Posts Tagged science

STEM Tuesday — Animal Superpowers — In the Classroom

By on October 12, 2021   /   Animal Superpowers, STEM Tuesday  

Kids love learning about animals—especially ones with superpowers! Use these books from the STEM Tuesday list along with their classroom ideas to let students explore how animals use their amazing skills to survive in nature and help humans too.  

Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope by Bridget Heos, photographs by Andy Comins

Can you believe that delicate little spiders can create something with such amazing strength that might someday be used to repair or replace human ligaments? Read all-about it in Heos’ Scientists in the Field title.  

 

Activity

Experiment with different kinds of materials to see which makes the strongest web!

Materials:

  • thread, yarn, or thin stretchy cord
  • bowl
  • objects to put on top of your web (rocks, sticks, fake bugs)

Steps:

  1. Have groups of students choose a type of string to use. Then ask them to wrap the string around the bowl to make a web over the open side. They should think about the pattern of their web as they wrap.
  2. Next tell students to test the strength of their web. Put objects all over their web. Are certain areas stringer than others? How many objects can it hold?
  3. Then ask students to test out a different kinds of string to make a new web. After testing its strength with different objects, ask them: Which web was stronger? Why do you think it was stronger?

 

Check this out!

The author’s classroom discussion and activity guide: https://www.scribd.com/document/135393652/Stronger-than-Steel-Discussion-Guide.  

Super Sniffers: Dog Detectives on the Job by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent  

Explore how dogs use their super sniffing detection skills to help humans.      

 

 

 

Activity

Dogs can smell scents from much farther away than humans. See how close you have to be to detect a certain smell.

Materials:

  • jars with lids
  • cotton balls
  • strong scents (such as perfume, vinegar, coffee, onions, or vanilla extract)
  • measuring tape

Steps:

  1. Soak some cotton balls with strong smelling liquid or cut up onions or other foods that have a strong smell.
  2. Put the stinky cotton balls or food in a jar—one smelly item per jar—and close the lids.
  3. Ask a friend to stand 15 feet away and then open a jar. Can your friend identify what the smell is?
  4. If not, ask your friend to slowly step forward, still smelling, until they can tell you what the scent is. Measure how far away your friend was before identifying the smell.
  5. Repeat with the other jars. Were some smells easier to identify from far away? Were some smells especially difficult?

 

Check this out!

TedEd video about how dogs “see” with their noses: https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/02/17/alexandra-horowitz-dog-animation/.  

 

Superpower Field Guide: Moles and Superpower Field Guide: Eels by Rachel Poliquin, illustrated by Nicholas John Firth

Discover the extraordinary skills of moles and eels in these two guides. Then explore the rest of the series. Poliquin and Firth have two other titles about beavers and ostriches.      

 

 

Activity

Some superpowers are hard to believe–like the eel’s ability to store and discharge electricity! They store electricity like a battery, so try making this battery with a lemon.

Materials:

  • 4 lemons
  • 4 pieces of copper
  • 4 galvanized nails
  • 5 alligator clip wires
  • a light to power

Steps:

  1. Roll lemons on countertop with your hand  to release the juice inside.
  2. Stick one nail and one piece of copper into each lemon.
  3. Use the alligator wire clip next. Attach one wire from an alligator clip to a nail in a lemon and the other wire to a copper piece in another lemon. Continue until all the lemons are connected.
  4. You should have one piece of copper and one nail that are not connected to wires. Connect the copper piece to the positive connection on the light. Connect the galvanized nail to the negative connection.
  5. Turn on the light and it should work with your lemon battery.

 

Check this out!

Superpowered Creature Creator post on the author’s website: http://www.rachelpoliquin.com/superpowered-creature.

 

Further Resources

Check out these sites for more fascinating and fun STEM animal superpower resources:

Hope these activities and resources get your students excited to learn more about animal superpowers!

