Open Wide, Look Inside

From shovels and seeds to vegetable soup, Growing Vegetable Soup takes readers on a journey from the garden to the kitchen. Author and illustrator Lois Elhert uses colorful pictures and large print to transform a learning experience into a story.

Ehlert’s use of color in Growing Vegetable Soup adds a touch of fantasy to a scientific and realistic story. The illustrations are pieced together with simple shapes that describe the words on the page. Each picture has labels to help with vocabulary and spelling. The illustrations play off as a collage, but the colors work together in a way to show off the important words on the page.

The end of the story focuses on the scientific fact that vegetables grow annually and can be used in the end, "At last it's time to eat it all up! It was the best soup ever€¦and we can grow it again next year." Elhert emphasizes each step and includes important information such as watering, sunlight and weeding. Her subtle use of words can be ignored for younger readers or pointed out and studied at more age appropriate grades.

Curriculum Connections
Starting in kindergarten students begin to learn about life science and the way plants change, grow and go through a typical life cycle. Into first grade, students begin to learn more in depth about how to care for plants and the necessities for sustaining life. Growing Vegetable Soup can be used to explain from the very beginning how plants grow and change and the important elements that help plants grow and thrive. The labels and specific instructions provide vocabulary/spelling lists about plants and the pictures provide instructions about how to care for plants. In Virginia, this book applies to science SOL k.6a and k.6b (living things change as they grow, and they need food, water and air to survive; plants and animals live and die (go through ha life cycle), as well as 1.4a (plants have needs-food, air, water, light and a place to grow).

Additional Resources

• Let's Read offers a full lesson about vegetables that includes taste testing of vegetables, multiple drawing/touching techniques that keeps activities hands-on and a hand-out for students to participate in activities at home.
• First School gears its activities towards kindergarten and hands-on activities using different vegetables seen in the book. There are also various crafts, language arts/spelling lessons, and references to other books on similar subjects.
• Lesson 5: Yum Yum seeks to teach kindergarten and first graders the parts of a flower/plant and includes computer, extension and home activities.

Book: Growing Vegetable Soup
Author/Illustrator: Lois Elhert
Publisher: Voyager Books
Publication Date: 1990
Pages: 32 pages
Grades: kindergarten-first grade
ISBN: 0152325808

Expanding students’ knowledge from their own environment to the various other environments of the country and the world can often be a challenge.  Students are often unaware of the different characteristics and species that compose other habitats.  Brenda Z. Guiberson’s book Cactus Hotel, illustrated by Megan Lloyd, details the life cycle of a cactus and the characteristics and species that compose a desert habitat.

The gradual progression, spanning from the unintentional planting of a fruit seed by an animal to the  use of a two-hundred and fifty year old decaying cactus by animals for protection, emphasizes the multiple stages and adaptations that occur throughout the plant’s life-cycle.  With each page Guiberson introduces the reader to a new step in the life cycle of the plant.  This organization helps to demonstrate to students the extensive time frame it takes for plant growth in addition to the adaptations the plant and other species must make in the desert environment.

Guiberson and Lloyd demonstrate in their book the interdependence among a habitat by showing how the cactus is not just a component of the environment but it also houses many species in its “hotel” throughout its life cycle.  This connection to a hotel stay, along with the vocabulary used, allows students to comprehend what a cactus or other organism provides to the overall habitat.

Everybody wants to live in the cactus hotel.  Birds lay eggs and pack rats raise their young. Even insects and bats live there. When one animal moves out, another moves in. And every spring they come for a special treat of nectar and juicy red fruit.

This book will help familiarize students with a particular environment that they may be unfamiliar to, but all students will benefit from the additional connections that Cactus Hotel provides through explaining in detail and with examples how all species and organisms depend on one another in an environment.

Curriculum Connections
Guiberson and Lloyd’s book is great for a wide range of children from first grade through fourth grade.  This book gives details that could be further explored in the upper elementary grades with a study of adaptations, life-cycles (In Virginia 4.5) and specific dry-land environments (3.6d).  When used in first and second grade classrooms Cactus Hotel correlates to the standards relating to the life needs of plants and animals (1.4, 1.5) and the interdependence among these needs (2.5).

