Touring Picture Book - Sunflower Shoots and Muddy Boots & Flower Pressing

Coming into Summer there are lots of wonderful books to encourage little ones to get outside so the Touring Picture Book team have chosen one of the very best for our latest post. If you're new to the Touring Picture Book: welcome! The team love to share a fun new release and a follow-up activity you can do with your children or a connection that we have made to the book that you might find helpful to think about.

Sunflower Shoots and Muddy Boots by Katherine Halligan & Grace Easton is packed full of brilliant activities as well as fascinating facts about starting your own garden (indoor and outdoor!). So if your little ones loves to dig in the dirt and get messy, wants to learn more about what to plant, then this book is a great place to start. Especially if you are a garden-novice parent like me! 

Before I share my thoughts on the contents of the book, I just wanted to share that this book is ingeniously spiral bound meaning that it can lie fully flat on the grass, patio or workspace where you are and the pages are a heavy gloss making them wipe-clean and also heavy enough that they aren't flapping around in a breeze. It has really been designed to be used outdoors and whilst gardening!

But under the cover is a treasure trove of ideas for getting you started! It gives you top ten plants for little gardeners, guides to garden flowers, herbs and creepy crawlies as well as a list of great projects like creating a pea-pod tee-pee, a mud kitchen, creating magic garden imaginative play areas. It also has lots of facts scattered throughout the pages and vocabulary builders too so that children can take about the tools they need, the plants they want to grow; and also it has lots of tips for keeping safe. I really liked the fact that it has a small section on small, indoor gardens too meaning that there is a space for everyone to grow their own little garden. 

The illustrations in this book are utterly charming - with beautiful floral images it really brings to life the wonders of a garden. And they are definitely inspiring for creating your own garden! It's an absolute delight and the perfect gift for budding little green fingers.

When I looked through the book in the early Spring for a project to do I was very much drawn to the flower pressing 'Making Memories' section as I loved doing this as a kid! (Quite a few of the other projects are more suitable for now the weather is becoming more summer-y so we will try them out too.) And BookBairn loves to pick flowers so it seemed like a nice way to keep them. It's really easy too and involves very little preparation but does require some patience!

BookBairn and I went out to the garden, and out local footpath, to collect some flowers (some might be considered weeds but we know that weeds are just flowers that are growing in the wrong place) and brought them home. We have a little flower press that I picked up for the project but you can just as easily put some flowers between paper/card and then weight then down with some heavy books. (Make sure they are dry before you do this - you don't want your book pages soggy and ink bleeding). Then leave them for a week and when you open them up, hey, presto, pressed flowers!

We have turned ours into a garden picture but they make lovely gifts, especially in a frame, or some bookmarks. Such a fun activity.

Check out the other activities happening across the Touring Picture Book Club and pop over to our Twitter to be in with a chance of winning a copy of Sunflower Shoots and Muddy Boots of your very own!

And look out for our next touring picture book which will be Super Duper You by Sophy Henn! Hooray!

And if you've popped over from one of the other fabulous blogs - hello! And our regular readers - hello to you too! We would love to hear if you have any signed books that you love!