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STEM Tuesday
  • STEM Tuesday-- Plants-- Writing Tips & Resources
    STEM Tuesday– Plants– Writing Tips & Resources
    July 15, 2025 by
    Writing Exercise: Making Facts Sticky! For this non-fiction exercise, pick a plant to gather information about. Write down at least five things you already know about the plant, especially the most basic, common things. Got it? Great! Now it’s time to make those facts memorable......
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  • STEM Tuesday-- Plants-- In the Classroom
    STEM Tuesday– Plants– In the Classroom
    July 8, 2025 by
      Most plants obtain their energy by converting sunlight into food, which makes them a target for hungry animals. But not all plants are defenseless. Some plants fight back, and a few even become a threat to those trying to eat them. These books explore many interesting plants and the strategies and adaptations they use to survive. They make a great starting point for nature explorations, classroom discussions, and activities!   Killer Carnivorous Plants by Nathan Aaseng  Plants gather energy from the sun and turn it into leaves, flowers, fruit. Animals, who can’t produce their own food, eat the plants. But what happens when you turn the food chain upside down? When the plants are the hunters and animals the hunted? In this book you’ll meet sticky traps, trigger traps, and pits of death. There’s also a handy survival manual for carnivorous plants.   Classroom Activity – Build a Carnivorous...
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  • STEM Tuesday-- Plants-- Book List
    STEM Tuesday– Plants– Book List
    July 1, 2025 by
    Rooted to the ground, plants are pretty much stuck in place. Most of them get their energy from turning sunlight into food – which makes them a target for hungry animals. But some plants fight back, and some turn the food web completely on its head. These books might inspire you to think about plants in a different light. Rooted to the ground, plants have to find nutrition, fend off predators, and survive whatever conditions the environment throws at them. From water lily leaves that could serve as rafts to a flower that smells like a rotting corpse, meet the plants that thrive by using brilliant and bizarre adaptations. Beware the killer plants – the leaves that sting, the jaws that trap. This book, not for the faint-of-heart, is the perfect read for kids who want to know about the bird-catching plant, vampire vines, and corpse flowers. For older readers,...
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  • Notes of Hope when the world is too much
    Notes of Hope when the world is too much
    June 28, 2025 by
    When it seems like the world is just too much for our kids, when we witness hurt, fear, loneliness, a middle schooler’s loss of family or friends, it’s time to spread some hope. This is exactly how Libby, who comes from a long line of bullies, fights her reputation after finding a stone painted with the words Create the world of your dreams, in Flight of the Puffin by Ann Braden. In searching for ways to create that world, Libby, a lonely and art driven middle schooler, sets off a chain reaction of notes of hope when she writes You are awesome on an index card and leaves it outside for someone else who might need a bolster to find. My own decision to create Notes of Hope with my students came as a project at Mount Mary University to coincide a visit from Diana Chao, originator of Letters to...
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Photo of Christine Taylor Butler

Christine Taylor Butler

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Biography

Christine Taylor-Butler has been a prolific consumer of public
libraries from an early age. A consummate tinkerer it was deemed
advisable she study engineering at MIT for job security. Years later she made a break for the corporate door and delved into children’s literature hoping to write stories about talking animals when a sneaky editor at Scholastic conned her into writing non-fiction for children. She’s been writing science books ever since, and is now also writing
science fiction (The Lost Tribes) which hides real science between the
pages. Christine lives in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband,
daughters and cats who think she’s both servant and head of their pride.