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Home Education Magazine
May-June/97 - Columns
Good Stuff Rebecca Rupp
RIBBET!
It's spring. The season of frogs.
Last year we raised frogs. The kids brought home a million frog eggs from the pond up the road, which, lovingly tended, turned into a million tadpoles, which were well on the way to turning into a million frogs when I cracked and insisted that 999,997 of them be returned - now! - to their natural habitat. The remaining three reached froghood in the kitchen, and then followed them. As close encounters with metamorphosis go, it was interesting, educational, and mind-broadening, and we now view frogs in the wild - potentially our frogs or their descendants - with a proprietary eye.
We acquired our frog eggs sloppily, in buckets. For a tidier and more scientific experience, however, Workman Publishing sells The Pond Book and Tadpole Tank. The plastic tank has a handle, for gripping while dunking into pond water, a built-in strainer, and a magnifying lens in the lid, for closer examination of specimens. The accompanying book, by Karen Dawe, is a field and activity guide, with descriptions of over 40 different kinds of pond life - among them, tadpoles - that "slither or swim." About $14.95; available from Workman Publishing, 708 Broadway, New York, NY 10003; (212) 254-5900, or the Cuisenaire Company of America, Inc., P.O. Box 5026, White Plains, NY 10602-5026; (800) 237-0338. If you just want a good non-disruptive look at tadpoles, you might consider an Aqua Scope, which is a sturdy upside-down periscope for underwater viewing. Users dunk the bottom end in the pond and look through the clear plastic window in the top. These are available from ETA, 620 Lakeview Parkway, Vernon Hills, IL 60061-9923; (800) 445-5985; or from the Edmund Scientific Company (see above). (Edmund calls their version an "Inflatable Underwater Viewer.")
For those who do not have a lush source of infant pre-frogs within walking distance, frog hatchery kits are available from most science supply stores and catalogs. Generally these include a plastic aquarium, a pack of tadpole chow, and - sometimes - assorted underwater landscaping materials, such as colored aquarium gravel and plants. The kits come with a coupon for tadpoles. (A few states won't allow foreign tadpoles to cross their borders; check before you order.) Sources include the Edmund Scientific Company, 101 East Gloucester Pike, Barrington, NJ 08007-1380; (800) 728-6999; Delta Education, P.O. Box 3000, Nashua, NH 03061-3000; (800) 442-5444; and the Carolina Biological Supply Company, 2700 York Road, Burlington, NC 27215; (800) 334-5551. Prices range from $10.00 to $35.00, depending on the size of the tank and the number of potential frogs.
Or you can try making your very own (very small) pond. The Carolina Biological Supply Company sells a "Minipond Ecosystem:" a "maintenance-free" habitat that simulates a real-live pond. The kit includes a plastic container (the pond), pond substrate (hay), protozoan mixture, algae mixture, pH test strips, and nutrients. Combine them all according to the included instructions and you'll soon have a booming population of pond organisms. No frogs, unfortunately: minipond inhabitants are mini. To get a good look at them, you need a microscope. The kit costs about $18.00.
For the informational scoop on frogs, try Frogs by Gail Gibbons (Holiday House, 1993), a picture book all about frogs, including the basics on the frog life cycle, with big bright illustrations. Frogs, Toads, Lizards, and Salamanders by Nancy Winslow Parker and Joan Richard Wright (Greenwillow, 1990) includes accounts of sixteen different frogs and associated creatures. Each gets two pages to itself: a clever cartoon and a catchy couplet appear on the lefthand page; a detailed labeled drawing and scientific information on the right. Why Is a Frog Not a Toad? by Q.L. Pearce (Lowell House, 1992) explains the crucial differences between the two: the theme of this 32-page picture book is pairs of animal species that look a lot alike, but aren't. As well as frogs and toads, Pearce points out the differences between such confusing duos as crocodiles and alligators, butterflies and moths, bees and wasps, wolves and coyotes, and jaguars and leopards. Jerry Pallotta's The Frog Alphabet Book (Charlesbridge Publishers, 1990) covers frogs (and friends) from Amazon horned frog to Zigzag salamander; Wendy Pfeffer's From Tadpole to Frog (HarperTrophy, 1994), a "Let's-Read-and-Find-Out" Science Book, traces the life of a frog from tiny jelly-like egg to giant booming bullfrog. The Eyewitness book Amphibian by Barry E. Clarke, Geoff Brightling, and Frank Greenaway (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993) contains 64 pages of spectacular color photographs of frogs and company; Extremely Weird Frogs by Sarah Lovett (John Muir Publications, 1991) includes 21 full-color frog photos, plus chattily descriptive information. Among the featured weird frogs are the Asiatic gliding frog which, by spreading out broad finger and toe webs, manages to sail through the air for distances of fifty feet, the glass frog, which is practically transparent, and the tomato frog, which is tomato-colored.
