Science

You Can’t Taste a Pickle With Your Ear

Posted by on Oct 3, 2013 in Art, Body Smart, Early Learning, Integrating Knowledge and Ideas, Nature Smart, Non-Fiction, Range of Reading, Science, Self Smart, Vocabulary | 0 comments

You Can't Taste a Pickle With Your Ear by Harriet Ziefert and Amanda Haley When it comes to Common Core State Standards, the one that I think is the most fun is Range of Reading. (I know, I know, all the CCSS are fun, but this one is the most fun!) Range of Reading: Informational Text means we want kids to “read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts.” In other words, we can share all kinds of cool nonfiction books with our students, and I have a fun pick this week.

You Can’t Taste a Pickle With Your Ear: A Book About Your 5 Senses by Harriet Ziefert with pictures by Amanda Haley is an informational picture book with a great sense of humor. It has some nice text features like a table of contents, an introduction, a conclusion, and questions at the end of each mini-chapter for discussion. The information presented about the five senses is appropriate for early elementary students and will work well for any “all about me” units as well as for health and science studies.

Read aloud the title You Can’t Taste a Pickle With Your Ear and you’ll get students grinning. You can read the 32-page book in one sitting, or read each mini-chapter devoted to a different sense one at a time. For an art activity that will bring together all the information in the book (so we’re Integrating Knowledge & Ideas as well as working on Range of Reading), have students make a self-portrait and label the body parts they use for each of the five senses. To get those Nature Smart/experiential learners really involved, bring in pickles for the class. Students can write about how they used each of their five senses as they look at, smell, touch, hear (long crunchy pickles that snap in half work best), and taste. Remind your students again about the title of the book (but keep paper towels on hand in case any of your students feel the need to test for themselves.)

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Rosie Revere, Engineer

Posted by on Jul 11, 2013 in Art, Early Learning, Integrating Knowledge and Ideas, Logic Smart, Phonological Awareness, Range of Reading, Rhyming, Science, Self Smart, Social Studies, Vocabulary | 2 comments

 

Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts

I have the best of reasons for posting late this week: I’ve been on Mackinac Island at the Michigan Reading Association conference, being inspired by dedicated educators and loving the slower pace of an island with no automobiles. Now I’m sitting in a white wicker rocking chair with a cup of coffee and my laptop, dear husband at my side, watching sailboats glide by. The only thing that could make this any better would be a great book, and luckily, I have one.

Rosie Revere, Engineer written by the marvelously talented Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts is one of the rare rhyming book gems: the story is as solid as the meter and the language isn’t dumbed down in order to make a rhyme. Rosie Revere is the kind of girl most creative people will relate to: joyfully inventive, but so fearful of failure and ridicule that she hides her inventions away. The “gadgets and gizmos” she creates are fantastic, and I love Roberts’ whimsical and yet credible drawings of them. (I myself would love a pair of Rosie’s helium pants.) Rosie’s desire to help her great-great-aunt Rose fulfill her lifelong dream of flying gives Rosie the courage to test one of her inventions.
The heli-o-cheese-copter sputtered and twitched.
It floated a moment and whirled round and round,
then froze for a heartbeat and crashed to the ground.”
Rosie is devastated by the failure, and by her great-great-aunt’s laughter, until she hears,
“‘Your brilliant first flop was a raging success!
Come on, let’s get busy and on to the next!’

So not only is the message of this book one that every creative person with perfectionist tendencies needs to hear (I’m keeping it by my bedside table as a reminder) but it has historical notes in it about Amelia Earhart and E. Lillian Todd (the first woman to design airplanes) and Rosie the Riveter and other strong women whose names and deeds should be known. For a social studies lesson, you could easily springboard from this book into studying awesome women inventors. For math-science-art, get graph paper and a bunch of doodads and thing-a-ma-bobs for students to plan, design, build, test, and refine their own inventions. If you ask people to donate old, broken electronic gadgets to your class and bring in small tools, your students can take apart old radios and remote controls to disassemble and use. Build those Phonological Awareness skills by focusing on the rhyme, then discuss the interesting word choices for a Craft & Structure lesson. To keep rocking those Core Standards in Reading, you can easily work in Integrating Knowledge & Ideas by comparing Rosie Revere, Engineer to Iggy Peck, Architect by the same power duo. 

So share this book with absolutely everyone you know, and get busy taking creative risks, because
Life might have its failures, but this was not it.
The only true failure can come if you quit.”

For more information on the author, please visit andreabeaty.com.
For more information on the illustrator, please visit davidrobertsillustration.com.

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All the Water in the World

Posted by on Jun 27, 2013 in Craft and Structure, Early Learning, Fluency, Nature Smart, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Range of Reading, Science, Vocabulary | 1 comment

All the Water in the WorldSummer in Michigan means swimming in lakes, running through sprinklers, diving into pools. It’s a good time of year to share  All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon and Katherine Tillotson.

Science, poetry, and art swirl together in this gorgeous picture book.
“That rain
that cascaded from clouds
and meandered down mountains,
that wavered over waterfalls
then slipped into rivers
and opened into oceans,
that rain has been here before.”

All the water in the world is all the water this world will ever have, so it’s our responsibility to keep this precious resource clean. George Ella Lyon has a free teacher’s guide on her website: georgellalyon.com  with plenty of extension activities. I think it’s cool to recreate the water cycle with your students by putting hot water and a glass in a clear bowl, and covering the bowl with plastic cling wrap so they can see evaporation and condensation (for a much better explanation, go to easy-science-experiments.com). Talk about the lyrical language Lyon chose as well as the facts of the water cycle and you’ll hit the Core Standards of Craft & Structure plus Key Ideas & Details (love the two-fer!) Pay homage to Tillotson’s flowing art by pulling out the watercolors to illustrate the water cycle or why water is so important. And if it’s as hot where you are as it is in Michigan, get out the sprinklers as well!

 

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A Little Book of Sloth

Posted by on Jun 19, 2013 in Early Learning, Key Ideas and Details, Nature Smart, Non-Fiction, Range of Reading, Science | 0 comments

a-little-book-of-slothFor me, summer reading is all about slowing down, relaxing, and reading for pleasure.  To help you unwind, I’m sharing this irresistible book,  A Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke. Flip through the pages and just try not to squeal at all the sleepy-cute faces and snuggly, furry bellies.

This is a non-fiction picture book about Slothville, a sanctuary for orphaned and injured sloths in Costa Rica. Baby sloths cling to their mothers for the first year of their lives, so little orphans each get a special stuffed animal to hug. All the snuggling and relaxing in the shade and hanging out make me think that I need to spend more time being sloth-like.

Share A Little Book of Sloth with students first for the pure pleasure of learning about these easy-going mammals. Take your time and enjoy the photos and the “who knew?!” facts. You’re hitting the Core Standards of Range of Reading with the age-appropriate non-fiction, and the author’s high-level vocabulary makes this an easy lesson on Craft & Structure (what is a “Xenarthran”? You’ll find out in this book!)

After reading, visit Lucy Cooke’s website www.slothville.com where you can watch videos of the sloths at the sanctuary. My favorite video teaches how caregivers at the sanctuary potty-train baby sloths. Enjoy A Little Book of Sloth and take a page from the sloth’s book: slow down, enjoy hanging out, and spend lots of time hugging.

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