Weekly book shelf, 10/2—more on evolution

We are still looking at evolution this week as we work our way through the Paleozoic Era towards the Mesozoic and its dinosaurs.

Who Was Charles Darwin?, by Deborah Hopkinson, is a short chapter book telling the life story of Charles Darwin. About half the book is devoted to his voyage on the Beagle, but there is a short chapter on his childhood and several chapters about his life following the voyage, including mentions of his wife and children, his illness, and the political and cultural climate in which he was writing his On the Origin of Species. The language is little more complex than in the Magic Tree House series, but it's pretty close to that level, and the pencil sketches are interesting enough to add to the book while not being a total distraction. Calvin read this one to himself, and again out loud to me, so I know he really enjoyed it.

Born With a Bang and From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan are is the first two in a series of three books about our world. The language in these books is lyrical, almost mystic, and the illustrations are vivid and capturing. They are dealing in science, but the tell it like a story. Calvin really loves them. My only disappointment is in the page layouts: one full page of beautiful picture facing a page full of text, but multiple font sizes and colors are used, something that I always find distracting. It's a small issue, though, and not much of one at that. There is a timeline at the top of every page and a more succinct run down of timeline facts in the back of the book.

Voyages Through Time: The Beginning by Peter Ackroyd is a book I think we'll be using a lot through our study of evolution and prehistory. This is definitely more of a reference book, broken into chapters based on time periods and eras. The images are large and enjoyable without being distracting the book is pleasantly devoid of varied font sizes, colors, and presentations—it's simply written as a reference book, full of well presented facts, and images with descriptive captions. The chapters are well developed but in some cases lack the dimension that would allow them all to be interconnected, but I didn't find this to be a huge issue since we were using less as a reading book and more like a reference book.

Kitchen science—demonstrating matter

I admit it. I ordered a book of science curriculum. It was highly recommended by other homeschooling moms, and it isn't filled with worksheets and quizes, Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding is more of a guideline for parents, and that's a "curriculum" I can live with.

The "lessons" start with categorizing, so last week we took a walk and categorized everything by its manner of life or lack thereof. Is it living? Is it organic non-living, or inorganic non-living? It was a fun talk, and walk.

The second section deals with matter and the states of matter. I don't feel the need to keep up with the book's suggested pace, or even necessarily stick with its order (although it strictly warns me that deviation is unacceptable, I think rules were made to be broken), but since we've been reading Bang! The Universe Verse Book 1 on our journey through evolution, which starts with the Big Bang and the formation of matter, yadda yadda, I thought now was as good a time as any.

So we hit up the library for some books on the matter and read them. Of the books available there, States of Matter, by Suzanne Slade, was the most helpful. To connect the activities with the things we've already been reading about we took it down to energy, then to atoms, then to molecules and matter.

Then I put our books of experiments in Calvin's hands.

Demonstrating matter: marbles in a boxtop—tightly packed is a solid, lightly packed is a liquid, loosely packed is a gas. He played with that for a while, and explored items in the house with reference to their matter.

Changing states of matter: Of course. Ice from the freezer, melt it in the pot, bring it to a boil and watch it steam, allow the steam to condense on something and, if so desired, re-freeze it.

Molecules on the move: two identical glasses filled with the same amount of water. Heat one in the microwave. Add one drop of food coloring to each cup and watch the color move through the water.

Air is matter, too: sweep an air tight bag through the air and quickly close it tightly, then notice that the bag is full of...air.

Displacement of matter: fill a glass and mark the water level. Add an object and note that the water level is now higher.

Air is matter, too, two: fill a bowl with water. Find a glass smaller than the bowl and stuff a sheet of paper in the bottom so that it won't fall out. Push the glass, top down, into the bowl of water, keeping the glass completely upright. Remove, still keeping the glass straight upright, and note that the paper is dry.

The last demonstration, from the book Chemistry for Every Kid, by Janice VanCleave (a great book, by the way), was Calvin's favorite, but really he had a great time with all of these. And I liked the time together; science was my mainstay in college.

Weekly book shelf, 9/24

We are on an exploration of evolution and prehistory these days (check out our felt timeline!), and I was pleasantly surprised to find so many beautifully written and illustrated children's books on the subject. In fact, these are just five of many books that we played with this week.

Our Family Tree is the lightest and simplest of the three picture books here. A family is shown on the beach drawing their family tree in the sand, starting with the appearance of bacteria and moving through to current times. The pages are filled edge to edge with beautiful illustrations in deep, rich colors, some of the family on the beach, others of the periods of the past. The story is that of the earth and its creatures, told in one or two flowing sentences of poetic language on each page. At the end of the book is a timeline noting the periods of the illustrations and giving brief details about each. This one is truly a picture book, and it presents the history of the earth and its creatures very calmly and pleasantly.

Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution begins with a general overview of the earth's timeline presented in short one paragraph descriptions of the periods with illustrations to boot. Following this is a more detailed telling of our current age and the development of evolution as a science. The book touches on evolution, natural selection and survival of the fittest, variation and mutation, speciation, and extinction. Illustrations made of torn paper images give a texture to the pages and bring extinct creatures to life. They are also expertly used to demonstrate concepts, such as mutations/variations and natural selection. Together, the illustrations and the clean writing present serious information in an understandable and enjoyable manner.

Virginia Lee Burton's presentation of evolution is filled with the illustrations and soft, flowing words we've come to expect from her. Life Story is a detailed but non-technical account of the story of the Earth, and it does not touch at all on evolution—in fact, I don't think it even uses the word once—but it roughly presents the concept through the idea of ancestors and changing life. I can't tell if that's a relic of its age, or of the author. But the real bone to pick here is with the obvious ethno-centric view point come modern man. Prehistoric man is mentioned, then the development of society, and then there is "the discovery of the New World", after which the book basically becomes the story of the evolution of American suburbia. For all that, though, I am enjoying this one with Calvin.

Bang! The Universe Verse and It's Alive! The Universe Verse Book 2 are both graphic novels and are a truly unique look at the history of life, the universe, and everything. These books present basic concepts (like partical physics and stoichiometry???), entirely in rhyme and illustrations like those found in any good graphic novel. Because they are written in rhyme, some of the language can be a bit convoluted, but also because of the rhyme they are enjoyable to read and listen to. They are most definintely too much information for Calvin right now, but he enjoyed listening to them and had a great time re-reading them himself several times already, and that means he's hearing the words and understanding that those concepts are out there, and I count that in the win-win category. These books will be lots of fun for some, but are definitely not for everyone.

We also finished reading The Secret Zoo, and Calvin has been reading Arabian Nights with Jon at night again. To himself he's mostly been re-reading his Magic Tree House books as of late.

And on my shelf...I finished The Help and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, along with another book I read in order to review it for Book List, the ALA's book review magazine. Reviewing is a new job for me, and I'll have to see how it effects my after hours reading.

Journal entry—Prehistoric life