For a collection of your own colorful frogs, the Edmund Scientific Company catalog (see above) carries a "Poison Dart Frog Collection:" seven polyvinyl plastic frogs, hand-painted in brilliant colors, designed in collaboration with the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland. The frogs look poisonously real. For $16.95, you get one each of the red-eyed tree frog, Historionicus, Tinctorius, Auratus, Leucomelas, Asureus, and Lehmanni. Or kids can try their hands at coloring their own: Dover publishes a Reptiles and Amphibians Coloring Book (Thomas C. Quirk, Jr.) with over 70 black-line illustrations of frogs (and toads, lizards, snakes, turtles, salamanders, alligators, and crocodiles), plus descriptive captions. $2.95 from Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd St., Mineola, NY 11501.
For those interested in what's inside a frog, the Edmund Scientific Company and Carolina Biological Supply both carry dissecting supplies, preserved frogs, and instruction manuals. Young biologists can also dissect on-line: try http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/~insttech/frog for an interactive step-by-step frog dissection tutorial. Or kids can try constructing a model frog: ETA (see above) carries a "Reptiles and Amphibians" kit with materials for six different models, including a cut-away view of a leopard frog showing its internal organs. Also included: an alligator, turtle, chuckwalla, rattlesnake, and red eft. The kit costs $13.95.
For the fictional frog, younger readers are bound to enjoy the adventures of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad. Titles, from Harper Trophy, include Frog and Toad Together, Frog and Toad Are Friends, Days with Frog and Toad, and Frog and Toad All Year. Each includes several short and charming stories about the curmudgeonly Toad ("Bah!" said Toad) and his kindly and patient friend, Frog. William Steig's Gorky Rises (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1980) is the story of a young frog who mixes up a potion in the kitchen that causes him to rise - and rise and rise - into the sky; in Quentin Blake's The Story of the Dancing Frog (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), a talented frog becomes a world-famous stage performer, before retiring to the peace and quiet of domestic life. Jon Scieszka's The Frog Prince Continued (Viking, 1991) tells what happened after the princess kissed the enchanted frog: living happily ever after had its complications. (The Prince kept hopping about on the furniture and flicking his tongue.)
For older readers, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (Viking, 1983) lacks frogs, but stars a truly memorable Toad, owner of the luxurious Toad Hall and a very fast motorcar. Two modern sequels by William Horwood continue the adventures of Grahame's wonderful characters: The Willows in Winter and Toad Triumphant (St. Martin's Press).
You might consider reading the above while listening to the frogs: the audiocassette Frog Heaven from World Disc Music contains a solid hour of frog croaks, honks, squawks, creaks, peeps, and bellows recorded from frogs all over the country and world. Included are frogs from the Florida Everglades, California, Georgia, Washington, and Sri Lanka. The cassette costs about $10.00 from World Disc Music, NorthWord Press, Inc., Box 1360, Minocqua, WI 54548; (800) 6398.
If you listen carefully, you'll even hear an occasional "Ribbet."
Discover America
A board game of American history, geography, and culture (and even a bit of spelling). The board, patterned in patriotic red, white, and blue, pictures a circular playing path (the "state circle") on which each step is labeled with the name of The fifty states. Players start on the "Hawaii" space and move around the board counter-clockwise, finishing up in Washington, D.C. On each move, plaayers can decide to either "Shake Two Dice," and then follow the number-coded instructions on the included instruction card; or spin the "state selector" spinner and name a state capital. "Shake Two Dice" results variously land players with "Lucky" or "Sorry" cards, which live up to their names, shunt them to "Travelers Aid" (there's no aid about it; you're stuck there until you manage to win your way out), or challenge them with "Quiz Cards." There are six questions on each of the 200 Quiz cards: a Who, What, Where, When, and Which question, and a definition or spelling challenge. (Answers are on the back.) Which question a player answers is determined by the roll of a die. Sample questions:
-Who was the second President of the United States?
-What is the nickname of the state of Alaska?
-Where is the geographic center of the continental United States?
-When did the Civil War end?
-Which state has the most U.S. national parks?
-Spell Massachusetts.
Players earn money for each space moved (plus windfalls from "Lucky" cards); the person to reach Washington, D.C. with the most cash wins.
