Earlychildhood NEWS, an online resource for teachers and parents of children from infants to age 8, has named the Big Science for Little Hands™ series from Terrific Science Press (Miami University) a Best Books pick, saying

“A whole wide wonderful world of exciting hands-on learning, exploration and discovery awaits young minds with these engaging texts. The activities featured are perfect for not only developing science skills such as observing, comparing and measuring and allowing children to work with everyday materials, they’re ideal for allowing kids to use prior knowledge and provide new information that can be applied to other areas of learning.”

Terrific Science Outreach can provide any group of early childhood educators with a workshop based on these Big Science for Little Hands titles:

• Squishy, Squashy Sponges: Early Childhood Unit Teacher Guide (ISBN: 1-883822-36-X) features 16 engrossing activities with sponges. Children use their senses of sight, touch, hearing and smell to explore a variety of sponges, discover how sponges change in water, match sponge prints with the actual sponges, and discover that water in sponges can help make seeds grow.
• Curious Crayons: Early Childhood Science In Living Color (ISBN: 978-1-883822-54-5) offers 19 hands-on activities with crayons, including melting, weighing and sorting. Children learn what crayons are made out of, how well crayons color on various types of paper, methods to remove the crayon wax from several materials and how solids become liquids. Additional activities include comparing the weights of different crayons, sorting crayon sets into smaller groups, and studying the water resistance of crayon marks.
• Marvelous Moving Things: Early Childhood Science in Motion (ISBN: 978-1-883822-53-8) rolls out 22 adventures using common toys/play structures such as balls, seesaws and swings to encourage observation, comparison, measurement and communication. Children will delight in discovering how various objects slide down different ramp surfaces, learning how the forces of push and pull work on objects, and experiencing how various surfaces and situations affect the movement of balls. Other activities include observing and comparing how wheels move over different surfaces, using a balance and playground seesaw to learn about up and down motion, and creating a ramp ride.

New from Terrific Science!

Camp and Club Science Sourcebook: Activities and Planning Guide for Science Outside School.

“The Camp and Club Science Resource book is an excellent tool for leaders or instructors of after school programs. It is well conceived and has a flow that would make sense to an instructor who may not be familiar with science, but who is accustomed to the informal or afterschool education field. Although I am not a science teacher I felt very comfortable with this book and felt confident that I could implement the activities it describes with kids in the afterschool programs I oversee. I particularly like the way the topics are presented in a format that offers a running theme. Each of the activities has simple and easy to follow directions and the concepts addressed are thoughtful and relevant.”  Click for more…