A Home for Many — Additional Resources
Books
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Bash, Barbara. Ancient Ones: The World of the Old-Growth Douglas Fir. Sierra Club. 2002. This book documents the lifecycle of one of the world’s great trees and reveals its importance to the many life forms that flourish beneath and within its welcoming branches. Grades 4–8. ISBN: 978-1578050819. |
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Bishop, Nic. Forest Explorer: A Life-sized Field Guide. Scholastic Press. 2004. Focusing on deciduous forests, the book showcases life in the understory, the treetops, and at the edge of the woods. Grades K-4. ISBN: 978-0439174800. |
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Carrighan, Sally. One Day on Beetle Rock. Heyday Books. 2002. The story describes the lives of the animals that live under and around a granite outcropping in Sequoia National Park. Grades 4-8. ISBN: 1890771538. |
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Hutchins, Pat. Good-night Owl!. Aladdin. 1990. This simple, cumulative story of poor Owl’s attempts at sleep gets children thinking of just how many animals call a tree home. Grades K-3. ISBN: 978-0689713712. |
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Latimer, Jonathan and Karen Stray Nolting. Illustrated by Roger Tory Peterson. Backyard Birds Peterson Field Guides: Young Naturalists Series. Houghton Mifflin Books. 1999. Backyard Birds is just one edition to the Young Naturalists Series featuring art of celebrated naturalist Roger Tory Peterson. This field guide is both accessible and effective, incorporating lessons on one of the most effective methods for identifying birds. Others in the series include, Birds of Prey, Caterpillars, Butterflies, and Songbirds. Grades 4-6. ISBN: 978-0395922767 |
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Robbins, Michael. Fandex Family Field Guides: Birds. Workman Publishing Company; Box edition. 1998. With 50 individually die-cut cards, readers can experience these colorful birds up close. Each cut out is accompanied with details regarding the bird’s habitat, diet, conservation status, and more. Grades 4-6. ISBN: 978-0761113973 |
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Morgan, Emily. Next Time You See a Pill Bug. NSTA Kids. 2013. This illustrated book allows in-depth study of the pill bug. Grades K-5. ISBN: 978-1936959174. |
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Nat Geo Wild Animal Atlas: Earth’s Astonishing Animals and Where They Live. National Geographic. 2010. (Grades K–5). This large-format atlas of animals is arranged by continent and then by habitat (biome). It includes photos, maps and graphics, and facts about each animal. ISBN: 978-1426306990. |
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Pfeffer, Wendy and Robin Brickman. A Log’s Life. Aladdin. 2007. This book introduces readers to the life cycle of a tree, starting when it is hit by lightening to create a fallen log. Grades K-3. ISBN: 978-1416934837. |
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Schreiber, Anne. Log Hotel. Scholastic. 1994. This story about a log decomposing in a forest depicts the variety of animals that live in it. Grades K-3. ISBN: 978-0590273893. |
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Sill, Cathryn. Forests. Peachtree. 2013. Each page of this story presents one sentence describing a particular forest habitat: boreal forest, tropical rain forest, cloud forest, temperate rain forest, deciduous forest, or tropical dry forest, accompanied by a realistic illustration. Grades PreK-3. ISBN: 978-1561457342. |
Other Resources
AllTrails
A free app for Apple and Android devices, AllTrails helps users access trail maps to national parks or a hiking path near home, or to map a new trail of their own.
Easychart
A free app for Apple or Android device, Easychart is a good tool for easily creating bar, line, and pie charts. The app also works without an Internet connection.
iNaturalist
iNaturalist offers a great place to record and map observations of plants and animals. Each place page displays all the species that have been recorded for a given place, including information about their abundance, conservation status, and who was first to observe that species in that place on iNaturalist.org. You can also create a group page, for your school, for example.
LeafSnap
Leafsnap is a free app for iPhone and iPad (Andriod version in development) that uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from individual leaf photographs you take in the field. Leafsnap is currently geared just for Northeastern United States species, but expansion to include all U.S. regions is underway.
Ordinary Extraordinary Junco
Video shorts from The Junco Project introduce one of North America’s most common groups of songbirds. Juncos can be readily observed in backyards, city parks, and forests alike, and also are interesting in terms of their animal behavior, ecology, and evolutionary biology.
Paper Plate Habitat
Florida PLT has created a Paper Plate Habitat template to be used in conjunction with the exploration of microhabitats. This document contains a list of materials, instructions, and images necessary for students to create their own habitats and to begin exploring the life and interrelationships found within.
Project Noah
Use the Project Noah online photo album for sharing wildlife pictures and documenting wildlife observations.
Schoolyard Habitat Guide
The Schoolyard Habitat Project Guide provides the basic steps needed to restore or create wildlife habitat on school grounds, incorproating critical thinking and decision-making skills while challenging students in reading, writing, science, mathematics, and language arts. Additionally, schools and organizations serving K-12 students may apply for grants of up to $8,000.
WildLab Bird
The Wildlab Bird is a free app for Apple devices (try iBird Lite for Android) to learn the basics of bird identification. This application uses audio, photographs, maps, and the process of elimination to help identify over 200 bird species. Sightings can also be entered into a national bird watching database for comparison.
