Stars Beneath Your Bed: The Surprising Story of Dust is a natural for fulfilling the new science standards. That’s one of the things I learned when I attended NSTA and spoke on a panel of authors organized by Carrie Launius and hosted by Wendy Saul. Each of the educators at the conference gave activities to go with various books. Carrie worked with teacher to get them to consider how the book deals with cross-cutting concepts:
Patterns
Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation (more…)
I had the pleasure of visiting Pioneer Elementary in March. Wow, the art teacher was a burst of creativity, working on such incredible projects with the kids. Many other teachers were doing amazing work, as well. See some of it below! Click on each photo to see it in greater detail. (more…)
Who wouldn’t love books at this school in Lexington, SC? Librarian D’Etta Broam is a book dynamo. Yes, she really did meet me in this vulture hat to honor Vulture View. Of course, there was that on camera interview I did with their local vulture puppet, “Bill,” who rather likes the word REEK! (more…)
Here are some more great educational ideas from Indian Hill Elementary in Cincinnati, Ohio. These are from a school visit week in Feb, 2009. The first ones extend STARS BENEATH YOUR BED: THE SURPRISING STORY OF DUST.
A student imagines where dust goes!
Students imagine fiction based on Stars Beneath Your Bed
Each classroom had a welcome board outside the door with that day’s special message to students.
I visited with so many great educators at Indian Ridge. This teacher had her students write buggy poems. For another project they made masks related to the characters in books.
Thank you, librarian Jonelle Hamou, for contributing this project. 3rd and 4th grade students at Frederick Douglass Elementary, in Winchester, VA, investigated science and art in connection with STARS BENEATH YOUR BED: the Surprising Story of Dust.
Students use ink pens to color parts of coffee filters, then fold each filter into a pie-piece shape. (more…)
Let’s begin our physical science storytime. Physical science studies the non-living world around us: air, water, wind, rock, minerals, glaciers, all sorts of things. But these non-living parts of our world also play a big part in our lives, and other animals’ lives, too. So, we’ll begin with an animal you might have seen…vultures! (more…)
April Pulley Sayre is an award-winning children’s book author of over 55 natural history books for children and adults. Her read-aloud nonfiction books, known for their lyricism and scientific precision, have been translated into French, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean. She is best known for pioneering literary ways to immerse young readers in natural events via creative storytelling and unusual perspectives.
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Let’s begin our physical science storytime. Physical science studies the non-living world around us: air, water, wind, rock, minerals, glaciers, all sorts of things. But these non-living parts of our world also play a big part in our lives, and other animals’ lives, too. So, we’ll begin with an animal you might have seen…vultures! 
