Science in the Library

At my last preschool storytime we did a Moon theme, because of the upcoming eclipse. I found a lot of great ideas from Johnson County Library .  One of the cutest ideas they gave me turned out to be this activity acting out the solar system and singing about it. I caught it on video: (tune: Farmer in the Dell) The Earth turns around, the Earth turns around, Once a day, every day, the Earth turns around. The moon goes round the Earth, The moon goes round the Earth, Once a month, every month,The moon goes round the Earth. The Earth goes round the Sun, the Earth goes round the Sun, Once a year, every year, The Earth goes round the Sun. The stars are all around, The stars are all around, Here to there, and everywhere, The stars are all around My library is working on putting together at least 20 STEAM storytime themes and I can add this one to the mix. If your library has done any storytimes that have been really STEAM-related, please share!

I was doing some work on the nonfiction collection today, focusing on the shelves about astronomy, space, planets and time. While examining the books closely, I came across a few that I want to remember as being really interesting: Faraway Worlds: Planets Beyond Our Solar System , by Paul Halpern and Illustrated by Lynette R. Cook, is a fascinating look at the search for distant planets. It contains simple visual demonstrations of how scientists are able to find stars that have planets--the "wobbling star" is explained with a good diagram about the gravitational pull of a large planet. Halpern's writing is very accessible and Cook's illustrations take the book to another level of imaginative wonder, as she artfully speculates what a beach might look like on a planet with two suns. There is even a page at the end dedicated to explaining how Cook comes up with her illustrations. Really a fantastic and imaginative read. I found a lot of books about the Hubble ...