A Net in Time

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Review: Animal Camouflage

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Every once in a while you get a book in your hands for reviewing and you just fall in love.  As soon as I saw this beautiful book “Animal Camouflage” I was like “Son, look at this book”, and talking to other people about it.  I just really, really like this book and thought it a very clever design. 

Now I have to admit that my 12 year wasn’t quite an enamoured as his mother was, but he thought it was pretty interesting, and had fun flipping through the pages and finding the more difficult animals to spot.  I am also concerned that I won’t be able to show you well the beauty and wonder that is contained within this book.

I’m trying to figure out just what I like so much about it.

First: It’s an unusual rendition of a camouflage book. It’s not animals hiding in their areas, with their colours and stripes and stops within a multi-coloured background.  It’s white with dark lines, so the animals are right there and can be seen, some easier than others.  But no colours to look for, just shapes and outlines, hidden with all the white and lines.  

Second: the information is presented in a clear format.  Do you see how each area has a colour?  That colour is used for the four pages it takes for each area.  This makes it easy to differentiate between areas.

Third: It’s a lovely book to hold.  Feels good in the hand.  It’s pretty to look at and to exclaim over.  I showed it to a friend and she agreed it was a nice book to hold in your hand, and loved the ways the animals/scenery was represented.  “It’s very clean”.

Fourth: It’s educational.  The text is brief, but more animals are covered than just a couple for each area.  I do wish that they talked about the TYPE of camouflage that each animal possessed, like the gazelle with a stripe down it’s belly.  The spots of a giraffe helping it blend into the browns of the savannah, and the brown pelt of the cottontail helping it hide in the underbrush. 

Fifth: I think that it’s perhaps less about the camouflage of animals, but more how they create a fun camouflage search and find to help children want to learn more about the different animals represented.    Honestly… it’s a FUN book to look through, to find the four reindeer or the 10ish wolves or can you find the anaconda slithering along the ground?

If you get stuck, or your child needs help, the answers are in back of the book.

Animal Camouflage: Search and find
Sarah Dennis & Sam Hutchinson
Princeton Architectural Press
Hardcover, ages 6-9
Animal, elementary, nature

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Where can you Find it?   Amazon Link.

Review: Lesson Planning for High School Physical Education

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Do you remember when I reviewed Moving with Actions and Words?  This was a physical education curriculum for young children.  Today I have one for High School students entitled “Lesson Planning for High School Physical Education”.  Put out by Human Kinetics, this is an amazingly detailed book to help high school age youth get the exercise they need, as well as teaching them valuable new skills, setting them up for a healthy adulthood. 

So what do you get?

In Lesson Planning for High School Physical Education, you get a 770 page book divided into two main sections.
1. Planning for Student Success in High School.
+ The Importance of Teaching For student Learning
+ Teaching to Standards
+ Meeting the National Standards and Grade-level outcomes in High School
+ Developing an Electives-based program for High School Students

This first section gives you all the nitty-gritty details about why phys ed is important for high school students as well as giving the instructor the needed facts about what the national standards are for each grade level.  A challenge is then issue to offer students a choice in what they want to learn, what sport most interests them. This may take some creative thinking on the part of the physical education staff, but where there is a will there is often a way. 

2. Lessons Plans for High School Physical Education.
+ Extending Students Skills and Knowledge to outdoor Pursuits
+ Extending Students…. to individual Performance Activities
+ Extending Students…. to Target Games
+ Extending Students…. to Dance and Rhythms
+ Extending Students…. to Fitness Activities
+ Extending Students…. to Designing and Implementing Personal Fitness Plans.

This section breaks down each physical activity into a number of lessons.  For instance aquatics takes you through 16 lessons ranging from how to swim, rescue, endurance, aerobics, diving, water polo and more.   Each lesson is broken down into parts like fitting a life jacket, swimming underwater etc.  Each Lesson as you can see, lists the equipment needed, outcomes, goals etc. 

One of the things I very much appreciate is the goal to help high school students internalize what they are learning and finding a sport (or sports) they like and want to take part in whether it be water polo, dance, or fishing. 

My thoughts:

This is a highly organized and very thorough approach to high school physical education.   Each section is well-laid with numerous lessons to help you to teach the sport involved.  The sports aren’t all the normal ones that I was expecting like soccer and volleyball, but also included sports such as fly-fishing, rock-climbing and dance.  This book is geared to the adult instructor. 

Lesson Planning for High School Physical Education:
 - Meeting the national standards & Grade-level outcomes
 - 16 modules, 248 lesson plans
Shape America
Human Kinetics
Lynn Courturier MacDonald
Robert J. Doan
Stevie Chepko
Trade paperback, 771 pages
exercise, physical education, lessons, planning, high school

Reviewed for: Human Kinetics. 

Where can you find it?   Amazon Link.

Activities to Help with Snowflake Bentley

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Thank you Leah for helping me out on my blog today.  Welcome!
I love biographies. Even young children can appreciate them when you read aloud a great picture book biography. When you add some fun and academic activities after you read, you can turn the biography into a great learning opportunity. 

The children’s book Snowflake Bentley is the story of Wilson Bentley, a boy who grew up in Vermont. As a boy he loved the beauty of snowflakes and longed to one day capture their artistry with a camera so that others could appreciate it. As a grown man, Wilson, nicknamed Snowflake Bentley, was able to demonstrate this beauty through his skill as a scientist and artist.

 
Snowflake art and science activities
 
These activities will help you to explore the science and art of snowflakes with your kids after you read the book Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. 

