Wild Outdoor Wednesday

Follow a bumble bee. What sort of path does it make as it flies from flower to flower? Capture the colors of the flowers it is visiting. Does it sound like the other bees flying around? 

Remember to take your sketchbook or journal with unlined pages, something to draw and write with, and something to add color ~ watercolors, colored pencils, crayons, or markers.

Living Fossils

Living Fossils: Clues to the Past
by Caroline Arnold; illus. by Andrew Plant
32 pages; ages 8-11
Charlesbridge, 2016

When I was a kid, my favorite book was my dad's geology text. I spent hours and hours leafing through the pages, studying drawings of fossils and dinosaurs, losing myself in the geological time scale, sounding out "Carboniferous" and "Silurian".

Mostly, when we think of fossils, it's dinosaurs and trilobites. Something preserved in rock. Extinct.

But what if some of those ancient creatures still lived among us? Would we recognize them?

In this book, Caroline Arnold shows us six amazing creatures that resemble their long-gone, ancient relatives. She shows us where they live, how they survived extinction, and what their future holds. One of these "living fossils" is the horseshoe crab. One hundred fifty million years ago, horseshoe crabs had hard shells and long tails. They crawled up on sandy beaches to search for worms and shellfish to eat.

Not much has changed in the intervening millennia... if you visit the east coast on a warm summer night when the moon is full, you'll probably see hundreds of horseshoe crabs pull themselves onto the beach. They're digging nests and laying eggs, just as they did millions of years ago.

You don't need to drive to the beach to find a living fossil; just head outside to a wetland or meadow and look for dragonflies. These keen mosquito-devouring aerial hunters are the great-great-great-/.../ great-grandchildren of dragonflies that lived 280 million years ago. Over time things changed, like size. Back then, dragonflies were a lot bigger - about the size of a crow!

You can find out more about living fossils at Caroline Arnold's website, where she has some activities to do. Check out this article about scientists researching living fossils at the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

Today's review is part of the STEM Friday roundup. Drop by STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. Review copies from publisher.

Wild Outdoor Wednesday

Sit by a pond or wetland area and listen to frogs. Capture the colors, sounds, smell, feel of the area.

Remember to take your sketchbook or journal with unlined pages, something to draw and write with, and something to add color ~ watercolors, colored pencils, crayons, or markers

Whose Eye am I?

Whose Eye am I?
text and photos by Shelley Rotner
32 pages; ages 4-8
Holiday House, 2016

We use our eyes to see the world - and so do the animals living around us. They use their eyes to see shapes, colors, movement, size, distance. They're on the lookout for danger and sometimes mates.

The cool thing - we all have eyes, but our eyes look different. Not only that, some animals have different ways of seeing the world.

This book presents information through photos and text, and invites readers to explore through interactive pages that ask, "Who am I?" We get up-close looks at dog eyes, cat eyes, owl and pigeon eyes. We meet frog eyes and snake eyes and learn interesting things such as snakes can't close their eyes. Not only that, when they shed their skin they shed their eyelids too. Imagine if we did that!

My favorite: a close-up of a dragonfly's eyes. They are huge - and they can see colors that are invisible to us. So can butterflies and bees. And yes, there's even a bit about human eyes.

Today's review is part of the STEM Friday roundup. Drop by STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. Review copy from publisher.

Wild Outdoor Wednesday

Revisit your square. Do you notice any changes? 

Write down what you see; draw pictures; capture the colors of June in your square.

Flying Frogs, Walking Fish....

Flying Frogs and Walking Fish
by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page; illus. by Steve Jenkins
40 pages; ages 4-7
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016

theme: nature, animals, nonfiction

Animals walk, leap, climb, and swim. Some roll or turn flips. Others fly or glide, and a few are even jet-propelled.

There are so many ways to get around, and a good chance you've only seen a few of them. For example, have you ever seen a walking octopus? It has eight legs, but uses only two of them to walk along the ocean floor.

This is a book full of ACTION! Animals leap, tumble, climb, glide, tiptoe, scramble, cruise, slither, and dive. To do those things, they need adaptations that allow that sort of movement. Like tube-feet, fins, between-the-toes webbing, and spring-loaded legs.

