With the increasing likelihood that more kids will be home distance learning, here’s a fun and creative means to learn about science, nature, and more.

Kids love to create, imagine, and have fun. Nothing fulfills all three of those desires quite like designing and planting a terrarium. With the step-by-step project instructions found in A Family Guide toTerrariums for Kids, the results are beautiful, inspiring, and confidence-building. Making these little landscapes develops motor skills, spatial awareness, and provides a wealth of sensory input. The science behind the art is included with quick and simple lessons on ecosystem functions, the water cycle, and plant nutrition. But for kids, it’s all about being active and building something cool!

With the terrarium plans found in A Family Guide to Terrariums for Kids, everyone in the family can tap their inner “science geek” to:

• Use multi-colored sand and succulents to craft a desert terrarium
• Plant, trim, and tend a terrarium bonsai tree
• Build a peat bog filled with carnivorous plants
• Make an aquatic terrarium, complete with a marimo moss ball “pet”
• Design a prehistoric garden of air plants
• Create a plant-filled habitat for a praying mantis
• Grow a Japanese garden with living rocks

With information on selecting the best terrarium container, growing materials, decorative elements, tools, and plants, readers are primed for success that lasts long after the terrarium has been built. Terrariums combine imagination and creativity with a dash of hands-on science. And you get to play in the dirt! What could be better than that?

About the author:

Patricia Buzo is the owner and artist behind Doodle Bird Terrariums. From the age of 15, she had a successful career in fine art and mural painting, often choosing plants and nature as her preferred subject matter. Looking for a chance to work more closely with nature, Patricia founded her terrarium-making business in 2008, and through trial and error has become an expert in her craft. Both by experimentation and research, she perfected how to best create and care for planted terrariums, while at the same time using her artist background to create realistic miniature landscapes using live mosses and other tiny plant life.