Tag: Caroline Arnold

Planting a Garden in Room 6: #Kidlit for #NationalGardeningDay

April 14 was National Gardening Day, which reminded me of a perfect children’s book to celebrate it:  Planting a Garden in Room 6: From Seeds to Salad by Caroline Arnold.

Caroline Arnold has visited Mrs. Best’s kindergarten classroom before for this series (see our previous review of Carolyn Arnold’s Butterflies in Room 6  and Hatching Chicks in Room 6 was a winner of the Cybils Award for Elementary Nonfiction.)

This time:

The children in Room 6 are planting a vegetable garden.

Mrs. Best brings in some seeds and transplants. The children plant them in a raised bed garden outside their classroom. Caroline Arnold takes gorgeous photographs of the process, step by step.

Before long the plants have grown enough to be harvested and the children eat the results.

This  book is absolutely delightful. The series is called “Life Cycles in Room 6,” but the life cycle aspect is subtle. Arnold includes just the right amount of information to hold a young reader’s attention. Plus, seeing children in the photographs draws them right in.

There’s also a how-to aspect. Helpful tips for gardening are included as mini-sidebars overlaid on a cute watering can graphic.

Planting a Garden in Room 6 would be fantastic to accompany a gardening project, either at home or at school. It would be a great addition to a unit on plants, as well. Grow some young minds and pick up a copy today!

Related Activities:

Timid about gardening? Start with a pot of lettuce. Find a container that is at least 8 inches in diameter. Fill it with soil (potting soil works best for containers.) Buy some seeds and plant them as directed by the instructions on the package.

Place your container in a place that gets at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight, and water as needed.

If the seedlings seem crowded, you can carefully pull out a few to give the rest space to grow.

You should be able to start eating your lettuce in a few weeks.

Check our previous posts about:

  1. Planning a garden
  2. Ideas for theme gardens
  3. Butterfly gardening

See our growing list of books for gardening with children at Science Books for Kids.

 

Reading age ‏ : ‎ 3 – 7 years
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Charlesbridge (March 15, 2022)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1623542405
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1623542405

 

Disclosure:  An electronic galley was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

STEM Friday #Kidlit Butterflies in Room 6 and Painted Lady Migrations

Painted lady butterflies are in the news this week. First of all, they are migrating in huge numbers in southern California.

Check out short video of the butterflies streaming across a field by South Coast research. Amazing!

The numbers of painted ladies are higher this year because of seasonal rains that caused a flush of their food plants. Here in Arizona we have seen smaller numbers of painted ladies migrating in both February and fall (links to previous posts).

If you’d like to see how to identify these butterflies, learn more about their migrations, and/or participate in a citizen science project, visit the Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site at Iowa State University

With perfect timing the fabulous new picture book that showcases the life cycle of painted ladies for the youngest readers, Butterflies in Room 6: See How They Grow by Caroline Arnold, also emerged on March 12, 2019.

Follow along with the children in Mrs. Best’s kindergarten class as they hatch painted lady caterpillars from eggs, feed the caterpillars a special diet, and wait patiently for the butterflies to emerge from their chrysalids. As you can see from the book cover, nothing is as mesmerizing as a freshly-eclosed live butterfly!

Caroline Arnold is both the author and photographer for the book and she has captured some fun and incredible images of both the insects and the children. Her 2017 book with a similar format, Hatching Chicks in Room 6, was a winner of the Cybils Award for Elementary Nonfiction.

Back matter includes answers to questions about butterflies, a vocabulary list, links to butterfly information online and suggestions for further reading about butterflies.

Butterflies in Room 6 is a must have to accompany a unit on insects or project raising painted lady butterflies. Fly out and get a copy today!

Related Activities:

1. Explore butterfly and moth metamorphosis.

A painted lady butterfly undergoes a number of changes during its lifetime, from egg to larva to pupa to adult.

You can see the process in this time lapse of caterpillars raised in the classroom. The brown mixture is the artificial diet they use as food.

Why do you think the painted lady caterpillars are so spiky?

This is a painted lady caterpillar on a hollyhock leaf.

