Quick Collections!

 Welcome this month's guest blogger, Heather L. Montgomery*!

Round rocks, red leaves, rhinoceros beetles—we all know that kid who would cram them in a pocket then clutter up the closet. . . That kid might be a scientist. George Washington Carver, Jane Goodall, Charles Darwin—all were incessant collectors as kids! 

My recent picture book, What’s In Your Pocket? Collecting Nature’s Treasures, features nine historic and modern scientists who grew their skills by packing their pockets, then sifting and sorting through nature stuff. Collecting artifacts develops skills—observation, description, sorting, evaluation—with broad application. 

Kids can build permanent collections, seeking out just the right thing to fit a category and taking care to find the perfect specimen, but there’s lots of fun to be had in quick collections, too.  On your next outing, why not put your pocket-packing skills to the test? 

Alphabet Mess: Quickly collect 30 or more random items into a pile. Then turn the mess into a tidy alphabetical line. Can you make a complete alphabet?

Categories: Call out a category (nut, something orange, something ancient, once living thing, something fuzzy, something smelly, etc.) and see what everyone finds. Bring the artifacts together to compare/contrast. For easy display of small items, use a white ice cube tray. In addition to the stated category, what else do those items have in common?

Picture Perfect: Develop a list of sensitive items (butterfly, bird, living flower, moss on a rock) and collect pictures instead of samples. Not enough cameras? Work in pairs. One person (the photographer) must line up the blindfolded person (the camera) so that when the camera flips open the shutter (blindfold) the item is directly in view.

Collection Connections (left): Make a grid on a piece of paper (adjust size according to your needs). Place one artifact in the center square. Any collected item can be added to an adjacent square if you can name one way in which the items connect. For example, they could both be animal parts, one (a plant) could use another (soil), they could both provide shelter, they could be the same color, texture, shape,… For an extra challenge, add an item and let others guess the connection.

*Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are wild about animals. An award-winning author and educator, Heather uses yuck appeal to engage young minds. Her books include: Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill, Bugs Don’t Hug: Six-legged Parents and Their Kids, and What’s in Your Pocket? Collecting Nature’s Treasures. Learn more at www.HeatherLMontgomery.com

Happy 50th Apollo 11 Moon Landing!

We're thrilled to have author and Chicago Review Press editor Jerome Pohlen guest-posting in celebration of his recently released—and very timely—book, THE APOLLO MISSIONS FOR KIDS: The People and Engineering Behind the Race to the Moon with 21 Activities. Enjoy! 

Next week (July 20) marks the 50th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. I chose to write about Apollo—not just Apollo 11, but every mission—because my father and three of my uncles worked on the program. I understood the basics of the story before I started, but writing the book have me a fresh appreciation for this remarkable engineering achievement, and the brave and bold people who made it a reality.

One of my favorite activities from the book asks readers to calculate the relative distance between the Earth and moon using a simple model. It starts with a given: If the Earth was the size of a basketball, the moon would be about the size of a tennis ball in comparison. But how far apart would the two be on this same scale? As it turns out, the distance to the moon is roughly 10 trips around the Earth’s equator—not very far, right? Readers measure the basketball’s “equator” and multiply by 10—it’s 25 feet! And to get a sense of that distance, readers are asked to hold these two balls that far apart.

Embrace Your Inner Inventor

by Mary Kay Carson

Buy from Books 'N' More and get a discount!

I'm proud to announce the release of my newest book, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids: His Life and Inventions with 21 Activities.

Alexander Graham Bell was a man of many interests and talents. While famous for inventing the telephone, Bell also...

• invented an improved phonograph that Thomas Edison had to buy the patent for in order to build a usable product.
• worked with early airplane inventors Glenn Curtiss and Samuel Langley and competed with the Wright Brothers.
• attempted to save President Garfield from his fatal gunshot wound with a bullet-finding invention similar to a metal detector.
• was a pioneering speech teacher to the deaf and a life-long friend and mentor of Helen Keller.
• emigrated from Scotland with his parents after both his brothers died from tuberculosis.