I love this school. The scientific inquiry. The diversity. The joy of learning. It felt like the most wonderful educational family I have encountered and I miss them already! Extraordinary librarian Suzanne Fox, who I’d met when she worked at another school, invited me. I also had the pleasure of making friends with librarian Frances Martindale. Her reading style is fantastic. If I were doing an audio book, I’d call her to do the voice. Head of School Ralph Wales was so supportive and welcoming. This private school is serious about their mandate to bring racial and cultural diversity into their school. They have faculty and students of many backgrounds. Their library books and major projects are chosen to open children’s eyes to the possibilities for themselves and the world.  They embrace science even at the youngest ages. The Kindergarteners, preschoolers, and I had some  brain-expanding science talks.  I just want to hang out at Gordon. The atmosphere is that joyful and stimulating.

Click here to download the lesson plan: One Is A Snail.

Thank you to Margaret for sharing. We met because she was teaching workshops on the book. She’s so creative as an educator. I’m her fan and it’s because of her math enthusiasm that I attended my first NCTM conference earlier this year. Love the vibe of the math education world. Just zaps my brain cells and makes me think, smile, and create.

Jeff and I just returned from a 4,600 mile roadtrip to research at desert sites (White Sands, Painted Desert, Meteor Crater). I gave two programs at the spectacular Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. I also spoke at a conference for early childhood teachers coordinated by Jennifer Haggart of the Early Childhood Consortium of the Omaha Area. Rockin’ awesome folks in Omaha and I learned a lot from Isabel Baker and Peg Callahan, who were  presenting all sorts of new young books. Thanks to M. Susan McWilliams of the Omaha Literacy Partnership, University of Nebraska, who helped provide support and facilities.

Meanwhile, I have finished the photos for Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant. (Due out May 2012) and the layouts I’m seeing are scrumptious.

It’s been a tough year for sea turtles. Strandings of sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico are up and most of those stranded, it seems, were drowned in fishing gear. The Sea Turtle Conservancy and others are pressuring the National Marine Fisheries service to enforce the laws that protect sea turtles, particularly those regarding fishing nets and turtle excluder devices. Letting lawmakers know that we care about sea turtles is more important than ever.

Glad you are embracing the newly illustrated Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out!  For related activities to this book and many others, see Picture Perfect Science Lessons, published by NSTA. The authors, Karen Ansberry and Emily Morgan, are excellent presenters and create dynamite day-long and two-week long science education/literacy workshops.  www.pictureperfect.com.

After a quick reading of the book, a 6-year old spontaneously practices, is able to chant a section, and has made up some dance moves to go with it.   RahRahRadishesOutLoud

Here I teach the new chant to a large group, line-by-line. Rah Rah Radish youngauthorsconf. I teach word-by-word and challenge a group:  Teaching Insect Chant.  Here I perform a high speed version of the Fish Chant End . An older student rhythmically reads Bird, Bird, Bird_ A Chirping Chant.

Rah, Rah, Radishes: A Vegetable Chant is being released by Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster on June 16th, 2011 but can be pre-ordered at  most stores/sites now. Order from your local independent bookstore at IndieBound. I highly recommend that preschools and early child care organizations order from the folks at The Book Vine For Children. They are experts on books for ages 0-6 and they ship nationwide.

Another activity is to divide up into teams and have each act out a stanza of the chant. I wish I had video of what creative teachers did performing Ant, Ant, Ant: An Insect Chant during a recent inservice!

I found yummy peppers and a possible fruit for Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant: huckleberries. I stood in the market pondering, trying to figure out how to work it into the rhyme. Nothing came to mind. Just in case, I bought the huckleberries to take home and photograph. But I  forgot them in the fridge at my hotel. Couldn’t tote them home for book photos. Oh, well, huckleberries. Sorry you’re not in the book, only in the blog!

Activities

1. Make a list of all the vegetables named in the book. Then categorize those veggies by color or by which part of the plant they may be. This might include leaf, root, fruit, or stem.

2. Look up the food groups. The food pyramid has become a plate! Find out what other kinds of food make a healthy meal.

3. Ask the kids to bring one vegetable to school. Identify them and then demonstrate how to clean them. Make a soup to share.

4. For older students, choose a vegetable and look up recipes for ways it can be cooked or combined with other foods.

5. Identify the rhyming words. List some other words that rhyme with them.

6. At Halloween, carve a pumpkin and plant the seeds. Each child takes home a cup with the planted seed.

7. Learn the word sprout. For each child, give them three radish seeds, three corn seeds, and three bean seeds. Wet a paper towel and fold it. Put it in a zip lock bag. Lay the seeds in a row. Watch for them to sprout. Add water if the towel dries out. Look at how the different seeds begin to grow.

8. Make a chart of one of the vegetables to show the life cycle from seed to fruit.

9. Look up the temperature zones and learn what they are. Identify your own zone and find out the average frost dates for planting.

10. Make a face salad. Cut a slice of bread into a circle and add cut veggies to make eyes, nose, hair, ears, and mouth. Cucumbers slices would make eyes, radish slices lined up make a mouth, zucchini for ears, curly lettuce for hair, etc.

11. Choose a vegetable and create a PowerPoint group project or class display that provides information about the vegetables. Include facts about the veggie, a picture, nutrition information, recipes, etc.

12. Make a list of the veggies in the book and alphabetize them.

13. Create a vegetable book. Have each child choose a vegetable and create a page about that vegetable. The pages might include poems they write, facts, art, or anything else they want to create.

14. Look up the veggies that didn’t get in the book from the author’s website. Learn more about them and see if you could write a short sentence in the book’s style.

15. Keep a week-long record of what vegetables you eat. Lead a group discussion and  list ways you can add more vegetables in meals.

National Science Standards: characteristics of organisms; personal health

See what A Year of Reading has to say. Shirley Duke posted extension activities here: Simply Science Blog. Back to photographing fruit for Go, Go, Grapes: a Fruit Chant, which is out next year. Mangosteen, anyone?

I’d already been worrying about childhood obesity because of my work as a visiting author in schools; I see about 17,000 school kids each year. I’ve noticed that some audiences are sluggish, having a tough time brainstorming, asking questions, and responding quickly and creatively. It just seems like they’re not feeling good. These audiences also seem to have the highest numbers of kids struggling with obesity, and the worst time to speak with them is soon after a greasy school lunch.

After watching the BBC show, I wondered, how could these kids change their eating habits? How could they find, choose, or prepare healthy foods such as vegetables if the entire vegetable aisle was a foreign country to them?

I knew from my work, and from my previous chant books, that kids can easily learn new words if they are in a chant form. Then, when kids are out in the world and they see a chant word, they connect with it. Perhaps I could do something in this small way.

Rah, Radishes: A Vegetable Chant (Beach Lane Book/S&S, release June 14, 2011) is about having fun with vegetables—and with delicious words, colors, and shapes. I photographed the book at our local South Bend Farmer’s Market over the course of four years. The farmers are so excited about the book. (They know which carrot or celery is theirs!)

Once kids read the book, I hope they’ll have vegetable names, colors, and shapes in their heads. Perhaps they’ll stop and actually point at a potato, laugh at a rutabaga, try broccoli for the first time.

Of course, this book is just a tiny piece of what needs to be done to help kids have healthier lives. So many people are putting their hearts and hands into the work of providing kids with better food choices. My hope is that folks doing this important work will find the book—and any joy and conversation it sparks—helpful in their efforts.

http://simplyscience.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/vulture-view/