Additional Resources

• A hands-on experiment where students can investigate how a cactus adapts its size based on the amount of water available.
• A to Z Teacher Stuff provides lesson plans, activities, and experiments for a desert habitat unit.
• This site contains various science videos (including habitats and the desert) which students can watch followed by corresponding quizzes, vocabulary, activities and games.

Book: Cactus Hotel
Author: Brenda Z. Guiberson
Illustrator: Megan Lloyd
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: 1993
Pages: 32 pages
Grades: First Grade-Fourth Grade
ISBN: 0805029605

Have you ever found an egg in your backyard? Do you want to find out more about eggs and the creatures they protect within them?

An Egg is Quiet, illustrated by Sylvia Long and written by Dianna Aston,  portrays the life of an egg and all of its many characteristics.  The book describes not just one type of egg, but an array of animal eggs and reflects on their unique differences while reminding the reader of their similarities. The depictions of the eggs themselves in the beautiful water color illustrations are ideal in learning sizes and shapes and textures of each individual egg. Every egg is always labeled so that the reader knows which creature is waiting inside the egg until the time that the egg breaks and is no longer “quiet”.

We even find out why eggs have the shapes, colors and textures they do. It is because they need them to survive. They blend in or use “camouflage”. In this quotation from the book, we find out where the egg lives and why its shape is important.

“Sea turtles dig a hole in the sand and lay up to 200 soft, round eggs. Round eggs fit together nicely in tight spaces.”

At the end of the book, there are diagrams showing the different stages of growth inside the egg. We find out how the egg takes care of the creature inside it. Finally, the creature hatches and the last page depicts colorful pictures of the animals that spring from their egg homes.

Curriculum Connections
This book may help a child understand the life cycle of animals and how these offspring are different from what the mother looks like at first(K.6). Children can also learn that a creature has needs, even within the egg, in order to grow(1.4). Children will learn about the physical characteristics animals needs to survive(1.5) and how camouflage works (3.4). Finally, children can investigate changes in the life cycle (2.4).

Additional Resources

• Here are some activities and different ways of teaching the information presented in this book.
• This lesson plan helps kids learn about eggs.
• A step by step guide for hatching your own eggs!

Book: An Egg is Quiet
Author:  Dianna Aston
Illustrator: Sylvia Long
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 26 pages
Grades: K-2
ISBN: 0-8118-4428-5

The beauty about having four seasons is the distinct characteristics that come along with each.   The changing of each season is especially exciting for children, for they anticipate their favorite activities that may come only once a year. As a child, I was often very anxious for the start of fall.  Not only did I get to start back at school, but I also loved to watch the leaves change colors and celebrate Halloween.  There was one thing that always embodied the heart of fall for me–pumpkins.  Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson celebrates the growth of pumpkins with the story of their life cycle.

Using bold photographs taken by Shmuel Thaler, Pumpkin Circle explores the growth of a pumpkin.  Levenson explains the process starting at the beginning, with a seed, and completes the cycle, where it first began, with pumpkin seeds.

How did this begin? What is this pumpkin thing?  Is there Mother Nature?  Is there a Pumpkin King?  We can be sure of this: It’s a circle without end.  It’s pumpkin seeds to pumpkins to pumpkin seeds again!

Levenson explains that pumpkin seeds come in all different shapes and sizes, yet once they are planted in soil, they can grow to become pumpkins!  First the seeds sprout into two small leaves, with roots deep down in the earth.  Then with the help of the sun and water, the plant sprouts grow into large leaves that create the perfect place for a pumpkin flower to grow.  Levenson then introduces animals into this life cycle, as bees buzz near the gold, velvet flowers, and grasshoppers make adventures throughout the garden.  As summer turns to fall, it is time for the pumpkins to be picked, so they can be enjoyed!  Levenson encourages the reader to due this by creating their own personal jack-o’-lantern.  However, the cycle does not end here.  The pumpkin then shrinks into the earth, dispersing its seeds into the ground once again!

Pumpkin Circle is told with rhyming text and great close-up photographs.  Along with the descriptions of the life cycle, Levenson uniquely places the text in designs that outline the shape of the photograph, emphasizing the characteristics of a pumpkin at that stage.  For example, as he writes about the twisty tendrils of the pumpkin plant, he places one line of text in an upward arch and the next in a downward arch, replicating the shape of the tendrils.  This technique enhances the text and provides further visuals for the reader.  Together the rhyming, photographs, and placement of text make Pumpkin Circle a book that will surely keep children’s interest.

