Senor Parrot's Perch

Increasing core knowledge is critical to reading comprehension and learning. Vicki Cobb has written a thought provoking post titled An Outside-The-Box Proposal.  She writes about bolstering students’ core knowledge by  including writing by award winning children’s non-fiction authors in the classroom curriculum. In her article she asks several questions:

• What would happen if teachers and authors worked together to share knowledge and skills?
• Can an author’s love of the subject infect students with the love of learning?
• What would happen to learning if non-fiction books replaced textbooks, moving from enrichment to the core knowledge component in the classroom?
• How would students be affected if they got to meet and talk with the authors?
• And (this of course appeals to the economist in me), how can we do this within a school’s budget?
• What would happen to the learning environment of your school if your teachers and award-winning children’s nonfiction authors collaborated in a large-scale project where everyone was involved in sharing knowledge and skills?

I like this idea. In the upper level college classes we start to read sources instead of textbooks and that’s when the real fun in learning takes place. It’s OK when we have them together, but reading the original and talking about it is much more stimulating and it gives everyone more confidence, ending up in more advanced and more agile learning.

My own daughters are drawn to reading science  books, probably in large part because their mother is a microbiologist and I just love the stuff, and we both enthusiastically encourage it. But if they weren’t well written, telling a rich story, I don’t think they’d have anywhere near the interest that they do. On trips to the library they will grab an armful of books about the ocean or physics to take home to read just for pleasure reading.

My kids like to learn. But something about their textbooks doesn’t grab their interest the same way a good, short, well-written science book does. One of the aspects of these kind of books is that they teach in a narrative, story-telling style, that puts the information into a more accessible context. Also, these books are usually teeming with fantastic illustrations and photographs -who doesn’t love any book by Nic Bishop? When written this way, the books hold kids’ interest so much better and they retain a lot more of what they have read. After finishing a good book they want to go back to the library to find another. When we’re in the  bookstore, they pull them from the shelves and ask to buy them.

So, go out and get smart. Get an armload of good science books today and start reading. I’m sure you would like Pelican’s Catch by Janet Halfmann. There’s many more out there that everyone in the family will enjoy.

I’m a sucker for books like this. Loving science, married to a scientist, I’m drawn to the lives of these wonderfully fascinating people. Whaling Season: A Year in the Life of an Arctic Whale Scientist by Peter Lourie details the life of John Craighead George, a field biolgist studying bowhead whales, and living with the Inupiaq Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska. Known as “Craig” to everyone around him, he has been studying the whales for most of his adult life, taking careful measurements of every harvested whale, and collecting lore from the Inupiaq over the many years he has lived among them, all the while he keeps his eye out for hungry polar bears as he travels the ice-packed landscape.

Author Peter Lourie has done an excellent job with this book. He portrays the day-to-day life of the scientist, showing how his work is done, the enjoyment and satisfaction he gains, the relationships he builds with the Inupiaq, and the valuable results of all his hard work.

From a family of scientists, it is really no surprise that John Craighead George would become one himself. From early on he loved the outdoors and spent many days in the wilderness. He spent some time when he was a young man working at a scientific station in Alaska, and after earning his Ph.D., he returned to work as a field scientist to study the bowhead whales that live year-round in the frigid arctic waters.

One facet of his work is to monitor the number of whales harvested by the Inupiaq. Each whale that is killed by the Inupiaq must be measured and samples of various parts are taken. Craig is careful to respect the Alaskan natives as they carry on their traditional livelihood. He has also carefully noted all their stories and descriptions of the bowhead whales, discovering the generations of knowledge that they have accumulated (more…)

 AstroPuppies in Space is an entertaining and very educational kid’s video about space exploration. After watching it, we watched it again. In fact, I wouldn’t mind popping it into the dvd player one more time if I still had it at home. I got the copy we watched from our local library. You can go here to see some trailers of the video and you’ll see what I mean.

The AstroPuppies are two intrepid sock puppets (sock puppies?) who lead you and your kids on a great journey aboard their space shuttle, beginning at Cape Canaveral and traveling on to the Moon. After that, the next stop is the Sun and then on through our solar system. Along the way the puppies ask questions and provide answers to lots of interesting questions. Actual footage of the dramatic 1969 moon landing is included, as well as NASA footage of life and work aboard a space station. 

The makers of the dvd have a nice website over at AstroPuppiesinSpace.com. They have video clips, fun activities and space links so kids can have fun learning more about space and space travel. I highly recommend heading over to AstroPuppiesinSpace.com to give your kid a head start in making fun and exciting associations with science. 

I love valuable resources like this. They stimulate our kids’ minds and make them receptive to new ideas and the wonders of our natural world. They are great ways to have conversations about what it’s like to be a scientist or an engineer, or to travel in space.  

Each spring My wife fills the deck with flowers. We enjoy their beauty until the fall frosts kill them off. But we’re not the only ones. Bees are everywhere, flying about from flower to flower in the hunt for more pollen. Hundreds of bees. We’ve never been bothered by them and they’ve never seemed bothered by us. It’s a happy coexistence.

Bees, specificly Honey Bees, are the subject of Jay Hosler’s graphic novel Clan Apis. Taking the graphic novel approach, author Jay Hosler encapsulated the life cycle of honey bees within a coming of age story and found an interesting and effective way to teach kids about the ecology of honey bees. Hosler’s approach is to imagine a hive, or clan, of honey bees endowed with human motivations, through them telling the amazing story of the Honey Bee. The illustration is excellent, lively, and entertaining. I’ve included a few panels from the book that I snagged from Hosler’s website for you to see.

It’s surprising how much actual detail and information Hosler conveys through this method, while keeping the interest in the story high. Beginning with a young larva and it’s older sister, Hosler details in clear and interesting detail the growth cycle and social lives of bees. As the young larva, Nyuki, grows into a young bee she absolutely buzzes with questions. Her older sister, Dvorah, is always there explaining to her the ways of bees and their jobs and duties.

Like a child eager to grow up, Nyuki is eager to find her own way, against the advice of her older sister, landing herself in the middle of dangerous straits. This opens the doorway (more…)

Some time last summer I got the bug to build a robot. I wanted to get my oldest daughter, age 11, involved, too. Lots of things about robots appeal to me. They are very much the nexus for a lot of cool, current and emerging technology: (more…)