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Make This! Building, Thinking, and Tinkering Projects for the Amazing Maker in You by Ella Schwartz

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 160 pgs.
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Make This! Building, Thinking, and Tinkering Projects for the Amazing Maker in You by Ella Schwartz is a magazine quality book chock full of experiments for kids to do with one another or with a supervising parent over spring break or summer break from school. This allows kids to learn how to create functioning items out of recyclable materials and repurpose them. It has been a delight to watch our daughter choose a project and run with it.

My daughter made the solar oven mostly on her own over spring break, but our weather was uncooperative most of the time for her to see it in action making s’mores. Once she was back at school, we had a sunny day so I put the solar oven outside for her. The chocolate on the s’mores did start to glisten and look a bit melted, but unfortunately, her pencil that held the foil at an angle kept blowing open, making it hard for the heat to be sustained and actually make the s’mores.

Since initially getting this review ready, my daughter spent some more time with the book and picked out a project she was confident in tackling on her own. She was on a break from electronics on a rainy day, and this one fit the bill. She built her own catapult.

Not too many supplies were needed, and she even let me take a video of her trying it out. There were several takes in making this video, but she was happy with this one.

Make This! Building, Thinking, and Tinkering Projects for the Amazing Maker in You by Ella Schwartz is a book that every inquisitive kid should have at home. I’m sure we’ll be using this one again and again, especially when I hear the phrase, “Mom, I’m so bored.” She needs direction now and this book will get her active and creative at the same time.

 

RATING: Cinquain

Mailbox Monday #517

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has it’s own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Leslie, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

National Geographic Kids: Make This! by Ella Schwartz and Shah Selbe for review.

This book is designed to inspire the next generation of engineers and supports all kinds of kid creators: those who prefer guided instruction, those who prefer to dream up and design objects on their own, and everyone in between. With thoughtful text and bright illustrations, kids get the tools and the know-how to tackle all kinds of exciting projects: building a kaleidoscope, designing a fidget spinner, planting a rain forest, creating a musical instrument, and more. Unconventional scenarios inspired by real National Geographic explorers give kids a chance to think outside the box and apply their maker skills to real life. Chapters are divided up by scientific principle, such as simple machines, energy, and forces. In each chapter, kids can start by following step-by-step activities, or get creative by tackling an open-ended challenge. Helpful sidebars explain the science behind what’s happening every step of the way.

Make This! is perfect for curious and STEM-loving kids, families looking for a fun way to play together, and anyone else who’s ready to get creative and start tinkering!

Narrow Bridge by Robbi Nester from the poet for review.

Carefully crafted, beautifully written, these poems are a bridge indeed between this world and the one that shimmers just beyond us. In one poem, the narrator is a small child trying to capture the moon in her mirror; when that fails, she catches it in a net of words, and that is what Nester does throughout this book in poem after gorgeous heart-breaking poem. These are poems that “sing for the joy of being heard.” ~Barbara Crooker, author of Les Fauves and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems

In Robbi Nester’s Narrow Bridge, we are urged to be more open and fearless— Consider how a mirror tipped toward the sky captures the moon, if fleetingly; how “The voice of the bird/ in the maple/ is bigger than his body.” There are still passageways we can widen, if only we allowed wonder to make a bridge between our sense of fixity, and that refuge and home we could make again in each other. ~Luisa A. Igloria, author of The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser

What did you receive?