News & Blog

In The Magic Half, Miri uses a magic lens to put things right. In this science activity, we’ll explore with a not-so-magic lens called a magnifying glass, then use our lens to turn a picture upside-down and backwards! Materials needed: magnifying glass white piece of paper or card stock computer or TV screen in a dark room First, examine your […]

I have a feeling Ramona Quimby grew up to be a scientist. Here are a couple of reasons why: If Ramona drank lemonade through a straw, she blew into the straw as hard as she could to see what would happen. “Ramona, what did you have to go and do a thing like that for?” Beezus demanded […]

Temple Grandin was able to improve the lives of millions of animals. How did she do it? By thinking like an animal, caring about animals, and then working hard to make things better for them. You can do the same thing! Temple Grandin loved cows, so she learned all she could about them. Then she was […]

Evan and Jessie make plenty of lemonade in The Lemonade War. Let’s make some of our own and see if we can learn some chemistry at the same time! Here’s what you’ll need: Lemon juice (either from a bottle or from a real lemon) Baking soda Water Sugar drinking glass spoon First, pour 1/4 cup lemon juice […]

This week’s science activity comes from my good friend (and a great author) Helen Boswell, author of the young adult novel Mythology. This is a great activity for young naturalists like Calpurnia Tate from this week’s book! Here’s we go: Plants are an important part of the ecosystem and equally interesting. (For instance, did you know that plants can actually tell […]

In this week’s book, Flush by Carl Hiaasen, Noah fought to keep the water from being polluted. We can help with water pollution too! This week’s activity comes to us from my fabulous little sister Hope Braithwaite, who is the Programs Assistant at the Utah State University Water Quality Extension. So she’s an expert on teaching kids […]

This week’s guest post is by author and ecologist (and all-around nice person) Heather Hawke. Thank you, Heather! Here we go: Halloween is soon upon us and few books are creepy and crawly as The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand. Mrs. Cavendish’s roaches are shiver-worthy with too many legs even for bugs! But here […]

In this week’s book, Oliver Olson makes a solar system model for his school project. So let’s make one too! Here’s how to make a scale model of the solar system using stuff you probably have left over from Halloween.      Materials needed:      2 small pumpkins     2 mini pumpkins     3 Tootsie Pops, sticks cut off  […]

For Groovy Robinson in The Year the Swallows Came Early, the best time for birdwatching was in March. But in many parts of the world, winter is a great time for birding!  If you want to be an amateur ornithologist (even for a day), you’ll probably want a bird feeder, a pencil and notebook, and a […]

In this week’s book, The Reinvention of Edison Thomas, one of the ways Eddy calms himself down is by reciting the elements from the periodic table. Some of the words he recites like chlorine and iron) are probably familiar, while others (scandium!) are…not so familiar. All matter (everything that takes up space and has mass) is made up […]