Drawbacks: Because of the way the "Shake Two Dice" instructions are set up, it can be a long dry spell between Quiz Cards, which are the mind-expanding part of the game. (We shamelessly fiddled with the rules, so that everybody got a Quiz Card on each turn.) We also altered the state-capital-naming instructions: according to game rules, players can opt to name a state capital on each turn. Which state capital is determined by the twirl of a spinner. Over the course of the game, players keep track of which state capitals have been named by checking them off - using a dry-erase marker - around the edge of the spinner panel. If you land on a state for which the capital has already been named, you lose a turn. We found that limited numbers of state capitals got named this way - by some fluke of fate or spinner design, the boys kept landing on North Dakota - so we simply let people spin until they landed on an unused state. (In version two, since nobody here had much interest in naming state capitals, we made the state spinner a must on each turn, and had everybody keep track of all correct answers on black-line U.S. maps.)
Finally, the "Lucky" cards aren't appropriate for kids. Almost all of them give players extra cash through gambling wins ("Slot Machines: You won $200;" "Video Poker: You won $10") and Them ("Mischanged in your favor: Receive $10) is positively unethical, since all right-thinking parents teach their children that when a change error is made in their favor, they politely point out the mistake and give the money back.
Still there's a lot of information here for young history and geography buffs. Consider inventing your own Lucky Cards.
Discover America is recommended for 2 to 4 players aged 9 and up. It is available in a retail edition ($29.99 plus s/h) and in a deluxe edition ($34.99 plus s/h). The basics are the same in both, but the deluxe edition features little plastic storage compartments for the playing cards, a state selector with a big metal spinner, and little pegs for keeping track of named state capitals. To order, contact Second Avenue Creations, 108 S. Fourth Ave., P.O. Box 472, St. Nazianz, WI 54232; (414) 773-3053 or (800) 713-1105.
Alphabet Antics
A collection of creative alphabet activities for learners of all ages by art teacher Ken Vinton (Free Spirit Publishing, 1996). This is not your average "A is for Apple" book, but a free-wheeling tour of the alphabet, with ample opportunities for learning and invention. Alphabet Antics begins with a brief cartoon history of the alphabet; then each letter gets four creative pages all to itself. Under each, from A to Z, there are several different categories of information and activities. "Fun Facts" includes catchy letter-related information: the expression "A-OK," for example, was invented by Project Mercury astronauts in 1961; the "E" in "E-mail" stands for electronic; N is the chemical symbol for nitrogen; and "U-boat" comes from unterseeboot, the German word for "submarine." "Projects" generally center around literature, art, and creative thinking. Under F, for example, "Fracture a famous story. Rewrite it your way;" and under I, "Illustrate a famous quotation."
"Find Out About" includes three letter-related lists of People, Places, and Potpourri: E students, for example, are urged to check out, among others, Amelia Earhart, Wyatt Earp, Leif Ericson, Euripedes, Egypt, the Eiffel Tower, Ellis Island, the Erie Canal, eclipses, entomology, ESP, Excalibur, and extraterrestrials. Lists of (simple) "Words" and (not-so-simple) "Challenge Words" enhance spelling skills and build vocabulary; "History" traces the origins of each letter, with illustrations ("C" began as the Phoenecian "Gimel" which meant "camel"); and "In More Alphabets" pictures each letter in hand-sign, Braille, Morse code, semaphore, the International Flag Code, and the NATO code. There's also a picture puzzle for each letter, in which kids are challenged to identify objects starting with the featured letter (Rhinoceros, Rook, Rain, Rabbit, Ricochet) and a quotation by a famous letter-related person. F, for example, from Benjamin Franklin, is "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn."
About $19.95 from bookstores or from Free Spirit Publishing, Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 616, Minneapolis, MN 55401-1730; (612) 338-2068; help4kids@freespirit.com.
The Game of OCEAN
A question-and-answer card game for 2 to 8 players, aged 10 (or so) and up. The object of the game is to win enough letter-coded cards to spell the word OCEAN. Players accomplish this by correctly answering questions in five different ocean-related categories: O cards include questions about oceanography; C cards, circulation; E cards, ecology; A, animals; and N, navigation. Which card category the question is read from is determined on each turn by the roll of a lettered die.
There are four questions on each card, for players at different ability levels. These are coded with one, two, three, or four stars, meaning respectively "Beginner," "Intermediate," "Upper Intermediate," and "Advanced." Sample beginner questions include "What highly prized jewels are produced by oysters;" "What ocean did Balboa sight after crossing the Isthmus of Panama?;" and "Which ocean is nearly equal in size to all the others combined?" Sample advanced questions - most of which are definitely advanced - include "What two factors determine the density of seawater found at or near the surface?" and "What gas to corals combine with calcium to form limestone reefs and atolls?"
$10.95 from Other Worlds Educational Enterprises, P.O. Box 6193, Woodland Park, CO 80866; (719) 687-3840.