 

     

 

Karen Latchana Kenney loves to write books about animals, and looks for them wherever she goes—from leafcutter ants trailing through the Amazon rain forest in Guyana, where she was born, to puffins in cliff-side burrows on the Irish island of Skellig Michael. She especially enjoys creating books about nature, biodiversity, conservation, and groundbreaking scientific discoveries—but also writes about civil rights, astronomy, historical moments, and many other topics. She lives in Minnesota with her husband and son, and bikes, hikes, and gazes at the night sky in northern Minnesota any moment she can. Visit her at https://latchanakenney.wordpress.com.

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STEM Tuesday — Animal Superpowers — Book List

By on October 5, 2021   /   Animal Superpowers, STEM Tuesday  

 

Who needs superhuman heroes when there are animals with their own superpowers? This list gives readers an opportunity to explore all of the ways animals use their skills for surviving in the wild and even help us humans out as well!  

Animal Zombies! And Other Bloodsucking Beasts, Creepy Creatures, and Real-Life Monsters by Chana Stiefel  

Some may call these creatures creepy, but others will marvel at their special skills.  

Insect Superpowers: 18 Real Bugs that Smash, Zap, Hypnotize, Sting, and Devour! by Kate Messner, illustrated by Jillian Nickell

 Messner explores the super talents of bugs in this fun title.  

Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope by Bridget Heos, photographs by Andy Comins

Can you believe that delicate little spiders can create something with such amazing strength that might someday be used to repair or replace human ligaments? Read all-about it in Heos’ Scientists in the Field title.  

Superpower Field Guide: Moles and Superpower Field Guide: Eels by Rachel Poliquin, illustrated by Nicholas John Firth

Discover the extraordinary skills of moles and eels in these two guides. Then explore the rest of the series. Poliquin and Firth have two other titles about beavers and ostriches.

Superpower Dogs: Disaster Response Dogs by Cosmic  

Dogs have some of the best noses in the business. Learn how they help in disasters.

Super Sniffers: Dog Detectives on the Job by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent  

Explore how dogs use their super sniffing detection skills to help humans.

101 Animal Super Powers by Melvin Berger and Gilda Berger

Discover lots of extraordinary animals with this collection of animal superpower stories.  

Photo of DESERTS author Nancy Castaldo

Nancy Castaldo has written books about our planet for over 20 years including, SNIFFER DOGS: How Dogs (and Their Noses) Save The World, so she knows first hand about animal superpowers. Her books have earned the Green Earth Book Award, Junior Library Guild Selection, and other honors. Nancy’s research has taken her all over the world from the Galapagos to Russia.  She strives to inform, inspire, and empower her readers. Nancy also served as Regional Advisor Emeritus of the Eastern NY SCBWI region. Her 2020 international title about farm and food is THE FARM THAT FEEDS US: A Year In The Life Of An Organic Farm. Visit her at her website, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Instagram. 

Sibert Honor author Patricia Newman shows young readers how their actions can ripple around the world. Using social and environmental injustice as inspiration, she empowers young readers to seek connections to the real world and to use their imaginations to act on behalf of their communities. One Texas librarian wrote, “Patricia is one of THE BEST nonfiction authors writing for our students in today’s market, and one of our MUST HAVE AUTHORS for every collection.” Titles include: Planet Ocean (new); Sibert Honor book Sea Otter Heroes; Green Earth Book Award winner Plastic, Ahoy!; The NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book Eavesdropping on Elephants; California Reading Association’s Eureka! Gold winner Zoo Scientists to the Rescue. Visit Patricia online at her website, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Pinterest.  

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STEM Tuesday — Reptiles — Interview with Author Sneed B. Collard III

By on September 28, 2021   /   Reptiles, 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!

Today we’re interviewing award-winning author Sneed B. Collard III, author of One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution. In its starred review, Kirkus declares the book a “fresh and accessible approach to an important scientific concept.”

Mary Kay Carson: Tell us a bit about One Iguana, Two Iguanas. How did the book come about?

Sneed B. Collard III: Being a reptile nut, I had been thinking about marine iguanas for a long time, and even devoted a section to them in my book Sneed B. Collard III’s Most Fun Book Ever About Lizards, which has garnered a surprisingly large following over the years. When my family and I got to visit the Galápagos in 2016, seeing these unique animals instantly became one of the highlights of my life. Besides their incredible adaptations, the animals’ fascinating history intrigued me as a beautiful example of how new species arise from accidents and evolution, and I wanted to share that story with both children and adults. Coincidentally, a fairly recent scientific paper had used genetic markers to establish the timeline for when marine iguanas and Galápagos land iguanas split into different species, and I thought it would make a great story for young readers. I sat down to write the story and my editor at Tilbury snapped it up.

