News & Blog

Our Backyard Book Club read The Ellie McDoodle Diaries: Have Pen, Will Travel…so of course we had to learn how to start our own sketch journals! The first thing we tried was drawing Ellie from the step-by-step instructions in the book. (If you look closely at the photo above, the Ellie on the whiteboard was drawn […]

About the Book: One girl. One sketchbook. One week with the world’s most annoying relatives. When Ellie McDougal’s parents go out of town, she’s forced to go on a camping trip with her aunt, uncle, cousins, and baby brother, Ben-Ben. Ellie can handle mosquitos and poison ivy, but sharing a cabin with her crazy relatives? No […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

n this week’s book, Gianna had to identify lots of leaves for a school project. We’re going to learn about leaves too with this awesome chromatography experiment by ecologist Heather Hawke. Take it away, Heather! Have you ever wondered why leaves turn color in the fall? They don’t really switch colors – some of those yellows and […]

About the Book: Gianna Z has less than one week to collect, identify, and creatively display 25 leaves for her science project—or else she won’t be able to compete in the upcoming cross-country race. As the deadline for her leaf project draws near, life keeps getting in the way. Some things are within Gee’s control, like […]

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. […]

About the Book: ALVIN HO is an Asian American second grader who is afraid of everything—elevators, tunnels, girls, and, most of all, school. He’s so afraid of school that, while he’s there, he never, ever, says a word. But at home he’s a very loud superhero named Firecracker Man, a brother to Calvin and Anibelly, and a […]

In this week’s book, Sierra got in big trouble when she brought her mom’s lunch bag by mistake because there was a knife in it. The knife was probably there so Sierra’s mom could cut her apple right before she ate it so it wouldn’t go brown. Do you agree? Let’s see if we can come […]