Round

Round
by Joyce Sidman; illus. by Taeeun Yoo
32 pages; ages 4-7
HMH books for young readers, 2017

themes: nature, shapes

I love round things. 
I like to feel their smoothness. 
My hands want to reach around their curves.

Through the pages of this book a young girl explores things that are round in nature: seeds, eggs, berries... Round things spread. Round things roll.

What I like about this book: The diversity of round things! And the encouragement to look closer at the world around us. Also the reminder that some things that are round now were once jagged (like hills), and that some round things are ephemeral. And that some round things aren't round all the time.

There is also Back Matter! You know how I like books with Back Matter! Why are so many things in nature round? Joyce Sidman gives a few reasons including: round shapes distribute weight, round helps spread seeds or spores, and round things roll - which helps with distribution.

Beyond the book:

Make a list of all the Round things you can think of. They don't have to be found in nature.

Hunt for Round Things in nature. Now is a perfect time to find walnuts, hickory nuts, mustard seeds and other round things. Remember to check out the night sky for round things, too.

Do small Round Things roll the same speed as large round things? One way to test would be to roll them down a slope. Do they go as far? Push (or kick) them on a flat surface to get them started rolling.

How can you measure round-ness? Figure out a way to do it, then measure different things.

If you are watching the moon, how long does it take to get round? Draw a picture of it every night.

Today we're joining the STEM Friday roundup. Drop by STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. We're also joining others over at 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 the publisher.

Design, Create... Engineer

If the bitter cold has kept you inside and you're looking for something to do, gather up some odds and ends and see what you can design. That "E" in STEM is for "engineering": designing, inventing, creating.

It doesn't take much to create new things - all you need are some scratched CD's, toilet paper tubes, marbles, glue, batteries, mousetraps, maybe a motor and some dominoes. Then devise a solution to a problem.

What sort of problem? Hm-m-m... maybe a way to squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube, or a "card-holder" so the little one can join in the games. Or maybe a "waker-upper" that will make sure older brother gets up and out of bed in time to get to school. Or race cars to run around the kitchen floor or a way to make them go up the stairs. Or a an elevator to haul your books (and midnight snacks) up to the second floor.

Sometimes good ideas come from the trash bin. That's what happened when 12-year old Max Wallack figured out how to put styrofoam packing noodles and plastic grocery bags to use building a small dome shelter. Or when my kids decided to make kitchen hockey sticks from gift-wrap tubes and plastic bottles. The pucks: a couple plastic lids duct-taped together. Goal: the thin space under the stove, of course. (next invention: something to retrieve puck)

Some inventions are just for fun - like Rube Goldberg machines that turn a page or start a car. But all inventions, whether purposeful or just for fun, start with ideas.

One way to nurture inventors and engineers of the future is to fill their shelves with books, like Rosie Revere, Engineer, or The Kite That Bridged Two Nations. Both feature characters with can-do attitudes.

Then, make sure you keep a junk box or two filled up with stuff - and allow space for all that messy creativity to happen.

And bookmark this site for when your kids ask, "what does an engineer do anyway?"

Remember to head over to STEM Friday and check out what other bloggers are sharing today.

Flight Plans - make a helicopter

One of the fun things I do as a volunteer at Ithaca's Sciencenter is build helicopters with kids - and parents, grandparents, teachers.... everyone loves to make 'em. So I thought to go along with my review of Explore Flight! over at STEM Friday, that I'd share some helicopter flying here.

According to historians, kids have been playing with helicopter toys for the past 2500 years. All you need is a blade attached to a stem; give it a good rub and set it spinning. In the 1480s, Leonardo daVinci created a design for an "aerial screw" - and in 1906 French inventor Paul Cornu built a machine with 20-foot rotors powered by a small engine. It lifted him a foot off the ground and kept him there for 20 seconds.

Our helicopters won't have engines; they're more "helicopter-gliders". The spinning blades provide enough lift to slow its descent. And since it's a vertical flier, it only goes one direction: down.

Start with a template - this is the one we use for the kids and you can find a downloadable version from the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. You'll need a few items:

• scissors
• ruler
• paper
• paperclips
• pencil

Cut along solid lines. Then fold sections A & B along the dotted lines, and fold up the bottom to keep the "stem" from unfolding when you fly. Bend the blades (D & E) with one folded towards you and one away. Then try flying your 'copter. Hm-m-m... I wonder if a paper clip might help it fly better?

When you drop your helicopter, it pushes the air that's around it out of its way. The air pushes the blades into a slanted position (drop it again and watch closely). According to the folks at the Exploratorium,  the air under one blade pushes one way and the air under the other blade pushes the opposite direction. Those two forces push the blade around and make it spin.


So what happens if you angle the blades? Put a bend in them?
What happens if you make a 'copter with blades that are twice as long? Or twice as wide?
What if you cut jagged edges on the blades or make them rounded?
 What if you have one blade fatter or longer than the other?
What if you make 3 blades? or 4?
What if you add more weight to the stem?

Be a helicopter engineer today! Ask questions! Have fun!

And remember to head over to the STEM Friday round-up to see what other people are posting.

Engineering Nature's Designs

The other day I was out taking photos of leaves and I stopped to listen to the world around me. It’s pretty quiet on my hill, but there was a lot of rustling in the leaves – a breeze so subtle that I couldn’t feel it had the big toothed aspen leaves chattering like the ladies down at Rosie’s Café (an imaginary place that doesn’t exist in my town but should). I got to wondering how cool it would be if we could harness all the energy generated by the leaves flipping back and forth on their stems.

Some engineers had a similar idea. They were looking at problems with harvesting wind power in urban areas, where wind speeds are lower than needed for large turbines and where you wouldn’t want huge turbines anyway. One mechanical engineer experimented with an aerofoil that fluttered like a fish tail, generating small amounts of current each time it moved. Another team proposed a tree of flapping “leaves”.

Scientists at UC Davis are growing tiny “trees” of silver to collect solar energy. But you don’t have to be an engineer in a university lab to come up with a new idea. Thirteen-year old Aidan Dwyer devised a vertical array of solar cells to resemble the leaves that collect the sun’s energy. Because, as he pointed out, those natural “solar panels” aren’t all flat, like roof panels. In fact, they’re arranged around the trunk of a tree in a specific pattern: the Fibonacci sequence.

Aidan's project won the 2011 Young Naturalist award from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Even though he made some rather serious errors in original calculations, the idea has merit. He's conducting a new set of experiments to see if he gets similar results (with corrected calculations).

Velcro was another nature-inspired idea that came from close observation of how burdocks clung to sweaters. What ideas does nature inspire in you? For more Friday science inspiration, head over to  STEM Friday. 

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