this camp is aimed at an older age group than Naturesbase camp, 14 to 18 year olds.

http://www.pgl.co.uk/pglweb
PGL offer camps for children, including primary and secondary schools. Again, these have more of an adventure aspect, with activities such as climbing, skiing and kayaking.

https://www.yhasummercamps.co.uk/
YHA Summer Camps, formerly Do It 4 Real, offer specific camps to cater to certain interests, which include extreme sports, leadership skills, horseriding and watersports.

THE BRIEF

Client
Naturesbase

Background
UK children are losing contact with nature at a 'dramatic' rate, and their health and education are suffering, a National Trust report says. Traffic, the lure of video screens and parental anxieties are conspiring to keep children indoors, it says. Evidence suggests the problem is worse in the UK than other parts of Europe, and may help explain poor UK rankings in childhood satisfaction surveys.

The phrase 'nature deficit disorder' was coined in 2005 by author Richard Louv, measured in 'diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses'.

Key Objectives

• To design elements of a potential children's book which will act as an introduction to exploring the natural world through activities and associated information.
• To suggest best or most appropriate art styles, type use/formatting and/or added features through research to help the audiences best engage with the subject matter.

Target Audience(s)

• 5-7 year olds (Emerging readers). To be read and used with adult assistance.
• 7-9 year olds (Confident readers). To be read and used with some adult assistance.
• 9+ (Confident and competent readers). To be read and used independently with minimal adult assistance.

Initial Thoughts

• The range of ages and open subject matter means that this is a task where I can express my own style
• At this stage, there is not a particular area that I will look to research, instead taking a wider view of the subject.
• Encouraging children back into the outdoors may require research back to the sixties and seventies to see how they went about it.