Posts Tagged kidlit

STEM Tuesday — Earth Day 50th Anniversary Celebration– In the Classroom

By on April 14, 2020   /   Earth Day, STEM Tuesday  

 

It’s interesting that we’re celebrating Earth Day’s 50th anniversary in the midst of a pandemic that has much of the world shut down. As I write this post, my state is under a Stay-At-Home order, and has been for a while. While COVID-19 has been devastating for people, in a way, it’s been a gift to the Earth. With people taking a step back from their daily hustle and bustle, the Earth has breathed easier, and animals have felt safe to come out of hiding. Before the world restarts, it’s a good time to step back and take a look at our relationship with the Earth.

The books on this month’s list cover a wide range of topics, from inspiring environmental activists…

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

One Earth: People of Color Protecting Our Planet
by Anuradha Rao
With stars from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, this book profiles twenty environmental activists of color from around the world. Their individual stories show how they went from kids who cared about the environment to leaders in their communities.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Friends of The Earth: A History of American Environmentalism with 21 Activities
by Pat McCarthy
A collection of inspiring stories about the women and men who had the foresight to preserve Yosemite, Mt. Ranier, the Grand Canyon, and the Florida Everglades. Through these stories, young readers form a picture of American environmentalism and conservation. McCarthy helps kids act with 21 eco-activities.

 

…to understanding the complexities surrounding environmental policy…

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines
by Paul Fleischman
This Green Earth Book Award title offers a wake-up call for middle-grade and young adult readers as they try to make sense of the flood of environmental news. Readers discover there is more at work than merely wanting to help — money, politics, history, and psychology are all connected.

 

…to things you can do in your everyday life to help the Earth.

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Human Footprint: Everything you will Eat, Use, Wear, Buy, and Throw Out in Your Lifetime
by Ellen Kirk 
A powerful visual tool from Ellen Kirk and NatGeo that helps kids visualize the extent of their consumption. Did you know we each consume 13,056 pints of milk; take 28,433 showers; and eat 12,888 oranges, 14,518 candy bars and buy $52k,972 of clothes in our lifetime?

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Generation Green: The Ultimate Teen Guide to Living An Eco-Friendly Life
by Linda Sivertsen
Sure, we want to be eco-friendly, but how do we accomplish that? Siversten offers dozens of tips on how to shop, dress, eat, and travel with a lighter carbon footprint.

 

Even if you are quarantined and don’t have easy access to these books, you can still dig in to some activities that celebrate Earth Day.

Research How COVID-19 is Helping and Hurting the Environment

Practice your internet searching skills to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the environment. (Be sure to look for reliable sources of information.) In some ways, it seems to be helping. Air quality has improved dramatically in many areas due to the lack of cars on the road. In other ways, it may be hurting. A lot of recycling has been suspended because of the Stay-At-Home orders. How else is the pandemic helping or hurting the environment?

On a more personal note, think about how you are living right now. What things are you doing (or not) that are beneficial to the environment? Are you doing anything that is more harmful?

Take Action In Your Own Life

Very few of us live a life that doesn’t impact the environment in negative ways. Often times, we don’t even think about how what we’re doing affects the Earth. One of the best gifts we can give to celebrate Earth Day is to make changes in our own lives to be more environmentally friendly.

To start, you need to be aware of how you impact the Earth. Take a look at how you use resources. You can make it simple or you can track your usage over a period of time – a week or two or even a whole month. Resources to look at include food, water, fuel (including gas for your car and energy for your house), clothing and other items.

Here are some questions to help you think about how you live.

  • How many resources do you use? How much of each?
  • Where do your resources come from?
  • How much do you waste?
  • What do you do with resources when you are done with them?

Once you’ve taken a look at how you use resources, think about things you can change to live a more environmentally friendly life. Here are some examples.

If you notice a lot of your food is being transported from across the country or world, commit to getting more of your food from local farms. Look into participating in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

How much of the food you buy gets thrown away? Think of ways to reduce your food waste. In our family, that often includes planning meals for a week and having leftover nights to eat food that didn’t get eaten the day it was cooked. You can also look into composting. Instead of throwing out potato peels and apple cores, throw them in a compost bin. Use the resulting compost to improve the quality of soil in your gardens.

Do you throw out clothes when you are done with them? If so, look into alternatives. You can pass them along to a friend or relative. There are also lots of opportunities to donate them to charities. You can even hold a clothing drive where you can help people recycle their clothing and earn money for a school or service organization.