Sophie's World
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1994) is now out in paperback, which makes it an inexpensive - and thoroughly worthwhile - read for your teenagers. The book, intended as a vehicle to introduce young people to Western philosophy, is the story of almost-fifteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen, who comes home one day to find two mysterious questions in the mail: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Thus starts Sophie's long strange journey through the history of philosophy, under the guidance of the elusive Alberto Knox and his dog, Hermes.
Sophie's philosophical education begins with a series of letters ("Course in Philosophy. Handle With Care."), which she reads in her secret hiding place in the hedge in the backyard garden. By letter, Sophie learns about the ancient Greeks, including Democritus, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the Semites, and the roots of Christianity. Then at last she meets Alberto in person - at first, he's disguised as a monk - and continues through the philosopy of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the ideas of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, the late eighteenth-century French Enlightenment, and the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Sophie's introduction to philosophy is interspersed with a real-life mystery: Sophie is receiving postcards sent to a girl just her own age named Hilde, from her father, the mysteriously all-knowing major. As the book continues, it becomes increasingly uncertain how the the stories of the two girls fit together - and the conclusion is philosophically apt and startlingly unexpected. Intellectually challenging; fuel for endless discussions.
The Composers' Specials
The Composers' Specials (Sony Wonder) are a series of beautifully done videos introducing kids to classical composers. In each, a child is paired with a famous composer in the telling of an exciting story. In Rossini's Ghost, for example, young Reliana, in 1862, is helping her grandmother in the kitchen and listening to her stories about early life in the theatre, back in the days when she knew the composer Rossini. Reliana tries on one of her grandmother's old stage costumes - and suddenly is transported back in time to 1816, the year of the opening of Rossini's opera, "The Barber of Seville." Reliana, invisible to everyone except the composer himself, is able to help when The singers puts a curse on the production and disasters strike.
In Strauss: The King of Three-Quarter Time, Johann Strauss of Vienna meets Nicholas, a young stable boy and forms an enduring friendship; in Liszt's Rhapsody, composer Franz Liszt, the world's greatest concert pianist, meets Josy, a Gypsy street performer, and wagers that he can turn him into a world-class musician. (All does not go as smoothly as planned.) Bizet's Dream features 12-year-old Michelle who dislikes Monsieur Bizet, her cantankerous piano teacher - until he tells her the marvelous tale of his new opera, Carmen. Bach's Fight for Freedom is set in 1717, with Johann Sebastian Bach, chapel organist to the domineering Duke Wilhelm, struggling for creative independence, with the help and sympathy of his ten-year-old assistant, Frederick. And finally, in Handel's Last Chance, set in Dublin in 1742, the composer gets ten-year-old Jamie O'Flaherty out of jail - he was caught stealing in an attempt to help his poverty-stricken family - and Jamie, who sings like an angel, participates in the first performance of Handel's Messiah.
Each video is about 50 minutes long, with a wonderful background of each composer's music: Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Strauss's Tales from the Vienna Woods, selections from Bizet's Carmen. The videos are aimed at a young audience; they're probably best suited for kids aged 7 to 12.
The set (six videos) costs about $100.00 and is available from The Videofinders Collection, National Fulfillment Center, P.O. Box 27054, Glendale, CA 91225; (800) 799-1199.
Connections
Connections is a visual game which encourages the making of creative connections: that is, finding relationships between seemingly unrelated objects. The original game includes two decks of 55 cards, illustrated with color photographs of natural or manmade objects. The game can be played with one deck at a time, or both at once. It begins with the dealer choosing one card and placing it face up in the center of the table. Five cards are then dealt to each player. The first player selects a card from his/her hand, lays it down next to the center card, and explains the connection between them. If the connection is accepted by the group, the play moves on to the next person in line, who must find a connection between a card in his/her hand and The two cards now on the table. A scoring method is suggested (one point for each connection), but the game can also be played "just for the fun of hearing other people's ideas." The game can last as long as you like - or at least until all the cards in the decks have been played.
The cards are beautiful to look at; and the game is imagination- and conversation-promoting, and a lot of fun. A brief explanation on the back of each card explains what each picture is. Illustrations include a cluster of red tomatoes, an ornate manhole cover, the flying buttresses of Chartres Cathedral, a cross-section of a tree trunk, New Mexico cliff dwellings, brain coral, the domes of the Kremlin, and a totem pole.
Two other equally attractive versions of the game are available: Connections: Math and Science in Nature and Connections: Architecture.
Each game costs $18.95 from Dale Seymour Publications, P.O. Box 5026, White Plains, NY 10602-5026; (800) 872-1100; http://www.aw.com/dsp/
© 1997 Rebecca Rupp
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