Picture Book Hikes are a fun and easy way to bring learning outside. Read a book (you can even read it outside!) and then enjoy the related hike, activity and snack suggestions!
My Love for You is Like the Night Sky
Written & illustrated by: by Laura Smetana
My Love for You is Like the Night Sky is a lovely, lyrical story about how much a parent loves their kiddo. Gentle, spare text full of night sky and space metaphors, (glittering galaxies! full moons!) make this a fun book to introduce younger friends to moon phases, constellations, and the solar system. A perfect wind down/ bedtime book, Laura’s beautiful illustrations could also be a jumping off point for a moon study.
Thank you to Flying Cardinal Press for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Hike:
Bedtime Hike
This is such a bedtime book for me that I wanted to put together a proper bedtime hike. Not just a night hike, but a bedtime hike. The age range for this book is definitely pre-k or thereabouts, so we kept things fairly simple.
- First, pick a location. If possible, a hike around your yard or neighborhood is the easiest with younger kids. You can adjust to your schedule and be close to home in the case of meltdowns or overtired kiddos. Although in my experience, kids are so excited to stay up late that meltdowns are few and far between. If you don’t have any good place to hike around your home (and I use good pretty loosely here, you don’t need a beautiful park, just a safe place to walk around a bit.) check out local nature centers, they often have full moon hikes that you can join.
- Next, put on some cozy pjs and sturdy walking shoes.
- Go outside, find a comfortable place to sit (picnic blanket, lawn chair, tree stump etc.) Read My Love for You is Like the Night Sky together. Point out some of the things you might spot in the sky like the full moon and/ or constellations.
- Grab some lanterns or a flashlight.
- Start you walk and keep an eye on the sky. (But also look at the ground so you don’t trip!) Look for the full moon in the sky. Notice how different things look at night. Point out some constellations– look for ones you recognize like the big dipper, or make up some of your own! Listen for animal sounds and any other night time observations too.
- Head home (hopefully worn out) and snuggle into bed. Don’t forget to remind each other that your love is like the night sky!
Also check out my Full Moon Projects to find craft projects for each full moon!
Snack:
Goodnight Moon Granola
The most important part of hiking with kids imo is snacks. (It is also the most important part according to my kids.) A hike without a snack is like peanut butter without jelly. I thought they’d outgrow this, but they have not. Consequently, I am always on the lookout for portable, reasonably healthy snacks. And because this is a bedtime hike and we ideally want kids to be winding down, I dug into ingredients that are supposed to make you feel sleepy. Tart cherries, almonds, oats and pistachios contain melatonin, bananas contain both melatonin and magnesium, and dark chocolate has serotonin. (Also it’s yummy…) If you have a nut allergy substitute seeds for the nuts, in fact the whole dry ingredients part of the recipe is pretty interchangeable, so feel free to adjust to your taste, just keep the total number of cups the same. (Add more fruit, use a different type of nut or seed etc) I went with a chocolately granola because chocolate, but also because the dark granola contrasts nicely with the moons. I spent a lot of time researching how to keep granola is big chunks, partially because I like chunky granola, but mostly because it becomes more portable. You can wrap it up and eat it with your hands as you walk, or stow it until you find a nice rock to sit on. I stuck the banana moons on after the granola was made so they wouldn’t brown too much, but I suspect that if you used store bought chips, you could throw them in with everything else.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup of coconut (or olive) oil
- 1/2 cup of real maple syrup
- 1/3 cup of coconut sugar
- 1 TBS vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp coarse salt
- 4 cups rolled oats
- 2 cups whole almonds
- 1 cup pistachios (shelled)
- 1 cup dried tart cherries
- 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
- 2 baking sheets
- 2 pieces of parchment paper
- dried banana moon phases (recipe follows)
- some extra chocolate chips (to attach the banana chips)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 300°f
Add the oil, syrup, sugar, vanilla, cocoa powder and salt to a large mixing bowl. Mix well.
Add the oats, nuts, cherries, coconut, and chocolate chips and take your time stirring really well and making sure everything is well coated. (It has a tendency to hide little pockets of dry oats at the bottom!)
Tip the mixture out onto a parchment lined baking sheet. please it into a flat even layer with a spatula or greased hands. Place another piece of parchment on top and press it down firmly and evenly with another baking sheet. (You are essentially just compacting it)
Place into teh oven and cook for 30-40 minutes checking for doneness. The chocolate makes it a little trickier to tell because it doesn’t obviously brown so keep an eye on it. It will still feel a little soft in the oven but will firm up as it cools. DO NOT STIR. At all. Not while it’s cooking or while it’s cooling.
Once cool break into big chunks. Melt the extra chocolate in the microwave and use it to stick on the banana moon slices.
Wrap up the granola for your hike!
Dried Banana Moons
I have never loved store bought banana chips, they are too crisp and too thick for my taste. (They also have a ton of added sugar.) Drying them yourself means you can make them chewier and as a bonus you can cut them to look like the phases of the moon! I added a little silver shimmer dust on some of mine to make them extra moon-y, but it was barely noticeable so I didn’t include it here. The fruit juice adds a little sweetness and prevents browning.
Ingredients:
- 2 bananas
- 1/2 cup (ish) pineapple (or lemon) juice
- parchment
- baking sheet
- circle cutter (I love these)
Method:
Peel the bananas and carefully cut them into even 3/8 inch slices. (A little bigger than 1/8 and a little thinner than 1/4 inch)
Leave the more circular ones as full moons and use your circular cutter to make the more oval shaped pieces into a crescent and a partial moon.
Put the banana slices into a a bowl and add the pineapple (or lemon) juice just enough that the slices can swish around a little and get coated. Leave for 12-30 minutes to soak.
Preheat the oven to 200° f
Scoop the banana slices out of the juice and gently shake off the excess. Arrange flat on a parchment lined baking sheet. Cook for 2 hours and then check for doneness.
The tricky bit is that they’ll still feel mushy after 2 hours, and it’s honestly hard to gauge because they firm up as they cool. After 2 hours I flipped mine and stuck them back in the still warm (but off) oven and that was just the right doneness, but both oven temps and bananas vary, so if they don’t feel dried out enough keep cooking and checking them every 15 minutes up to 4 hours total. I also prefer mine on the chewy side- if you like them more crisp then do at least 3 hours.
Cool and store in an air tight container.
I Couldn’t Stay up Late Enough for the Moon Breakfast
If your littles can’t stay awake late enough to see the full moon, you can still have some granola for breakfast the next day! It’s less conducive to hiking, but still delicious, and yogurt is actually another food that shows up on sleep-inducing-foods lists because it contains tryptophan. (So if not breakfast, maybe a late night snack?) You also don’t have to bother drying the bananas for this so it’s faster as well! Just put your favorite yogurt in a bowl, crush up some of the granola and sprinkle it into a moon shape along the side and top it off with banana moon phase slices!