Hello Book Bums families!
At Book Bums, we’re all abuzz for summer! Our newsletter this week is full of resources and ideas to get you buzzing too. You'll find non-fiction book recommendations, scientific crafts, a clever letter to a bee, and lots of ideas for having fun and learning outside. Enjoy!
Bookbums.com is an Amazon Associate; We earn from qualifying purchases. This means that if you click on a link to Amazon.com and make a purchase, We may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We do recommend the products. Feel free to find them by other means.
Word of the Week
ignite (ig-night) verb/action word - to set afire, to heat up or excite, to set in motion or spark
Reading books and having new experiences in the world can both ignite curiosity in people.
Literary Calendar
• April 27 is National Tell a Story Day.
• Celebrate by reading together. Even older kids will enjoy revisiting favorite picture books. (And we think you will too.)
• You could also take turns telling stories, true or fanciful, perhaps outside around a fire.
"The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller."
-Steve Jobs
From our Bookshelves
The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner is a beautiful, informative book about bees that just might ignite a love for all things earth science in your readers. The book is easy to navigate, yet it’s also extraordinarily thorough. It’s perfectly suited for young kids, even though it’s dense, because the reader can address one portion of the book one day and another portion the next.
We educators love to host investigations that inspire kids to dig into topics; we love for kids to pursue their own curiosities. The thing is . . . kids benefit from (dare I say, need) an influx of information to ignite that curiosity. It’s difficult to be curious about things we know little about.
If a child you love is afraid of bees, please do not eschew this book. Remember, knowledge and understanding can eliminate fear. Becoming curious enough to investigate rather than assuming we know all there is to know about the world around us is a keystone to our psychological well-being. We must embrace and demonstrate curiosity with our children, so they learn to embrace curiosity on their own. Curiosity, after all, yields higher levels of positive emotions, lower levels of anxiety, and more satisfaction with life. So how about inspiring curiosity with bees? We’ve got just the book!
Tips for Families
Spring flowers are blooming, and since we’re talking about bees, let’s consider one major reason bees are so important to us and our planet. Here it is . . . Bees are our top pollinators. They help more than 100 US crops to grow. Without bees, our dinner tables certainly wouldn’t look the same. We’d be missing most of our fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and (Gasp!), chocolate. (Yes. Some cocoa is grown in the US.) But, how, exactly, do bees impact our food sources?
Well, as bees go about collecting nectar from deep inside the flowers to which they’re attracted, their fuzzy little bodies are like Velcro to the pollen grains produced in the flowers’ anthers. While bees deliberately scrape a lot of the pollen into their pollen pockets (corbiculae) to take to the hives for use as a food source for larvae, lots of pollen tumbles off them as they wiggle and buzz, and some of it happens upon the stigmas of other flowers. Those pollen grains make their way down the pollen tube, fertilize an ovule, and initiate seed development. (Yep! It’s the birds and the bees all right!)
When I was a first-grade teacher, I got frustrated with the flower, stem, leaves, root plant activities. My students already knew those parts of plants and they loved learning more sophisticated information. So, we dug in deeper with our plant investigation. First, I invited our parents to send flowers to our class. It didn’t matter if it was a bouquet delivered from a local flower shop or cuttings from the yard, but I requested a nice note to encourage our classroom of scholars. After our windowsills were chock full of bouquets, we got busy.
We started by observing an image of a flower including labels for each discrete part, and then we used our hands as models. On one hand, we held up all five fingers to represent five stamens. We used our pointer fingers from the opposite hands to draw a line down each finger saying filament and then tapping the top of each finger saying anther. (filament, anther, filament, anther-5xs). Then, on the other hand we held up only one finger and identified it as a pistil. We tapped the top and said stigma, drew a line down that finger and said style then drew an o on the circle part of the hand and said ovary. Most flowers have multiple stamens and only one pistil.
Once the kids have practiced naming the parts using an image and their hands as models, it’s fun to dissect flowers to identify their parts. Tulips, blooming now, are perfect for this! We used paper towels, plastic knives, and plastic tweezers. Kids tried to find each part we had discussed earlier.
Finally, we used lots of construction paper, pipe cleaners, scissors, and glue to make 3-D flowers of our own. They didn’t have to be known flowers, but each one had to include a stem, sepals, petals, stamens (with filament and anther), and a pistil (with stigma, style, and ovary). Isn’t this better than copying words like stem onto a worksheet?
