Design, plant, and grow a world of your very own—inside a terrarium! Including 15 unique, imagination-inspiring project plans, each accompanied by adorable, full-color photographs, kids and their grown-ups will discover how easy terrariums are to plant and grow.
*As featured in The New York Times*
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 to Terrariums for Kids, the results are beautiful, inspiring, and confidence-building. Making these little landscapes develops motor skills, spacial 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! Plus, when the project is complete, there's a piece of living art to share with family and friends or display on a bedroom shelf.
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?
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Section 1: Parts of a Terrarium
Chapter 1 Picking the right container
Chapter 2 Preparing your container for planting
Chapter 3 The best plants for terrariums
Chapter 4 How to take care of your terrarium
Section 2: Terrarium Projects for Kids
1 Winter Scene Terrarium
2 Hanging Glass Globe with Succulents
3 Bonsai Terrarium
4 Pet Marimo Moss Ball Aquarium
5 Geometric Terrarium with Succulents, Crystals, and Geodes
6 Bromeliad Terrarium with Layered Sand
7 Japanese Garden with Living Rocks
8 Geometric Terrarium with Air Plants
9 Dinosaur Bones Diorama Terrarium
10 Carnivorous Plant Terrarium
11 Vivarium for a Praying Mantis
12 Closed Jungle Ecosystem with Tropical Plants
13 Orchidarium 96
14 Aquatic Plant Paludarium
15 Mini Moss Landscape
Resources
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Index
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.
Target Age: 8-12
Cool Springs Press
Pub Date: September 15, 2020
0.3" H x 9.1" L x 7.4" W
112 pages
paperback