The Great Outdoors Games & Puzzles Book

Buckley Beaver and Daffodil Duck are the tour guides for a nature excursion like no other! Children will love the curiosities and fun little quirks of the country setting as they work their way through a variety of activities featuring friendly animals, woodland wonders, and other nature themes. Country jokes and riddles will have kids giggling along with the animal guides.

Five sections — A Country Stroll, Crossing a Stream, A Day at the County Fair, Into the Woods, and Hiking Up a Mountain — feature puzzles that progress in difficulty, encouraging children to take the challenge and expand their skills (without becoming frustrated) as they work through the book. Connect-the-dots pictures make way for mazes, then word searches, sudokus, crossword puzzles, and logic problems.

Each illustrated page has lots to look at and plenty of room for small fingers to write. Buckley and Daffodil keep the tone lively throughout. It's an amusing and educational nature walk for city and country kids alike!

Children's Literature

This collection of puzzles and games is designed to celebrate the great outdoors. Mazes, crossword puzzles and matching games focus on being in the woods. A dot-to-dot puzzle reveals a creature that you might not expect to see in a pond. Comparing matching pictures that have a few differences tests observational skills. Coded drawings reveal an animal hidden within the lines. There are five chapters. The level of difficulty for the puzzles and games increases with each chapter. Level two activities require better reading skills than do level one, asking readers to practice mirror reading and complete fill-in-the-letter words. Level three includes sudoku puzzles that match symbols instead of numbers. Level five games include mazes with elaborate twisted trees and sophisticates puns. Level six games require matching up two columns of three-letter groups to make a six-letter word that answers a clue. A dictionary and the answers complete this kids' activity book. Reviewer: Kristin Harris