kids and science
jstemwedel | July 31, 2006
How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan. Illustrated by Loretta Krupinski.
This is a nifty science book for little kids. Our favorite thing about this book is that it's all about getting empirical.
After some unassuming storybook text (with lovely illustrations) about different kinds of seeds and the different kinds of plants that grow from them, the book gets down to business and lays out an experiment for the young reader to do: Plant a dozen bean seeds and see what happens to them over time.
After planting the seeds, each in its own eggshell or other container, and watering them daily, on…
jstemwedel | July 29, 2006Elder offspring: You're going to have to put up a post on your blog saying that there will be no Friday Sprog Blogging next week.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why do I have to do that?
Elder offspring: You'll be at your conference and we'll be on vacation, so we won't be able to talk about science with you.
Dr. Free-Ride: That's true, but I can talk to you on the phone.
Elder offspring: Yeah, but what if you ask us questions and we say, "Sorry, we haven't done anything that has to do with science"?
Dr. Free-Ride: You don't think I could find a way to connect what you're doing on your vacation with science…
jstemwedel | July 28, 2006On the eve of the elder Free-Ride offspring's birthday, we ate at a restaurant where the kids' entrees were served with Dino Tots. Hilarity ensued.
Elder offspring: Please pass the ketchup. I'm going to make a tar-pit on my plate.
Younger offspring: The stegosaurus is really yummy.
Elder offspring: "Help! I'm trapped in the tar! Oh no, someone's coming to eat me!"
Younger offspring: (Dipping an already-munched dino in ketchup) This one is bleeding.
Dr. Free-Ride: Do reptiles have red blood?
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: Uh huh.
Dr. Free-Ride: It makes sense. I just don't think I've…
jstemwedel | July 21, 2006It has been very hot in these parts. Last night, the Free-Ride family had a picnic in the back yard. There were also some bugs.
Younger offspring: There are lots of bugs out here!
Elder offspring: Don't worry, the mosquitos don't come out until later.
Younger offspring: Good, I don't want a mosquito bite.
Dr. Free-Ride: I know a good way not to get mosquito bites: invite Uncle Fishy over. Mosquitos love Uncle Fishy!
Younger offspring: Ticks, too?
Dr. Free-Ride: I don't know about ticks.
Elder offspring: Hey, when you're tasty, you're tasty.
Younger offspring: Both ticks and mosquitos…
jstemwedel | July 18, 2006
The World's Fair asks:
Are there any children's books that are dear to you, either as a child or a parent, and especially ones that perhaps strike a chord with those from a science sensibility?
I'm going to offer one current favorite of the sprogs': The Coolest Cross-Sections Ever by Stephen Biesty. This is not a book for sitting down and reading all the way through. Rather, it's a big book where kids can flip to a page that grabs them and read through (or have someone older read to them) all the description and labels on the detailed cross-sectional diagram.
The cross-sections range from…
jstemwedel | July 14, 2006Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, can you get your slime lizard [a plastic lizard embedded in slimy goo] off the table before dinner?
Elder offspring: Sure.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why do you two like gross stuff so much?
Younger offspring: I don't know.
Elder offspring: We just do.
The sprogs like learning. And, the sprogs like things that are gross. Today, they offer a selection of books to show how the icky can enhance the informational.
Informational but not icky: Big Tracks, Little Tracks: Following Animal Prints by Millicent E. Selsam, illustrated by Marlene Hill Donnelly.
This book helps kids to…
jstemwedel | July 7, 2006
Younger offspring: If we lived near a stegosaurus's house and a tyrannosaurus's house --
Dr. Free-Ride: Did they really live in houses?
Younger offspring: If they lived in houses, their houses would be really big, and if we lived near them, they would be so big that they would scare us to another house!
* * * * *
Elder offspring: There was one that's a meat-eater that was the size of a modern chicken. Also, parasaurolophus was a plant-eater who ate pine needles.
Younger offspring: Do you know the biggest meat-eater of all was tyrannosaurus rex?
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: I thought it was…
jstemwedel | July 1, 2006ScienceBlogs readers have raised $14,913.09 to help science teachers get the materials they need for engaging explorations of magnets, marine biology, electricity, and evolution. You've helped fund classroom equipment and field trips. You've helped stack the deck toward a future where fewer people are scared by science and more people are involved in conversations about science.
But we have the rest of today to do just a bit more.
DonorsChoose is generously rewarding bloggers who meet their Bloggers Challenge goals with DonorsChoose gift certificates worth 10% of the total amount they raise…
jstemwedel | June 30, 2006
Younger offspring: I drew this picture of the Earth!
Dr. Free-Ride: Wow, that's quite a picture. Will you tell me what's going on in it?
Younger offspring: Yes, but first scan it in.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm. Is it maybe not a coincidence that you're bringing home a picture like this on a Thursday night?
Younger offspring: That's a really tall volcano. And over there is a smaller volcano -- for grilling stuff. [1]
Dr. Free-Ride: I see. What else is there?
Younger offspring: On the other side of the tall volcano is a meteor coming toward the Earth, and right under that is a meteor-catcher…
jstemwedel | June 29, 2006Interesting news from Japan: Tohoku University has decided to launch an outreach effort to encourage more girls to pursue science. Rather than relying on secondary school science classes to whip up enthusiam for science, the university is recruiting its own women graduate students in the sciences to serve as role models and mentors.
From the Yomiuri Shimbun:
Tohoku University is to dispatch "Science Angels"--female volunteer students from its graduate school--to primary, middle and high schools in Sendai to attract more females into science. ...
