The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
About the Book: Called one of America’s favorite Christmas stories, and now a classic television movie, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” has been a favorite of young readers the world over since 1972. Funny, memorable, and outrageous, it is the story of a family of incorrigible children who discover the Christmas story for the first time […]
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Exploration and Observation: Balloon Rocket Launch
In Cosmic, Liam gets to go on “The Biggest Thrill Ride in the History of the World”–a trip to the moon! Let’s make some indoor rockets and see if we can launch them all the way to the ceiling. Materials needed: fishing line or string, drinking straws, balloons, shuttle picture, masking tape 1. Prepare the launch site. String fishing […]
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Cosmic
About the Book: Liam is too big for his boots. And his football strip. And his school blazer. But being super-sized height-wise has its advantages: he’s the only eleven-year-old to ever ride the G-force defying Cosmic rollercoaster – or be offered the chance to drive a Porsche. Long-legged Liam makes a giant leap for boy-kind by […]
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Exploration and Observation: North-South and Local Noon (Sundials, Part 2)
In Kepler’s Dream, Ella adjusts to life in a new place and is challenged to find her true north. For today’s science activity, you’ll find your true north and learn something about the place you live! It’s time for part 2 of our sundials activity from astronomer and physicist Laura Cotts! For this activity, you’ll just need a piece […]
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Kepler’s Dream
About the Book: When eleven-year-old Ella’s mother has to be hospitalized to undergo a dangerous cancer treatment, Ella spends the summer at “Broken Family Camp” with her eccentric grandmother, whom she’s never met. The situation is hardly ideal for either of them. Ella is scared her mother may die, but her grandmother seems to care more […]
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What Came from the Stars
About the Book: The Valorim are about to fall to a dark lord when they send a necklace containing their planet across the cosmos, hurtling past a trillion stars all the way into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Mass. Mourning his late mother, Tommy doesn’t notice much about the chain he found, […]
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Exploration and Observation: Galaxy Art!
Jacob Wonderbar and his friends broke the universe and were afraid that they’d destroyed their own galaxy. You probably know that a galaxy is a big, big group of stars, and that the galaxy we live in is called the Milky Way. But let’s learn some more about galaxies and make our own galaxy art! There […]
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The Six-wise Symmetry of Snowflakes
This week’s book, Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs, is full of snow. In fact, Hazel watches the snow fall in the very first scene and admires its “perfect geometric patterns.” So let’s take a closer look at the geometry of snowflakes! Most snowflakes have hexagonal symmetry, which means that there are six lines you could draw through the […]
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Breadcrumbs
About the Book: Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. They had been best friends since they were six, spending hot Minneapolis summers and cold Minneapolis winters together, dreaming of Hogwarts and Oz, superheroes and baseball. Now that they were eleven, it was weird for a boy and a girl to be best […]
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Another Snow Treasure: Ice Cream!
To go along with this week’s book, Snow Treasure, we’re going to make a snow treasure of our own: ice cream! I love this activity because it gets kids outside, even in cold weather, and can be tailored to a really wide age range. And you can incorporate as little or as much science as you want! This is […]