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Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans book cover

Backyard Book Club: Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms Overview

For this month’s meeting, the kids read Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms. It was a little longer than our previous picks, so we made sure everybody knew they could still come even if they hadn’t finished. (Click here for the book spotlight with online resources and other ideas.) Our book trivia challenge took the form of Beech Road Bingo (click for printable) where […]

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Kids learning Magic

Backyard Book Club: Magic Show

The most popular activity at Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms Backyard Book Club meeting was definitely the magic show and lesson. The kids were impressed with my meager magic skills and loved learning all the tricks themselves!  There are tons of great resources for learning magic tricks online, but we started with the very basics. We learned classic tricks like The Jumping Rubber […]

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Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans book cover

Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms

About the Book: As if being small for his age and also having “S. Horten” as his name isn’t bad enough, now 10-year-old Stuart is forced to move far away from all his friends. But on his very first day in his new home, Stuart’s swept up in an extraordinary adventure: the quest to find his great-uncle […]

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Supplies for experiment

The World-Famous Mentos Geyser

In this week’s book, Alvin Ho isn’t afraid of explosions and loves things that go up in the air. So I thought we’d do a classic science trick that Alvin would probably love–The World-Famous Mentos Geyser! Okay, it’s not technically an explosion (or a geyser), but it’s the closest thing I can safely encourage kids to try. […]

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