MKC: Care to share a favorite research experience?

Sneed: After reading about marine iguanas for so many years—and watching nature shows about them—just seeing these lizards dive into the ocean sent chills up my spine. Another thing that made a deep impression on me is that the Galápagos had recently come out of an El Niño year, in which warmer waters surround the islands and the lizards’ favorite marine algae dies back. This often leads to widespread starvation, and as we walked one island we found dozens of marine iguana skeletons littering the coastline. Since climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and severity of El Niño events, the skeletons were a sobering example of how urgent it is for we humans to cut our global CO2 emissions immediately.

The highlight of my visit down there, however, happened on our last day of snorkeling. My daughter, son, and I had just climbed back into a zodiac boat after swimming with sea turtles when another snorkeler shouted that a marine iguana was feeding underwater right next to him. I quickly pulled on my mask and snorkel and leaped back into the water. I swam over there just in time to see a large iguana grasping a rock about three feet below the surface, using its teeth to scrape algae off of the rock. It is a sight I will never forget!

marine (l.) and land (r.) iguanas

MKC: How would you describe the book’s approach?

Sneed: To me, evolution is one of the most remarkable stories on earth, and so for One Iguana, Two Iguanas, I just wanted to tell the story of how the marine iguana came to be. The recent genetic research made that fairly easy. I just imagined that first pregnant female lizard (scientists think it was a kind of ctenosaur lizard) somehow floating on a raft hundreds of miles when dozens—perhaps hundreds—before her had perished at sea. Somehow, though, she made it to the Galápagos, and turned a brand new species loose. After introducing the lizards, I just launched into the story of how the islands were created, how new life reached them, and then used our best understanding of evolution to recount how that new species established itself on the islands and eventually split into the two species of iguanas we have today. This approach allowed me both to use my best story-telling skills and slip in the science of it all at key moments. Sidebars and other excursions allowed me fill in the rest. It ended up being one of the favorite books I’ve ever written!

MKC: To whom did you imagine yourself writing to while drafting the book?

Sneed B. Collard III is an award-winning author of more than 85 children’s books, including his newest titles, Waiting for a Warbler and Beaver and Otter Get Along . . . Sort of. He is a popular speaker and has spoken at schools and conferences in 46 states and four foreign countries. To learn more about him and his books, visit his website www.sneedbcollardiii.com. Also follow the birding adventures of him and his son at fathersonbirding.com.

Sneed: Actually, both of my parents were on my mind while I was writing. Both were biologists who had unfortunately passed away before their time in the years before my visit to the islands. I knew how much they would have loved to visit the Galápagos, but they never did. I could almost feel them smiling over my shoulder as I worked on the story, though. Another huge inspiration was Dr. Jack Grove, a scientist, Galápagos guide, and former graduate student of my dad’s. Jack and I have developed a special friendship over the years and he has shared many Galápagos stories with me. I dedicated the book to him, and he actually provided a number of its outstanding photographs.

MKC: Do you choose to write about STEM books?

Sneed: When I write, I don’t think, “I am writing a STEM book.” STEAM and STEM, after all, are just artificial constructs that, I think, sometimes mask the fact that this is a really great book or this is an amazing story. I simply set out to write about things that interest me and that I think will help get other people excited about this incredible planet we live on. I don’t want only a science teacher to pick up my book. If I’ve done my job well, I want everyone to read it without partitioning their interests according to the academic categories we’ve been taught. I’ve worked with and mentored a lot of young people, and whenever I can I tell them, “Take an interest in everything. We only get one life. The more you learn, the more you will appreciate what a remarkable journey we are on.”

Win a FREE copy of One Iguana, Two Iguanas!

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 Mary Kay Carson, author of Wildlife Ranger Action Guide, The Tornado Scientist, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids, Mission to Pluto, and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

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