What I like about this book: the large print verbs introduce a collection of animals that move in similar fashion, and the paper cut illustrations that show how each animal is adapted for that motion. For example, a red-lipped batfish waddles across the sea floor on its fins. A flying squirrel uses skin flaps to capture air for gliding. And jumping spiders.... they can leap 50 times their own body length. Talk about moving!

Beyond the book: action words!

Get moving! Find the action words (verbs) on the pages of this book - or another book - and move like those words. Jump, scurry, somersault.... and more. 

Get moving, take 2 ~ Grab a bunch of index cards and write one action word on each card. If you need a list of words, go here.  Then go outside. Put all the words into a can or a hat or a bucket. Now each person takes a word. Start walking around your yard (or a park or playground) - however your card dictates. When you reach a turn, stop and pull another word out of the hat. 

Another word for run ~ Get a thesaurus or "synonym finder" and make a list of words that are synonyms for action words you use a lot, such as run or walk. Then start peppering your speech with these alternative words.

Watch how animals move ~ go somewhere where you can watch animals: a park or zoo or maybe a pet store. Jot down words to describe how different animals move. 

Today's review is part of the STEM Friday roundup. Drop by STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. We're also joining PPBF (perfect picture book Friday), an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books.  Review copy from publisher.

Wild Outdoor Wednesday

What are the colors of the leaves?

Remember to take your sketchbook or journal with unlined pages, something to draw and write with, and something to add color ~ watercolors, colored pencils, crayons, or markers.

Women who Investigate Crime Scenes

Angie Malone is the winner of a copy of Bubonic Panic - the giveaway winner was determined by drawing names from a hat (since rafflecopter refuses to load properly!) Now, back to Fun with Forensics...


Forensics: Cool Women who Investigate
by Anita Yasuda; illus. by Allison Bruce
112 pages; ages 9-12
Nomad Press, 2016

After an introductory chapter, the book introduces three women who work in forensics. Each has a chapter dedicated to her story of how she grew up, what kinds of things she was interested in as a kid, and the sort of forensic work they do now. ChristineGabig-Prebyl is a forensic scientist for a sheriff's office. When she was a kid, she collected owl pellets and was interested in life sciences.

What Christine likes best about her job is that it brings new problems to solve each day. She may use gas chromatography or analyze substances in a mass spectrometer. She might examine hair, fibers, paint using a microscope. In one case, she had to deal with more than 450 items of evidence.

Some forensic scientists are anthropologists who study bones, or entomologists who study insects. Throughout the book are many sidebars that focus on different jobs in forensic sciences, and the education that you'd need for that job. There are also short profiles of other women in the field. This is the perfect book for a young woman headed to college with an interest in sciences, but not quite sure what she wants to do.

Try It: Chromatography

 The ink in your pen might look black, but most ink is a mix of several pigments. A forensic scientist can determine what ink is used by separating the pigments into a banded pattern. The process of separating pigments is called chromatography, and you can do it on your kitchen counter.

You need: different kinds of water-based black markers; coffee filters cut into half-inch strips; bamboo skewers or pencils; tape; and some jars or glasses.

Draw a pencil line about 1/2 inch from one end of a filter paper strip. Make a dot of dark ink from one of the markers on that line. Pour a little water into the jar and hang your filter paper so it is just touching the water and the ink spot is above the water line. Tape it to a pencil so it can hang for a few minutes while the pigments separate. As water is drawn up the filter paper, it will carry the ink's pigments with it. Heavier pigments will be left behind first, and light ones later - so you may see some pinks and blues along the strip. Try it with different markers - you might find they have different pigments.

What about inks that aren't water-soluble? If you can smear it with a drop of alcohol, you might be able to separate the pigments using alcohol instead of water in the jar.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Wild Outdoor Wednesday

Turn over some leaf litter. Draw the bugs you find. 

Remember to take your sketchbook or journal with unlined pages, something to draw and write with, and something to add color ~ watercolors, colored pencils, crayons, or markers