There are lots of resources that can help you find ways to live a more Earth-friendly life. This includes several of the books on this month’s list.

Help Your Favorite Animal

Perhaps you’d like to do something further afield. What’s your favorite wild animal? Do some research. Where does it live? What environmental issues does it face? Are there charitable organizations that are working to help these animals? Once you know what issues there are, you can come up with some ways to help.

Perhaps that means donating to an organization dedicated to helping that animal. To help even more, ask for people to donate to that organization rather than giving you birthday presents. Or run a fundraiser to collect money to donate.

Maybe you can participate in a citizen science project that will help the animal. Enlist your friends and family, too. Here are a few resources that can help you investigate what citizen science activities are out there:

https://www.citizenscience.gov
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/idea/citizen-science-projects 
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Citizen-Science

No matter what you’re doing these days, I hope you’ll take some time to celebrate the Earth. Wishing you, your family, and the Earth peace and good health.

*************************************

Janet sometimes helps out with conservation projects – here she’s helping cut reeds to stock an insect hotel.

 

Janet Slingerland loves learning about science, history, nature, and (well) everything, which she then turns into a book. She has spent many hours helping out on environmental projects, including transforming her yard into a native plant oasis (a work in progress). To find out more about Janet and her books, check out her website: janetsbooks.com

Back to Top

STEM Tuesday– The Human Body — Interview with Author Sara Latta

By on February 25, 2020   /   Author Interviews, For Librarians, For Teachers, For Writers, Giveaways, Human Body, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the fourth Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

 

photgraph of author Sara LattaToday we’re interviewing Sara Latta, author of Body 2.0: The Engineering Revolution in Medicine, among several other titles. The book features modern biomedical engineering challenges, some of the STEM professionals who do it, and people who have benefited from it. (Check out the Kirkus review here! If you subscribe to SLJ or Booklist, you can see additional reviews at those sites.)

Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano: What’s the book about—and what was most important to you in deciding to write it?

Image of book cover of Body 2.0 by Sara LattaSara Latta: Thanks for having me on your blog! Body 2.0 explores the ways in which engineering, science, and medicine are coming together to make some remarkable advances in the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, neuroscience, microbiology, and synthetic biology. I begin the book with a brief history of biomedical engineering—arguably the first known example of which was a wooden toe found on an ancient Egyptian mummy—but primarily the book focuses on cutting-edge research and the scientists at the forefront of the research. That was important to me; much of the work I write about hasn’t even reached clinical trials. I wanted to show readers that they could jump into this research at a very exciting time.

 

CCD: Did anything about your sense of what was most important change as you developed the manuscript?

SL: I don’t know if it was most important, but at some point during the interviewing process I came to the realization that telling the story of the ways in which the scientists and engineers came to this point in their research would be really interesting to my readers. Several of them said they initially wanted to be medical doctors because they wanted to help people, but they didn’t have the stomach for it. One was an athlete who was inspired by his own injury; another transferred her love of Sherlock Holmes and detective work to scientific sleuthing. So I decided I had to create a separate section telling their stories.

CCD: What in the book most fascinated or surprised you?

 SL: Well, there was a lot! I’d been fascinated by brain-computer interfaces for several years, and even tried writing a sci-fi YA thriller using that technology a while back (it’s still in a folder on my computer). It’s really astounding how quickly work in the field—and other fields in the book as well—has progressed. I think that the work in synthetic biology holds enormous promise, not just in biomedical engineering but in other fields as well. The New York Times recently published an article about using photosynthetic bacteria to make concrete that is alive and can even reproduce.

CCD: I’d like to ask you a bit about your decisions about addressing ethics in Body 2.0. If I counted correctly, you spotlight three particular areas where scientific investigation and technological advancements raise important issues. Can you say a bit about your decision-making process about how much and what to spotlight, and your lasting impressions of the ethics related to this field?

SL: I told my editor going in to this project that I wanted to highlight some important ethical issues that some of this work raises, and she said “yes, absolutely.” It’s important to think about unintended consequences. I use the example that the discovery of petroleum as a cheap and plentiful source of fuel in the 19th century revolutionized the ways we lived, worked and traveled—and now we are paying the price with a global climate crisis. So I asked the question, what does it mean to be a human being when your brain is in a symbiotic relationship with a computer? Will these new technologies be available only to those who can afford them? One of the pioneers of gene editing recounted being jolted awake by a dream in which Adolf Hitler expressed interest in her work. It made her realize that “the ability to refashion the human genome was a truly incredible power, one that could be devastating if it fell into the wrong hands.”