On the last page of the book, Pumpkin Circle includes advice on how to grow pumpkins.  Levenson includes tips on the varieties, reproduction, protection, special effects, and harvesting of pumpkins.  This serves as a great follow up activity for children!  I’m sure they will eagerly want to grow a pumpkin after reading this story!

Curriculum Connections
Pumpkin Circle’s theme, the life cycle of a pumpkin, is a great way to teach children about the life processes of living things as they grow and change.  It emphasizes the need for water, sunlight, and care.  Students can also gain knowledge about the different parts of a plant, such as the seeds, roots, stems, leaves, and flowers (VA SOL K.6 and 1.4).  However, this book can also be linked to a physical science standards and investigation themes.  As students learn about the different stages of a pumpkin, they can use their observational skills to compare the physical properties of a pumpkin as it grows from a seed, to a leaf, and to a pumpkin.  Pumpkin Circle serves as a great extension into a history lesson as well, emphasizing the importance of pumpkins to the lives of early settlers and Native Americans.

Additional Resources

• Visit the Pumpkin Circle Project Website for information on the Pumpkin Circle video.  This site offers both the video and book for purchase in English and in Spanish.
• Learn how to grow a pumpkin! Plant a pumpkin seed and watch it grow as a classroom activity!  Directions and tips on gardening are also available.
• Check out this site for pumpkin lesson plans for language arts, math, science, social studies, cooking, and creative thinking!  Ideas include measuring the circumference of a pumpkin, using pumpkin seeds to create popcorn, and investigating the history behind jack-o’-lanterns!

Book: Pumpkin Circle
Author: George Levenson
Photographer: Shmuel Thaler 
Publisher: Tricylce Press
Publication Date: 2002
Pages: 40 pages
Grades: K-1
ISBN: 1582460787

Mia Posada is a fantastic author and illustrator of children’s literature. She has won many awards for her work, such as the National Science Teachers Association Award, Children’s Book Council Award, and the Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students k-12 Selector’s Choice Award. She truly has a gift and a outstanding passion for children’s literature.

Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg starts off my giving you visual and conceptual clues on what type of eyes are being shown. This can give you, the teacher, the opportunity to ask your students to guess and explore what exact animal the book is talking about.

Their mother crawled from sea to land
To bury these soft eggs in the sand.
Can you guess what is
growing inside these eggs.

As you can see the book is laid out by using rhyming words, which makes it fun for the children to read. It also allows us to continuously work on phonics with the children and having a fun rhyme to is a different twist to a book’s layout. Also, throughout the book you will notice that once it tells you what type of animal egg they were describing,  it goes on to  talk about that animal and its life.  As a teacher you can read this to your students and use the facts as a learning tool and/or you can use this book as a fun exploration activity to spice up a lesson plan. Teachers would/should be able to find many options and activities to explore the concepts of this book. At the end we get to see the actual size of the eggs for each animal that was talked about in the book. I find this to be a great summary to an interesting book. You may want to allow students to pass this around or have an actual sheet for them to compare and contrast the different egg sizes we just read about, in order to make the activities hands-on with your class.

Curriculum Connections
This book would be a wonderful asset to a lesson on life science with grades 1st-3rd. In the Virginia SOL 1.5, 2.5 and 3.4 students will investigate and understand that animals including people have life needs and physical characteristics. Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg allows students to guess different animal eggs and their characteristics. By allowing students to guess which animals are in the pictures will allow them to use their imaginations and explore the physical characteristics of different animals and their eggs.

Additional Resources

• Color Color Color – If you incorporated this book into the first grade classroom it would be really interesting to print pictures of a bunch of different animals from different environments.  Then, allow the children to pick the different pictures they would like to color and make our own animal home. For example, you would print off 5 Alligators, 5 ducks, 5 penguins, and 5 octopus pictures!
• CyberSleuth gives us many different lesson plans for animal life cycles and characteristics. Its always nice to get ideas from different teachers who have been successful teaching the same subjects.

