Open Wide, Look Inside

I love it when I can find a book that teaches science content without students realizing it.  Moonbear’s Shadow, written and illustrated by Frank Asch, is a lovely book about a bear’s fishing adventure. During this outing, Bear has a battle with his shadow that started when his shadow scared the fish away. Bear tried to run away from his shadow, hide from his shadow, and even nail his shadow to the ground but his shadow always followed. 

 Bear finally won his fight, so he thought, when he buried his shadow in a hole at noon and took a nap.  “The sun was high in the sky and Shadow was nowhere to be seen.” Of course when he woke up, the shadow reappeared. This witty books ends when Bear makes a deal with Shadow, “If you let me catch a fish, I’ll let you catch one, too”.  Thankfully, the sun cooperated by casting Bear’s shadow on land, not in the pond, which allowed Bear and his shadow to each catch a fish. 

Moonbear’s Shadow is a great introduction to shadows for kindergarten classes.  (VA SOL K.7a)  I like how the pictures in this book show a visual connection between the sun’s position in the sky and the length and location of the shadow.  My favorite page depicts the movement of the sun in four phases and the result of the sun’s position on a shovel’s shadow.  This book is sure to get students excited to learn about shadows.

Additional Resources:

• There are many wonderful shadow activities on Frank Asch’s website  
• This is an interactive website with a shadow activity that students will love
• Here is a simple worksheet in which students match a dinosaur to its respective shadow

Book: Moonbear’s Shadow
Author: Frank Asch
Illustrator: Frank Asch
Publisher: Aladdin
Publication Date: 2000
Pages: 32
Grade Range: K-3
ISBN: 0689835191

Did you ever wonder how and why the temperature changes? Weather Words and What they Mean  by Gail Gibbons gives children an opportunity to examine many of the terms that weathermen use today. This books uses language that many students can understand. Weather Words provides many good examples using the seasons to explain why the weather changes. On many of the pages a key weather term is listed at the top of the page and then the word is described with many pictures.

“Temperature. The temperature goes up and down. When the sun rises in the morning, the air becomes warmer and the temperature goes up. In the winter, the sun is low in the sky. The days are cold and shorter.”

The pictures are bright and colorful so it gives the students many things to look at. Additionally, in the back of the book there are interesting facts about weather to enhance the students knowledge.

Curriculum Connections
This book would be great for children to gain a better understanding of weather and some of the key terms associated with weather. (SOL 2.6(a) The weather terms are defined in language for children to understand. Weather Words and What they Mean can be used to introduce the students to weather terms. Additionally, this book may be a good resource for review on the topic because it provides many terms and then gives good examples of the terms. This book would be great for students because the pictures and the text keep students engaged.

Additional Resources

• This website provides teachers with many good activities for the students to complete when learning about weather. This website gives activities for students to understand how the wind works, and also gives students the chance to come up with their own weather riddle.
• This website is a great place for students to go to when learning about weather. This website provides stories about weather as well as activities. Another important feature of this website is that it gives students safety tips when the weather is dangerous.
• This is a great resource for students and teachers. For teachers this website gives many activities for the students to complete when they are learning about weather. The students can go to this website to complete some weather investigation. There are many different activities for the students to complete.

General Information
Book: Weather Words and What they Mean
Author: Gail Gibbons
Illustrator:Gail Gibbons
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication Date: 1990
Pages:1-30
Grade Range: 1-3
ISBN: 0-8234-0805-1

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, written by Verna Aardema, is story that tells of an African legend about what makes the sky rain.  This story is a long, repetitive, rhyming poem, much like “In the House that Jack Built”.

A herdsman name Ki-pat stands watching his cows, as well as the other animals of the Serengeti, begin to go hungry as the fields and pastures dried from lack of rain.

“These are the cows, all hungry and dry,
Who mooed for the rain to fall from the sky;
To green-up the grass, all brown and dead,
That needed the rain from the cloud overhead –
The big black cloud, all heavy with rain,
That shadowed the ground on Kapiti Plain.”

Ki-pat worries about the pastures and animals drying up and becoming ill, and wants to make the rain fall out of the cloud.  A feather falls from an eagle soaring above, and gives Ki-pat an idea – he will shoot the cloud to make the rain pour out!

“This was the shot that pierced the could
And loosed the rain with thunder LOUD!
A shot from the bow, so long and strong,
And strung with a string, a leather thong;
A bow for the arrow Ki-pat put together
With a slender stick and an eagle feather;
From the eagle who happened to drop a feather,
A feather that helped to change the weather.”

