A welcome note for parents and carers

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Hello! My name is Eleanor Chaney, and I'm the founder of the The Library Of Nature. I wanted to thank you for visiting the website and to give you an introduction into the project and what it can bring to you.

The Library Of Nature is based on nearly 15 years of experience working in arts education and my own experiences as a parent. It has been created to support your family in developing your creative skills, feeing your imagination, exploring the natural world and having fun together.

The website is built around my research into female naturalists botanists, entomologists, mycologists and other naturalists of the past who were passionate about the natural world, and navigated many challenges to do the work they loved. For a lot of these women, working as an illustrator allowed them to study nature.

This research is then used to inspire creative activities and outdoor adventures for your family. Each activity contains a key to let you know what age group it is designed for, how long we think it will take, what materials you need, and whether or not you child can complete it simply with supervision or if it's a project for you to do together. Activities range from colouring and drawing sheets you can instantly download and print off, to quick 10 minute makes they can go on to play with, to small, self contained projects you can complete over a few crafting sessions.

I have illustrated and designed these myself based on previous workshops in both formal and community education, and everything has been given the seal of approval by my own 7 year old.

The first stage of the project has been kindly supported by Arts Council England and this has enabled us to make the the website and it's activities free for Spring 2021.

We would love to hear any feedback, suggestions or responses you might have about the website or the activities. Please feel free to get in touch using the form below, or to find us on Facebook or Instagram.

We would also love to see how you use the activities. To keep all children who use our website safe we do not feature surnames or faces on our social media. Please send images of the things you create or the activities you have done to librarian(at)thelibraryofnature.com or message us on our Facebook page.