Snowflake Art Activities

Make beautiful crayon resist snowflakes with the instructions at Classic Play.
 
 
Find some great printable snowflake templates at What Mommy Does. Kids could color or paint these or decorate them with glitter.
 
Make snowflake art on canvas with this fun activity from Kids Activities Woo!
 
 
Use pattern blocks to make snowflakes with the templates here at Moms Have Questions Too.

Snowflake Science Activities

 
Little Bins for Little Hands has instructions for making snowflakes with salt crystals.
 
 
 
Kids can learn about symmetry and do some STEM exploration with the Snowflake Tinker Tray idea at What Can We Do With Paper and Glue.
 
Explore how much water is in snow with this experiment from Discover. Learn. Connect.
 
Enjoy reading Snowflake Bentley and learning about the beauty and science of snowflakes with these activities.

Leah Courtney is a homeschooling mom of four. Her days are filled with being a mom, homemaker, and teacher. In her (very rare) free time, she enjoys blogging, reading, and reviewing books and curricula. These days she’s learning the joys of being a mom of teens. You can read about her family and homeschooling life at As We Walk Along the Road.

Review: This Book is a Planetarium

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Who doesn’t like a hands-on book, a book that let’s you experience it as you read and learn?  This book is a Planetarium (affiliate link) is one such book.   Kelli Anderson brings us a book filled with pop up’s like you have never seen before!

You get these pop-ups: A speaker, a planetarium,a spiralgraph, a decoder ring, a perpetual calendar and a music instrument fill the pages of this book.   Heavy paper supports them, which considering their quality is an integral part of each construct.

When you first open this pop-up book you will find tissue paper protecting each of the constructs. This attention to detail helps to reinforce the obvious care and concern put into making it.  Defying every expectation of what a book can be, this pop-up extravaganza transforms into six fully functional tools: a real working planetarium projecting the constellations, a musical instrument complete with strings for strumming, a geometric drawing generator , an infinite calendar , a message decoder , and even a speaker that amplifies sound. 

Now will this book last forever?  🙂  Of course not, it’s made of heavy paper, but it is well made and if parents and their offspring use it carefully it will last for a good long while, at least as long as many of the disposable toys made now-a-days.  🙂   Uses?  Oh…. varied eh?   A good book to explore the senses, for studying the engineering of paper, to attempt replication, to get an introduction to making codes or to just have fun!   It’s a rather neat book!

Why do I like it so much?   This book is meant to be a hands-on, tactile science book.  A book with explanations and then “do it”.   The object is to be involved in the world, doing, listening, experimenting.   Then, as you’ve experimented with the book, to see how the book is brought to life in the physical world.  It’s geared to help the reader/doer.. ask questions and want to know more.  The fact that the font is smaller and in dark print helps you to focus on the learning and discovery FIRST, and then to go back after for answers.  Well designed.

My thoughts:

I LOVE, just LOVE books that help people ask questions.  That don’t necessarily provide ALL the answers, but enough to get the student going in the right direction.  This book encourages those questions, giving the student a good place to start, and then leaving them to it.  A good thing that!

This Book is a Planetarium and other extraordinary
    Pop-up contraptions
Kelli Anderson
Chronicle Books, hardcover, 5 pages
Pop-up, activity, science, engineering, Papercraft
Age range: 6 and up 

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Where can you find it?    Amazon Link.

Review: Writing Radar

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I freely admit that I have not read this book.  I have read bits and pieces of it, but predominately this was read by my 12 year.  He’ll be giving a report on it later in this post.  I’ll be giving the factual details about it like chapters, length, interesting features etc.

My lad read this book over the month of September through mid-way October as his language arts component, I occasionally asked him what he was learning about, and he’d give me a verbal chapter synopsis, and what he thought of the ideas presented.  It worked well for us.  

What do you get?
20 chapters, with titles such as:
Trust me; Getting started; The Best Journal in the world is yours;The Writing Journal in action; Blank Slate; Story Maps; Good Habits lead to Great inspiration; Focused Drafts and much more. 

Scattered throughout the pages are black and white illustrations that sometimes illustrate a point or add humour to the page.

Since I occasionally heard giggles while the lad was reading I assume that the author used humour to convey his message.   Neither did I hear complaints about it taking too long to read, or being boring, or too difficult.  The only thing I would hear was “Sorry mom, I forgot to read Writing Radar today.  Can I do two chapters tomorrow instead?”   I simply would say, it needs to be done in five weeks, how he managed that was up to him.  From what I read, it seemed crafted for 9-12 year olds.  A good middle school level book.

Leafing through I noticed they have these little grey boxes with “writing tip” at the top.  handy those I thought.   Asked the lad what he thought and he said “they told the point of the chapter or section”. 

The lad’s Report: 
Overall: Good book.
Liked: I don’t know how to understand this part exactly.  I liked most of it.
What did I learn: How to write a book or a story.
Specific example that I liked: How a draft of a story is like a wedding cake and you just add on layer after layer after layer.
Didn’t like: I liked the whole book. I can’t think of anything I didn’t like.
I think, maybe, it would have been good to add some questions to answer after chapters or something. 

Recommendation: Get it if you want to know how to write a story or a book.

 Writing Radar: Using your Journal to Snoop our and Craft Great Stories.
Jack Gantos
Farrar Straus Giroux
202 pages
Trade Paperback
Language arts, story writing, journaling, writers, middle school
Middle school
Reviewed for : Raincoast Books

Where can you Find it?

Amazon.ca: Writing Radar.
Amazon.com: Writing Radar.

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