The volunteers will visits schools in the…
jstemwedel | June 23, 2006Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, how was Nature Study today?
Younger offspring: We went on a nature walk.
Dr. Free-Ride: What kind of nature did you see?
Younger offspring: We didn't see any.
Dr. Free-Ride: A nature walk without any nature?
Younger offspring: Uh huh.
Dr. Free-Ride: Isn't that just a walk?
In honor of the end of the school year, the Free-Ride offspring compiled lists of the areas of knowledge they enjoyed exploring the most this year.
Younger offspring's favorite things learned in Nature Study:
A lots of animals and their life cycles (like frogs and butterflies).
Lots of planets -- but…
jstemwedel | June 16, 2006Younger offspring offers a way to distinguish dreaming from conscious experience:
I thought I was really awake, so I reached up to touch a cloud, but instead of feeling fuzzy like a cloud would feel, it was like touching an empty space. So that's how you can tell if you're dreaming, if you touch the clouds and they feel like empty space.
The child hasn't read Descartes yet, but we've got all summer.
jstemwedel | June 16, 2006Younger offspring did not, to my knowledge, watch of listen to the State of the Union address wherein President Bush called for legislation prohibiting the creation of human-animal hybrids. Indeed, it's not even clear that this wee beastie has any human DNA in it. (With recessive traits, it can be hard to tell.) Yet it's hard not to think this specimen is treading on ethically dangerous ground:
Younger offspring's explanation of this image, plus an image from Elder offspring that calls out for your interpretation, below the fold.
According to younger offspring:
It's part cow and part…
jstemwedel | June 16, 2006Dr. Free-Ride: So, I found a little café table for the back yard.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: A good one, or one that's going to fall apart?
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, I made a point of getting a cast-iron one rather than one made of elemental sodium; those aren't so weather-proof.
Elder offspring: You know, you still have to figure out a sprog blog for tomorrow.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, don't worry, we'll start asking you questions in a moment.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: So the sodium's reducing water.
Dr. Free-Ride: The sodium's losing electrons, so it's being oxidized, so yeah, it's…
jstemwedel | June 9, 2006As this week's "Friday Sprog Blogging" was going to press:
Younger offspring: Here's another picture for you to use.
Dr. Free-Ride: It's nice, but does it have anything to do with insects?
Younger offspring: No ... but you could still blog about it.
Dr. Free-Ride: I suppose ...
Wallace and Gromit are undeniably cool. They're made of plasticine and animated frame by frame. Wallace is an inventor. Gromit is a dog.
While not my most favorite of the Wallace and Gromit movies, Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit takes on important issues like ecological balance, humane pest-…
jstemwedel | June 9, 2006
Younger offspring: (Singing, to the tune of "Head and Shoulders") Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen.
Head and thorax, abdomen, abdome-e-e-en.
Bulgy eyes and antennae.
Head and thorax, abdomen, abdomen!
Dr. Free-Ride: Let me guess: you've been learning about insects?
Younger offspring: Uh huh!
Dr. Free-Ride: So what do you know about insects besides the names of the parts of their bodies?
Younger offspring: They have six legs. And they lay eggs.
Dr. Free-Ride: What kind of insects did you guys study?
Younger offspring: Walking stick. They camouflage so nobody can catch them.
Dr. Free-…
jstemwedel | June 2, 2006A conversation while walking home from school with the elder Free-Ride offspring:
Elder offspring: (Veering off the sidewalk toward a bougainvillea) Hello! How are you today?
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, what are you doing?
Elder offspring: I'm just talking to the plants.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why are you doing that?
Elder offspring: Some people think talking to plants is good for the plants.
Dr. Free-Ride: Child, you'd be amazed at what some people think.
Elder offspring: I don't see what's wrong with talking to plants. They are living things, you know.
Dr. Free-Ride: I didn't say you couldn't talk to…
jstemwedel | May 26, 2006Dr. Free-Ride: (sidling up to the younger offspring this morning with tape-recorder in hand) Hey, can I ask you about --
Younger offspring: I don't remember them.
Dr. Free-Ride: Huh?
Younger offspring: I don't remember the words to the brontosaurus song, and David won't sing it for me anymore because we're done studying dinosaurs. You'll have to blog about something else.
Dr. Free-Ride: Have you been reading the notes on my computer?
Younger offspring: (innocently) I don't know how to read.
Dr. Free-Ride: So you keep telling me.
Elder offspring: These butterfly books Super Sally sent […
jstemwedel | May 19, 2006After some discussion with the younger Free-Ride offspring, I discovered that she does not know one dinosaur or dinosaur-related song; she knows three.
And, because I asked nicely, now so do I.
Terry pterodactyl,
Bertha brontosaurus,
Trini the triceratops,
Stanley stegosaurus.
Tom tyrannosaurus,
He is carniVORous,
Sing it one more time and
Join in the chorus.
***
Where did all the dinosaurs go?
I wish they were still around.
Where did all the dinosaurs go?
The answer can't be found.
Although some theories do make sense,
Scientists don't agree
About what caused this mystery.
It's the dinosaur…
jstemwedel | May 12, 2006When the weather gets nice, a sprog's thoughts turn to rocketry. Photos of the first mission of the bottle-rocket season after the jump.
First, giving credit where credit is due: The rockets were built by our friends the Visiting Mathematicians who, with their sprogs Double Trouble, were picnicking with the Free-Ride family. We just got to share in the fruits of their awesomeness. The Visiting Mathematicians, in turn, credit Make Magazine as the source of the technological know-how. (There's an instructional video, too.)
T-10 minutes: On-site rocket assembly commences. Despite my urging…