The rain finally falls on Ki-pat’s field, which greens the grass, helping to feed and water his starving animals.

“So the grass grew green, and the cattle fat!
And Ki-pat got a wife and a little Ki-pat –
Who tends the cows now, and shoots down the rain,
When black clouds shadow Kapiti Plain.”

Curriculum Connections:

 This book will help teach children the relationship of seasonal change and weather patterns to life processes of plants and animals, as well as the importance of the water cycle for the life of living things, as suggested by VA Science SOLs 1.7abc, as well as 3.9c.

Additional Resources:

Teacherlink has an extension geography lesson for this book that highlights the different regions and wildlife of Africa, as well as point out that people who live far away from each other can be similar, as well as have big differences in the way they live.

Scholastic’s website provides guided reading questions to help children make predictions and tell their feelings about the story, as well as gives a guide for “choral reading” of the repetitious sections of the poem.

Kids Econ Posters provides an economics lesson plan for this book highlighting the topic of scarcity.

General Information:

Book:  Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain
Author:  Verna Aardema
Illustrator:  Beatriz Vidal
Publisher:  Scholastic
Publication Date:  2001
Pages:  32 pages
Grade Range:  1-3
ISBN-13: 978-0140546163

What always follows you on a bright sunny day?  Shadows by Carolyn B. Otto, uses real-life photos to show and explain how shadows are formed.  All children like to look at their own shadows which makes them curious.  The book walks the student through how to make a shadow with a flash light and how to block the light to produce a shadow on the wall.  The author explains how shadows can change because of the time of day or because the object moves.  She shows how to make shadows change in the real life photos.  At the end of the book, shadows are made by using your hands to create a bird and dog.  This is a good opportunity for the student to try making hand shadows. Otto also gives a suggested activity for parents to do with their child.  The real life photos in the book make learning about shadows more concrete.

Cirriculm Connections 

Shadows can be used as an introduction to the study of shadows which occur when sunlight is blocked by an object or producing shadows by blocking artificial light.  In Virginia, this topic correlates with SOL K.7, Interrelationships in Earth/Space Systems.

Additional Resources

Time for Kids is a fun website for students to play interactive games to reinforce the concept of shadows and to watch a short slideshow on shadows.  Here is the link for the website. The time for kids one is not working correctly. http://treasures.macmillanmh.com/national/students/grade1/book3/unit3/time-for-kids-show-shadows-long-shadows click on Activity 1, 2, & slideshow.

Observing and Drawing Shadows is a lesson on how to have partners work with each other to draw and note shadow changes.

I Have A Shadow is an adorable shadow song which explains how shadows are made through music.

Book: Shadows
Author: Carolyn Otto
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: 2001
Pages: 31 pages
Grade Range: K-2
ISBN: 978-0439295833

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong made the first human appearance on the moon.  Landing on the moon was not as easy as it had seemed to those who watched the event from their televisions at home.  There was much hard work and effort that went into the mission of Apollo 11.  The book, Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, by Brian Floca describes the detailed voyage in a way that children can enjoy and understand.  With intense and eye-catching illustrations, the book starts by introducing the launch and take off system of Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Micheal Collins, and Lunar Module Edwin Aldin.  After one week, the three men went on to create history.  Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 defines the job and skill level for children, showing that flying a space craft is not for everyone.  However, the also shows that with hard work and effort, anything is possible.  As millions watched on national television, Armstrong calmly said, “Houston, Tranquility Base is here.  The Eagle has landed” (pg. 30).  Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 remembers one of the most significant stories in history and captures the excitement for the younger audience.

Curriculum Connections

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 helps children to understand the wonderful story of the first human on the moon.  Throughout the book, the reader is captured by the intrinsic illustrations of space.  Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 may be used in a classroom setting to introduce a lesson pertaining to space.  Though in story form, children are also able to learn about the moon and the mysterious outer space.  They are also able to discover the relative size of the earth and moon and the distance between the two (3.8 and 4.7).

Additional Resources 

• The Mission of Apollo 11– This link includes a summary of Moonshot: The flight of Apollo 11.  The website features additional resources and materials, such as other voyages to the moon.  It also, contains five reviews from other readers.
• Away in Space– Features coloring pages, spaceships, astronauts, and more.  The activities are perfect for children of younger ages.
• Brian Floca– This website includes a library of books written by Brian Floca and the entire book of Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 can be read online.
  

Book: Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11

Author:  Brian Floca

Publisher: Antheneum/Richard Jackson Books

Publication Date: April 7, 2009

Pages: 48 pages

Grade Range: 2-4

ISBN: 141695046X