Additional Resources you may be interested in using with your family:
Benefits of Consuming Local Honey
Because it has antimicrobial properties, honey doesn't just soothe your throat as it coats it; it can also kill certain bacteria. Local, raw honey helps with seasonal allergies and is a good source of antioxidants. Honey has been used topically to help heal wounds and reduce infections since the days of ancient Egyptians because it has germ-killing and tissue-regenerating powers. It’s also a good source of antioxidants that can help prevent the aging process and battle chronic diseases. Honey can aid with digestive issues as well. Specifically, it can act as a catalyst in the digestion process, and it can help eliminate diarrhea. There are even studies indicating that honey has memory-boosting effects. In addition to these benefits, the consumption of honey has been shown to soothe the body and calm the mind. Anxious and need some stress relief? Enjoy about 2 tablespoons of some delicious local honey each day.
Great Pollinator Plants for Ohio
LINK: https://www.gardenia.net/guide/great-pollinator-plants-for-ohio
10 Ways to Save the Bees
LINK: https://thebeeconservancy.org/10-ways-to-save-the-bees/
How to Make a Bee Hotel
In The Bee Book you’ll find directions to make a bee hotel for solitary bees. You see, not all bees live in colonies like the honeybees. It turns out that solitary bees are responsible for the bulk of the pollination, even though they’re not as popular as the honeybee. To share the love with these lone pollinators, we can provide a space for solitary bees to nest as a thank you for their pollination service. All they need is a bundle of hollow canes and twigs that are securely bundled together, so gather a 2-liter bottle (or something else to use for a frame) and some bamboo stems &/or paper straws, and some sticks.
You should know that solitary bees are harmless and not aggressive. They rarely if ever sting unless they’re stepped upon or squashed. Their stings are not painful like the honeybee’s sting.
Here's a video to show one way to make your own bee hotel:
Get Out into Your Local Parks
Earth Day will be celebrated on Saturday, April 22nd, and it just might be the perfect time to get out into your local parks. Just in case you live near us at Book Bums, we’re adding a link to Metroparks of Butler County. On the website, you’ll find activities for kids (that are free, though they require registration) and volunteer opportunities for the whole family. Projects include invasive species removal, farm animal care, trail maintenance, nest box monitoring, garden management, historical interpretation, and more.
Tips for Readers and Writers
Onomatopoeia is a literary device that can complement readers’ experiences with text. When a word imitates the sound with which itis identified, that’s an onomatopoeic word.
/on-oh-mot-oh-pee-uh/
You can find examples of onomatopoeia on an ordinary box of breakfast cereal. Check out the Rice Krispies box, and you’ll find the words Snap!, Crackle!, and Pop! You can launch a discussion about onomatopoeia over a bowl of cereal or some Rice Crispy Treats. Mm. --> onomatopoeia
Other onomatopoeic words include meow, drip, hiss, plop, crack, swoosh, bang, hiccup, and (of course) buzz.
Pause for Poetry
Bee! I’m expecting you!
By Emily Dickinson
Bee! I’m expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due—
The Frogs got Home last Week—
Are settled, and at work—
Birds, mostly back—
The Clover warm and thick—
You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me—
Yours, Fly.
Practical Grammar
When you see data, do you say /day-tuh/ or /dad-duh/?
No worries either way, because both pronunciations are considered to be correct.
Now, when using the word data in a sentence, do you say, “The data is clear.” Or, do you say, “The data are clear.”?
Here’s the scoop. Folks at the Wall Street Journal have used the singular form of data since 2012. So they’d say, “The data is . . . “ They cited the fact that "most style guides and dictionaries have come to accept the use of the noun data with either singular or plural verbs.”
You should know that the “grammatically correct" approach is to say, “The data are . . .” because the word data is the plural of the Latin word datum, however "Guardian style guide guru David Marsh cites the example of the word agenda, a Latin plural now used almost universally as a singular. He described using its singular form, agendum, as “hypercorrect, old-fashioned, and pompous.”
Many academics use the “hypercorrect” version (The data are . . .) because academic writing must reflect the expectations of educational institutions, so be merciful. Both versions are, indeed, widely accepted as correct
If you know someone who would benefit from our newsletter or tutoring at Book Bums, please share this email with them! Thank you.
Copyright © 2024 Book Bums, All rights reserved
Our mailing address is:
7967 Cincinnati-Dayton Road Suite L
West Chester, OH 45069