CCD: As an author, what did you find most challenging about completing this book?

SL: Organizing all of the interviews and research I did for the book! I relied heavily on Scrivener and Evernote to bring it all together.

CCD: Can you say something about how you hope this book might impact readers?

SL: Biomedical engineering is all about improving the quality of life for people with diseases or injuries, whether it’s helping a person with quadriplegia become more independent or growing a bladder for a kid with spina bifida. I hoped to inspire idealistic young people interested in science, medicine, or engineering, who are also interested in making a positive difference in the world.

 

Win a FREE copy of Body 2.0: The Engineering Revolution in Medicine!

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Your host is Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano, author of National Geographic Kids Ultimate Space Atlas, Running on Sunshine, andA Black Hole is NOT a Hole, among several nonfiction books for kids. As a STEM Education Consultant and co-founder of two STEM education organizations, STEM Education Insights and Blue Heron STEM Education, she develops STEM curricula, supports STEM education research, and provides professional development for teachers. Along with several STEM Tuesday contributors and other great authors, she’ll be participating in NSTA’s Science and Literacy event in Boston this spring. She’ll also be co-presenting with author Cheryl Bardoe.  Grab a sneak peek now, but better yet, stop by and say hello!

 

 

Back to Top

STEM Tuesday– The Human Body — In the Classroom

By on February 11, 2020   /   Articles, Common Core & NGSS, Curriculum Tie-in, For Kids, For Parents, For Teachers, Human Body, STEM Tuesday  

STEM Tuesday CoSTEM Costume Contest

 

This month we’re peeling back the layers to take a look inside the human body! In the body, trillions of unique cells work together to form the tissues, organs, and body systems that allow you to run and jump, laugh and cry, and feel pain and joy.

The books we’re highlighting this month dive into how the body works to sustain life. They are a great starting point for different sciences activities and discussions in the classroom. Here are a few to try:

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Science Comic: The Brain – The Ultimate Thinking Machine by Tory Woollcott and Alex Graudins

Another title in this popular graphic novel series that focuses on science topics. Readers will explore the ultimate thinking machine – our own brain! How our brains evolved, how our brain controls our senses, how we remember things, and more.

  • Discuss why it is important to know how your brain works. What modern technologies do scientists use to study the brain? How did scientists study the brain before modern technology? How did this limit their knowledge?
  • Have students build a model neuron. Have students study a picture of the neuron and experiment with different ways and materials to create the neuron model. Use several neurons to model a neural network.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Human Cloning by Kristi Lew 

This title for older readers explores the use of cloning and the depiction of human cloning in science fiction.

  • Have students debate the pros and cons of human cloning. Assign groups of students to each side of the issue and have them research points that support their position.
  • Discuss the concerns over the way genetic advances and technology are being used now and in the future. When does human intervention into the basic genetic code of life go too far?

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Random Body Parts: Gross Anatomy Riddles in Verse by Leslie Bulion and Mike Lowery

With puzzles and fun verse, Leslie Bulion introduces human anatomy to middle-grade readers.

  • Have students choose a body part to research. With the information they learn, students can then create their own human body poetry and puzzles.
  • Have students swap the puzzles they created with classmates to see if they can solve each other’s riddles with the clues provided.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Human Movement: How the Body Walks, Runs, Jumps, and Kicks by Carla Mooney and Samuel Carbaugh

This book delves into how our bodies work when we play sports, dance, and walk. There are plenty of STEM projects, informative sidebars, and fun facts throughout the chapters.

  • Have students pick a type of movement – running, jumping, dancing, etc. Then have them prepare a flow chart that shows how the body creates this movement. What body systems are involved? How does the body know what to do? What actions and reactions occur to create the movement? What forces are involved?
  • What happens when an injury occurs to the body? How does this affect movement? Have students research a common injury such as a broken bone, sprained ankle, pulled muscle, torn ACL, etc. Then have them prepare a presentation on the injury’s affect on the body and movement.
  • Try one of the many STEM activities in the book!

*************************************

Carla Mooney loves to explore the world around us and discover the details about how it works. An award-winning author of numerous nonfiction science books for kids and teens, she hopes to spark a healthy curiosity and love of science in today’s young people. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, three kids, and dog. When not writing, she can often be spotted at a hockey rink for one of her kids’ games. Find her at http://www.carlamooney.com, on Facebook @carlamooneyauthor, or on Twitter @carlawrites.

Back to Top