Book: Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg
Author/Illustrator: Mia Posada
Publisher: Millbrook Press 
Publication Date:  2007
Pages: 28 pages
Grades: 1-3
ISBN: 0822561921

Eyewitness Books are great tools for the classroom with their bright pictures, easy-to-follow layout and extensive supply of scientific facts. Eyewitness Books: Tree proves no different offering close-up photography and careful labeling, almost like you’re observing the tree roots in real life. The book breaks up the topic of trees into more manageable mini lessons starting with a spread just answering the question, “What is a tree?” It moves on from there to cover “How trees grow,” “From bud to leaf,””Seeds and nuts” and even “Tree care and management.”

The book dives into the life cycles of trees, how to count the rings of a tree trunk and how the leaves and needles develop. Every once and a while a historical blurb will emerge in the text, one on the spread talking about bark informs us about the early settlers making maple syrup from the sap in the sugar maple. The text does a great job of making the science of trees up-close and interesting and still connecting back to other subjects like history, and math (counting the rings on the trunk).

Kids will love the large, bright photos and all the labeling to satisfy their never ending questions. Teachers will love the impeccable organization that can be expected from the eyewitness books. The size of the book also makes it easy to present to an entire class as a way to foster discussion or start a lesson.

Curriculum Connections
This book can be used as a general classroom resource when teaching a life science unit. A teacher may want to use it to begin conversations about the plant cycle or to do an activity pertaining to tress specifically. The type is quite small and there is a lot of reading, so this book would probably be best appropriate for older kids, grades 3-6. In Virginia these would best relate to SOLs, 3.6 (forests), 4.4 (plant structure), 4.5 (life cycles), 5.5 (cell structure) and 6.7 (conservation and management).

Additional Resources

• For a different way to present eyewitness, check out the Tree movie.
• To make a project out of studying trees, create a class arboretum. Use the entire lesson plan or just take parts, you could have the kids gather leaves to bring in the classroom to study, for example.
• Begin a conversation about Arbor day and discuss the the history of this holiday.
• Check out Education World’s lesson plan for measuring trees.

Book: Eyewitness Books Trees
Author: David Burnie
Publisher: DK Children
Publication Date: 2000
Pages: 64 pages
Grades: 3-6
ISBN: 0789458209

Mwenye Hadithi's work, The Crafty Chameleon, teaches two lessons focusing on bullies and the lifestyle of chameleons.  Adrienne Kennaway, the illustrator, does a wonderful job with the artwork in this book.  She brings every page to life, giving the reader the urge to turn the page.

The Crafty Chameleon is the story of a chameleon that has had enough of certain animals in the forest that are not very considerate and take advantage of the animals that are smaller.  The chameleon wants to teach the animals a lesson about being courteous and in the process shows the reader how he is able to disguise himself to infiltrate his plan.  The chameleon wants the leopard and crocodile to realize that they are not allowed to treat others the way they have been treating him.  After being bullied by both of the animals, the chameleon threatened to tie them up and pull them around the forest.  The leopard and crocodile laughed and refuse to believe that the little chameleon could neither tie them up nor pull them.  Later in the story, the leopard and crocodile's worst nightmare came true and the chameleon was able to do all of the above.  When the chameleon finished "pulling" them around the two animals said, "I am sorry, Mr. Chameleon, I will never bother you again, I promise! Please let me go (29)."  This apology allowed Hadithi, the author, to get the main point of her work across as she brought the book to a close.  "For brains are often better than strength or size (32)."  Throughout the book, the Chameleon was one of the smallest animals in the forest and he was having problems with the larger animals.  He was not as strong or as big, but he used his individual characteristics to his advantage.  The chameleon changed his color to adapt to his surroundings in order to survive and out smart the two larger animals.  "€¦But just in case the animals find out about the trick he played, he changes color and hides when he hears them coming (32)."  This book has the potential to be a child's favorite book because of the pictures and the very comprehensible literature.

Curriculum Connections
The student will learn about the specific characteristics that certain animals possess.  The chameleon's ability to change its color and blend into its background is something that other animals are not able to do.  This aspect of the story connects directly with the science SOL 1.5b.

Additional Activities:

• Making a chameleon.
• Something for if you are hungry.

Book: The Crafty Chameleon
Author: Mwenye Hadithi
Illustrator: Adrienne Kennaway
Publisher: Hodder Headline
Publication Date: 2004
Pages: 32 pages
Grades: Preschool-2nd
ISBN: 0340486988