Although her mother tried to steer her towards mathematics and away from following her father, Lord Byron, down the dark path of poetry and imagination, Ada Lovelace found that creativity and logic go well together after all. Ada grew up to be a mathematician and is often regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a “computing machine”.
The story is about Annabelle and her adventures in a cold and dark town using a never-ending box of colourful yarn to bring about transformation in this community with a variety of colourful yarn creations. Use the story as a platform to launch into a variety of explorations with the children.
Happy Nkhonya is a scholarship recipient at Macquarie University, Department of Educational studies where he is studying for a Master’s degree in Early Childhood. Happy, is planning to be the first educator to implement STEM programming into early childhood education on his return to Malawi.
Wonderfully depicting children’s love for playfully discovering the natural world around them, the book encourages them to see things differently. Celebrate children’s enthusiasm for thinking outside the box by finding new functions for a stick, dreaming up different futures for a sea shell or imagining the adventures of a gumnut.
Combine children’s creativity and imagination with learning about the natural world and broadening their vocabulary by learning the animals’ names, making their conversations and observations more specific. Imagine is a wonderfully illustrated book with a sense of wonder and abundance of colour.
Celebrating children’s appreciation of nonsense and giving them the power to make adults say silly things, The Book With No Pictures bravely leaves the realm of the picture book behind and focuses on sound instead.
This funny rant by Warren, a koala who is sick of being called a bear, is a great reminder that it is important to use correct terminology when speaking to children. You can also try to introduce more scientific language into the children’s vocabulary, for example, by talking about what makes a koala a marsupial.
Possums’ trip across Australia to find out how to make Hush visible again is a wonderful illustration of the joys of inquiry-based learning. Through trial and error and true hands-on experiences, they find the answer to their question, How do we make Hush visible again…
We were lucky to be able to tap into a fountain of knowledge with nature pedagogue, digital educator and special advisor for inquiry-based learning, Peggy Kessner from the Foundation “Haus der kleinen Forscher” in Germany, who visited us in Sydney in February.
Ada Twist is full of questions about the world she lives in. When she comes across a mystery, she learns all she can on the subject, then comes up with a hypothesis and tests it.
The book is such a lovely illustration of what we at Little Scientists believe in so firmly: Every child is curious and needs to be given the opportunity to learn about the world in a hands-on way.