Adventures from Backyard to Mountaintop
We’re celebrating Earth Month and the release of our new book, The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things To Do In Nature Before You Grow Up, with some of our favorite Vintage Nature activities. Today, we’re celebrating the simple, fun, joyful and awesome tire swing.
Virtual book tours are one of the most brilliant concepts to come from the digital blogging age. I love being able to connect with fellow writers, parents, educators, gardeners, birders and nature enthusiasts from the comfort of my couch. We are incredibly lucky to have an amazing group of bloggers join our virtual book tour for The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things To Do In Nature Before You Grow Up. (Enter to win your own copy at the Destination Nature giveaway.)
They will be posting reviews, guest posts, and samples from our book throughout the month of April. We can’t thank them enough, but we can encourage you to check out their blogs. (We’ll be posting links to their sites all month via our Facebook page.) These writers are fantastic. We encourage you to follow them and read them regularly. Without further ado, here’s the list of our rockstar bloggers featuring us this month.
April 2: Little House in the Suburbs
April 3: Go Explore Nature
April 5: Birding with Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman
April 8: Slow Family Online
April 9: 10,000 Birds
April 10: Bring the Kids
April 11: Small Wonders
April 12: Garden Therapy
April 15: Outside Mom
April 17: Birdfreak
April 18: Exploring Portland
April 19: Cragmama
April 21: Prairie Birder
April 22: Colorado Mountain Mom
April 23: Birdchick
April 24: Tales of a Mountain Mama
April 26: Adventure Tykes
In honor of Easter and bunnies everywhere, Destination Nature wanted to share the brownie cake they recently made. (By the way, a BIG, happy thank you to Ray Ray for making it possible. She’s a genius.) How did we do it? Easy peasy! We made two large sheets of brownies and cut out a bunny shape complete with paws and big ears. We used Nutella to help hold everything together, strawberries for the inner ear, M&M for the eyes and nails, pecans for the teeth, bananas to line his carved out belly and the best banana chocolate walnut ice cream for inside the belly. To top it all off, we adored with whipped cream and more Nutella. It was completely and utterly amazing. Brownie bunny cakes should be an Easter tradition.
The Destination Nature team is thrilled to announce a unique and exciting partnership…we’ve been selected as judges for the third annual CLIF Kid’s Backyard Game Contest to be held in San Diego, California, this summer!
To celebrate this effort to get kids active and outside, we are holding a giveaway from now and through the month of April. Prizes include autographed copies of The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book and CLIF Bar swag. Check it out! We’re excited to be working with CLIF. Destination Nature and CLIF Kid share the philosophy that encouraging kids to play and explore outside is a fun and healthy way for them to build valuable skills that they will use into adulthood. And this game is a perfect way to do that.
To enter the Backyard Game Contest:
The CLIF Kid’s Backyard Game Contest is open to children ages 6 – 12 years. The contest encourages kids to use their imaginations to invent creative backyard games. Finalists will be flown to California to compete in the finals and will receive a new bike and helmet. The top winner will receive a $10,000 scholarship! Entries are being accepted through June 17th at www.clifkidbackyardgame.com. (Fun fact: Stacy’s son Jack was a finalist for last year’s contest with his game Zombie Hunt.)
As judges we get to meet the finalists, play the games with the kids, and help select the winner. As outdoor play advocates, we are also sharing fun family outdoor activity tips with CLIF Kids throughout the spring and summer.
Being a kid is about running, playing, and being active. The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book was written with this in mind. So open the door and step outside for an adventure. And remember to enter the CLIF Kid’s Backyard Game Contest and sign up for our Destination Nature giveaway.
Saturday, June 8, Destination Nature will be part of a very exciting event called National Get Outdoors Day. The event (now in its 6th year) offers opportunities for American families to experience traditional and non-traditional types of outdoor activities. Prime goals of the day are reaching currently underserved populations and first-time visitors to public lands, and reconnecting our youth to the great outdoors.
How are we involved? Destination Nature will be holding a campaign for National Get Outdoors Day and GO Day events through a great site called Razoo. (It’s a lot like Kickstarter but for non-profits.) We’re calling it the Keep a Kid Outside campaign. Our goal for Keep a Kid Outside is to make sure the kids that attend a GO Day event will continue cultivating their love for the great outdoors. So several GO Day locations from around the country will get to give kids FREE copies of our book, The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up.
Here’s where you can help! For only $11, you can get a book in the hands of a kid. (Thanks to our publisher Falcon Guides for providing a great price to make this campaign possible.)
From the very beginning of this book, our goal has been to reach kids. Sure, there are a lot of books, reports and information out there about how important it is to get kids outside, and we support these efforts 100%. But our #1 focus is to reach kids. Our book definitely targets kids and gives them tons of ideas for getting outside and enjoying their backyard, nature and the great outdoors. We hope you’ll consider supporting our Keep a Kid Outside campaign by donating a book. We’ve been really impressed with all the organizers behind GO Day, and we’re confident they’ll get The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book into the hands of kids who need it.
GO HERE TO DONATE TO THE CAMPAIGN.
It’s finally here…and it has puppets! We put a lot of hard work into our book trailer for The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up. A big, huge thanks to Jon Good. Check out his website jgoodmedia.com. He’s a good friend and an all-around creative genius. He’s the one who made the magic happen, and we really want to thank him for his hard work. We hope you enjoy our take on a book trailer and share it with your friends. Oh yeah, and we hope you buy the book, too! What kind of authors would we be if we didn’t tell you to buy our book every chance we get?
Destination Nature is teaming up with CLIF Kid to give away some of their fantastic ZBars along with our new book, The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up. We’re holding this giveaway to celebrate our new book as well as our new relationship with CLIF Kid. We’re going to be judges for their Backyard Game of the Year contest!
We have our publisher to thank for the books (we love you Falcon Guides). And we have CLIF Kid to thank for the ZBars (seriously, ZBars are organic, healthy and they taste great).
We realize this is a long giveaway, but we want to make sure all of our new friends and followers from our virtual book tour have the opportunity to enter as well. Of course, you shouldn’t let it deter you from ordering your own copy of The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book. After all, you can always donate this one to a library, nature center or give it to a kid you know.
To enter, all you have to do is like us on Facebook! Just prove it by entering the form below. (After you enter, you might even be able to earn extra entries by telling your friends!)