Models of Painted Lady Butterfly Life Stages

Create a poster of a butterfly or moth life cycle

Gather:

  • Poster board, construction or craft paper
  • Crayons, markers and/or colored pencils
  • Yarn (optional)
  • Age-appropriate scissors
  • Glue, tape
  • Photographs or clip art of caterpillars, butterflies and moths

Choose a particular butterfly or moth and learn about what each stage looks like in its life cycle. Gather images. Plan where each stage should go in the cycle:  egg, caterpillar (larva), chrysalis or cocoon, and adult butterfly or moth. Leave room for a title at the top. Either draw each of the stages, or cut out photographs and paste or tape them on. Draw arrows between the stages or connect them with yarn. Put on a title and display the poster. Tell others about what you have learned.

2. Plant a butterfly garden

Start with Butterfly Gardening with Children which has links to a week of butterfly gardening posts, including Five great nectar plants for butterflies

If you’d like to encourage painted ladies, grow plants their larvae prefer. Painted lady caterpillars will eat a variety of weeds like thistles, but also some cultivated plants or wildflowers like sunflowers, mallows, including hollyhocks, yarrow, and ironweeds (Vernonia sp.) Check with your local butterfly societies for local native plants to grow.

Butterflies Book info:
Age Range: 3 – 7 years
Publisher: Charlesbridge (March 12, 2019)
ISBN-10: 1580898947
ISBN-13: 978-1580898942

Want to read more? See our growing list of children’s books about butterflies and moths at Science Books for Kids.

Disclosure: This book was provided for review by the publisher. Also, I am an affiliate with Amazon so I can provide you with cover images and links to more information about books and products. As you probably are aware, if you click through the highlighted title link and purchase a product, I will receive a very small commission, at no extra cost to you. Any proceeds help defray the costs of hosting and maintaining this website.

Come visit the STEM Friday blog each week to find more great Science, Technology, Engineering and Math books. Note: this is a new link as of 10/2018.

Desert Science Books and Activities

Today we were inspired by two new picture books about deserts and desert animals. See full reviews at our sister blog, Wrapped in Foil.

Get to Know Gila Monsters (Get To Know Reptiles) by Flora Brett is a simple text for beginning readers that helps sort myth from facts about this unique lizard found only in the desert Southwest.

A Day and Night in the Desert (Caroline Arnold’s Habitats) by Caroline Arnold reveals which desert creatures are active during which parts of the day and night. Although it centers on animals and plants found in the Sonoran desert, the book also contains a map showing where deserts are located throughout the world.

Desert Mammals Activity

We often think of cacti and reptiles when we think of deserts, but as A Day and Night in the Desert shows, there are quite a few mammals found in deserts as well.

Some mammals found in deserts:

  • Jackrabbits
  • Coyotes
  • Foxes
  • Ringtails
  • Coatis
  • Skunks
  • Cougars
  • Bobcats
  • Bighorn sheep
  • Javelinas
  • Bats
  • Ground squirrels
  • Mice
  • Packrats
  • Rats

Pick a desert mammal and find out more about it.

ground-squirrel-puffy

This ground squirrel is all puffed up on a cold morning.

For example, is the mammal diurnal or nocturnal? Is it active all year around or does it hibernate for part of the year? What does it eat? What is its life cycle? Does it have any special ways to conserve water in the desert?

javelinaWhat are these javelinas (also called collared peccaries) doing to keep cool?

Create a lapbook, poster, diorama, or report about your findings.

Resources to check:

1. The AZ-Sonora Desert Museum has an extensive list of fact sheets about desert bats as well as fact sheets about other desert animals and plants.

2. Pima Community College in Tucson has online facts about desert mammals

3. Arizona Naturalists has information about Sonora desert mammals

4. Tohono Chul Gardens has a number of desert related handouts on their website. Scroll down to “Fun and Smart Projects for Kids,” and look for links to the Desert Pathfinders Activity Booklet (this link takes you directly to the .pdf), Saguaros, etc.

5. Look for the Desert Habitats activities page on our Growing With Science website.

Looking for a list of more books for kids about desert habitats? Try our growing list at Science Books for Kids.

desert-books-button

Disclosures:  These books were provided by the publisher for review purposes.  I am an affiliate for Amazon, and if you click through the linked titles or ads and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra charge to you. Proceeds will be used to maintain this self-hosted blog.

 

Come visit the STEM Friday blog each week to find more great Science, Technology, Engineering and Math books.