How to Make Earth Day Seed Bombs

Earth Day is almost here... are you looking for an easy-to-make craft your students and children can make?  Stevie Rae from 🌱🌍 Funtimes Daily Fun and Learning 🌍🌱 and her family recently made some Earth Day-themed seed bombs using items that can be purchased inexpensively at a dollar store.  In this guest post, Stevie Rae describes how they made their seed bombs and shares some of the photos she took along the way.  Thanks, Stevie!

10 Children's Books About the Titanic

On April 12, 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the northern Atlantic and sank to the bottom of the ocean.  Sadly, 1,500 men, women, and children lost their lives that day.  Since then, thousands of books, stories, legends, poems, and movies have been written about it.  Listed below are ten children's books about the Titanic.  Both fiction and nonfiction books are included in the list.

This is an updated version of a blog post I wrote in 2017.

Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post.

How to Make a Mummy STEM Activity + Book List

The ancient Egyptians had one wish... they wished they could live forever.  They believed pharaohs would need their bodies in the afterlife so, they'd mummify the pharaohs' bodies to prevent them from decomposing and rotting away.

Making a mummy was a long and tedious process that could take months to complete. First, the body was packed in a salt called natron.  This allowed the body to dry out and for the moisture to be removed.  Once it was completely dry, the body was covered with scented spices and oils, then wrapped in cloth.  Finally, the body... now called a mummy... would be placed in a coffin and buried in its final resting place.

For obvious reasons, we can't mummify bodies these days... we'd be in serious legal trouble if we tried.  But we can recreate the process using apples, salt, and baking soda.  Keep reading to see some photos of an apple I mummified and to learn how to mummify an apple of your own!

Watch Over Our Water by Lisa Bullard + Minilesson + Free Poster

The amount of water that we have in the world right now will always be the same.  We will never have any more of it... and we will never have any less of it.  The water is in the rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans.  It's in the air.  It's in the ground.  It's locked in ice.   And... only 1.5% of it is accessible and drinkable.  This poses a serious problem.  If only 1.5% of the world's water is accessible and drinkable, how do we take care of what we have?  How can we make sure it's not wasted?  What can children do to help?

Catherine's Pascha by Charlotte Riggle + Art Enrichment Activity

Easter will be here in less than a month and families all over the world will celebrate it in their unique ways. Easter... also known as Resurrection Sunday and Pascha... is a Christian holiday commemorating Jesus's resurrection from the dead. It is a moveable feast, meaning that it doesn't fall on the same day each year.  

A few years ago, Charlotte Riggle wrote an Easter children's book called Catherine's Pascha. It's told from the point of view/perspective of a child named Catherine who excited about her church's upcoming celebration.  In Catherine's Pascha, we can tag along with Catherine as she tries to stay up late to go to midnight mass, goes to the church with her family, begs her mom for desserts at the feast, and falls asleep in the car on the way home.  Keep reading to learn more about Catherine's Pascha, some of the Pascha traditions she loves, and for an art enrichment activity to go with the story.

  

Working with Worry: A Workbook for Parents on How to Support Anxious Children by Melissa L. Kilbride and Samantha C. Sweeney

I usually write about children's books and activities on this blog, but every once in a while I find a resource that parents should know about.  I recently learned about Working with Worry: A Workbook for Parents on How to Support Anxious Children by Melissa L. Kilbride and Samantha C. Sweeney and wanted to share it with you.  Working with Worry is a tremendous workbook written for parents whose school-age children... preschool to highschool... are grappling with anxiety and worry.  It's packed full of resources, activities, and strategies that can be implemented easily.  Keep reading to learn more about Working with Worry to see it's something you'd like to read!

Yuka's Way Home by Abigail Roscoe

Several months ago, I wrote a blog post about reindeer and some interesting and fun facts about them.  Today's blog post is about a children's book about reindeer that I recently learned about... Yuka's Way Home by Abigail Roscoe.  Yuka's Way Home is a fictional animal story about a caribou named Yuka who gets separated from his herd, joins a herd of reindeer, and makes his home with them.  Who is Yuka?  How did he get separated from his herd?  How was able to make his home with the reindeer?  Keep reading to learn more about Yuka's Way Home and for a drawing enrichment activity to go with it!