Three Hundred Sixty-Five Days Outside: A One-Year Field Guide to Family Adventures, Outdoor Play, and Life Beyond Screens

Find the best stick. Don't settle for just any old stick. Find the best one, the one that you can show to people when you tell them, "I found the best stick." That's prompt #52. There are 364 more. Three Hundred Sixty-Five Days Outside is a book of outdoor prompts, one for every day of the year. A lot of them take a few minutes. Some take an afternoon. Many need nothing but you and whatever is outside your door; others ask for a pencil, a jar, or a camera. A few more from the book: Say hello to ten trees (actually say "hello" out loud to them). Find the crunchiest leaf. The best way to do this is by stomping on as many individual leaves as you can while you're out on a walk. Lay down in the rain. If you can catch the beginning of a rain shower, lay down for a while and then see the you-shaped patch of dry ground you made. The prompts work for kids and grown-ups alike, and for teenagers, grandparents, and classrooms. From the introduction: "This isn't a program, and it isn't something to keep up with. You don't need to start at the beginning. You don't need to do one every day. You don't need to finish the book." The book is 544 pages. Besides the prompts, there are pages to write and draw on, field pages in the back (maps and observation logs), and an index that groups the prompts by category, like sounds, colors, animals, and art.