Create Your Own Field Guide From a Wildflower Photo Safari

Spring is finally here in full force, and I’ve been thinking about Earth Day activities for kids. These kid-created, storybook-inspired wildflower field guides were a lot of fun for all 3 of my elementary aged children.

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I’m excited to join up with the Storybook Science blog series this month. This week’s theme is conservation, and I found a lovely book to inspire our activity.

On Meadowview Street by Henry Cole tells of a girl who saves a wildflower in her yard from the lawnmower by roping off an area around it. Over time, she ropes off larger and larger areas, until her whole yard is full of wildflowers. It’s a gentle lesson in conservation, and one my kids could relate to.

In fact, I remember Liam talking my husband into leaving an area of our yard unmowed during wildflower season a couple years ago. We had a patch of pale pink flowers appear, and he appreciated their beauty.

Learning about Wildflowers

Last week I realized that the kids were calling those same type of pink wildflowers “buttercups.” I knew that was wrong, but I didn’t know the correct name. I told the kids we’d find out.

So the other day I searched and found this helpful wildflower resource online. It turns out that our favorite pink wildflowers are called evening primroses.

Kids’ Wildflower Photo Safari

I talked the kids into going on a wildflower photo safari down our street and also around a nearby park. My kids each have their own inexpensive camera (affiliate), and they loved getting to use them for a serious project.

RELATED: Printable Nature Scavenger Hunt

Knowing that the kids take a lot of blurry pictures, I also snapped some wildflower photos with my phone.

DIY Wildflower Field Guide

Back at home, we printed out tiny contact sheet size photos on regular printer paper. The whole process took about a minute. I printed straight from File Explorer in Windows 8. (Update: it works the same way in Windows 10.) I held down the Shift key and selected all the photos I wanted to print. Then I clicked on Share and chose Print. Next, I scrolled down the right side and selected Contact Sheet. Then I clicked print. Here’s a screenshot –

If you have a different computer setup, search “how to print a contact sheet” and you should find what you need.

Once we had the wildflower pictures printed, the kids cut them out, and glued them onto quarter sheets of paper to make little booklets.

We’re actually still not done. Sometimes, when my kids are really interested in something, they’re v..e..r..y slow. And collecting and cataloging is right up their alley at this age. I’m pretty sure though, that if I give them the right amount of support and encouragement, they’ll complete these and have their very own local wildflower field guides.

They would really like this printable nature journal for kids – and you could totally combine that with this wildflower activity too!

RELATED: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Craft

For more storybook-inspired science activities, you may like to see what my fellow bloggers have created.