From: Steven Engelfried <sengelfried>
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 17:06:27 -0700 (PDT)

The "Let's Read and Find Out Series" has been around forever, and it's not flashy or anything, but these books really hit the mark for early science. Good, simple introductions, with just enough new information to keep that curiosity going. We read doze ns of LR&FO's to our kids during their younger home schooling days. "Who Eats What" by Lauber & Keller was probably the first they ever heard of "food chains." She introduces it in the simplest way (leaf?terpillar-wren-hawk), then brings in a few more
 examples. Once you get the idea, she shows how green plants start all food chains.
 She encourages kids to work this out with animals they know, shows how food chains apply in different areas and environments. A great example of starting with basics an d gradually building upon that to introduce more complex information that kids can fully digest and retain. After reading "Be a Nature Detective" by Selsam & Donnelly, we would walk over to the once unremarkable river beach under
 the freeway, but now we excitedly identified bird and raccoon tracks...a wonderful book-life connection for my five and seven year olds. Part of our rationale for deciding to home school twelve years ago was that we knew about all of the wonderful easy non-fiction books that would allow us parents with no teaching backgrounds to introduce a wide range of science and other topics, and LR&FO was a big part of that.
 
- Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library (OR)
  sengelfried at yahoo.com



                
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Received on Wed 06 Jul 2005 07:06:27 PM CDT