Experience

Nature Play Sign

On the Prairie

Enter the Living Maze

A living maze of prairie grasses invites children to wind their way to the center and back. Find butterflies and flowers hiding in the grasses.

The maze builds curiosity about nature as children learn to identify plants or grasses native to the prairie. But grasses and flowers weren’t the only life on the prairie. About 150 million years ago, Jurassic Dinosaurs roamed the South Dakota plains. Excavations in South Dakota have uncovered an abundance of dinosaur fossils.

 


Learn more about these topics through the books below.
Many of these books are at the Brookings Public Library.

Infants

Triangles: Shapes in the Natural World, In: Baby Eye Like, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
Good Night, Moon, Margaret Wise Brown & Clement Hurd

Toddlers

Freight Train, Donald Crews

Ages 3 – 5

Tatanka and the Lakota People, Donald F. Montileaux*
A Prairie Alphabet, Jo Bannatyne-Cugnet & Yvette Moore
If You're Not From the Prairie, Dave Bouchard & Henry Ripplinger 
The Three Little Tamales, Eric Kimmel & Valeria Docampo  
Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale, Lisa Campbell Ernst
Old Cricket, Lisa Wheeler & Ponder Goembel  

Ages 6 – 8

Prairies, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent & William Munoz
Wildflowers, In: Let's Investigate Plants, Derek Fell
Grasshoppers, In: Nature's Friends, Ann Heinrichs
Grasslands, In: First Reports, Susan Heinrichs Gray  
The Racoon & the Bee Tree, Charles Eastman & Elaine Goodale Eastman*
The Discontented Gopher, L.Frank Baum*
Dance in a Buffalo Skull, Zitkal-Sa
The Mystery of the Round Rocks, Mark Meierhenry & David Volk*
The Mystery of the Tree Rings, Mark Meierhenry & David Volk*
Prairie Town, Bonnie Geisert & Arthur Geisert
The Prairie Dog, In: Life Cycles, Sabrina Crewe 
Lewis and Clark, A Prairie Dog for the President, In: Step into Reading, Shirley-Raye Redmond & John Manders  
Prairie Girl: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, William Anderson & Renee Graaf  
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Alexandra Wallner
The Blizzard, Betty Ren Wright & Ronald Himler
My Mother's Apron, In: Early Dakota Prairie Series, Edward Keller & David Christy 
Prairie Day, In: My First Little House Books, Laura Ingalls Wilder & Renee Graef

Ages 9 – 12

Dakota Flora, David J. Ode
The Prairie Builders: Reconstructing America’s Lost Grasslands, In: Scientists in the Field, Sneed B. Collard
The Prairie: An Enduring Spirit, In: Life Views, Charles Rotter  
America's Prairies and Grasslands: Guide to Plants and Animals, Marianne Wallace
America's Prairies, Frank Staub  
People of the Plains & Prairies, In: Native peoples, Native lands, Linda Thompson
The Buffalo and the Indians, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent & William Munoz
Fort Sisseton, In: The Prairie Plains Series ; no. 5, Harold Schuler
Georgie, the Farm Boy of the Prairie, V.G. Hedner  
Stories from Native North America, In: Multicultural Stories, Linda Theresa Raczek & Richard Hook  
The Prairie Dog Prince, Eva Katharine Gibson*
The Jumpin-Off Place, Marian Hurd McNeely*
Under the Wild Western Sky, Jim Arnosky  
Prairie School, AVI & Bill Farnsworth
Prairie Whispers, Frances Arrington
Rodzina, Karen Cushman
My Face to the Wind, In: Dear America, Jim Murphy
Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie, In: Dear America, Kristiana Gregory
Dakota Spring, D. Anne Love & Ronald Himler
Inside Laura's Little House, Carolyn Strom Collins & Christina Wyss Eriksson
Prairie Summer, Bonnie Geisert & Arthur Geisert