Women in Science by Rachel Ignotofsky

Both of my children want to be scientists when they grow up. We often talk about great scientists and their contributions. It’s true that most scientists we are coming across in books are men. But it’s changing and women’s role in science is being acknowledged more and more often. The book Women in Science, written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky addresses exactly that.

The book allows a spread per scientist and covers about 50 brilliant women that contributed to the scientific discovery throughout the centuries, starting with ancient times and up to our days. Each spread features facts from a scientist’s life, her contributions and an awesome portrait illustration with additional facts surrounding her. The book is very fun to leaf through and even more fun to read. Many of these scientists I am learning about for the for the first time and some are like old friends. My daughter was delighted to see her favorite Jane Goodall featured here, and Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space. Most of the scientists covered in this book are Americans, although there are a few Europeans featured, as well as Asians. I wish there were more representatives from around the world, but we can’t have everything. There are more women mentioned in the end of the book, they didn’t get a spread, but they are there.

Overall impression: My children and I enjoy this book and found information straightforward and easy to understand. The illustrations add to the amazement of fantastic discoveries these women scientists brought to the world. This book is a valuable addition to our home library.

 

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair an unbiased review.

 

 

 

Week’s Roundup: Goodbye February 2015

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February is over and thank goodness it is. It was a good month, but it seemed long and heavy. Russians congratulated each other on the beginning of spring today. And even though here, in the US it doesn’t come for a couple of weeks at least, I think it is here already, lurking in the woods and soon will drive winter out completely.

Photo of the week:

nothing better than spending Sunday afternoon with my baby girl by my side, all nice and cozy

Week’s Roundup: February 16-February 22, 2015

Another busy week went by.

This post may contain links to the sites I’m affiliated with, should you choose to make a purchase following a link, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Photo of the week:

I was surprised to find first tiny leaves right next to my doorstep, it was such a sweet sight, especially because and hour later…

the blizzard descended, almost a day late, but fierce enough.

Lunar New Year

Our week flies buy in another blur of business, but we did have a little event for Lunar New Year yesterday.

First, we talked about why some people celebrate New Year’s arrival on the days other than January 1st  (such as Rosh Hashana, Russian “old style” New Year (January 13th) and Lunar New Year among them). Then we read D is for Dragon Dance by Ying Chang Compestine (affiliate link) to see the major elements of Chinese New Year Celebration.

Then we read about the legend of Chinese Zodiac animals in Russian (Легенда о Восточном Календаре. Мария Ершова, Игорь Олейников. Еще мы  прочли Нианское чудовище, тоже Олейникова иллюстрации)

and read our horoscopes for the upcoming Lunar Year, C. was delighted to find that she will have a very lucky year, D. was promised reward for his hard work, mine was more or less ok, my husband’s year is supposed to be luckier than the one that just ended. We’ll see 🙂

We did a couple of simple art projects

1. The idea for this finger print art came from this blog. It’s a simple and fun art project. First children painted their backgrounds using watercolor paints. Second I printed out some articles in Chinese (you can use newspaper too if available in your area) and children cut out buildings. Third, buildings are pasted onto the background. Children added cute panda stickers (affiliate link)  too. Then they put yellow and red blobs on the page (we used acrylic paint and brushes for that, but for tiny artists fingerprints would be more fun). After everything was dry, children connected their lanterns to create a garland, and added fireworks in the sky.

D.’s artwork

C.’s scenery

2. The second art project was to create a sheep- symbol of the new Lunar Year. Children painted the background -sky and grass, then painted the sheep- paying attention to the head and legs and just outlining the body. The body was filled in with pom-poms and cotton balls. Since it’s the year of Wooden Sheep they used some brown pom-poms in addition to the white ones. Oh, and don’t forget the googly eyes 🙂

D’s sheep

C. draws rainbows a lot nowadays, I love her sheep’s ears too 🙂

So, this was our little event for this Lunar New Year celebration. Hope the Year of the Sheep will bring a good fortune to everyone!

Arctic play

Today, there is so much snow outside, we can’t go out due to C. having very strong sniffles still. So we had a spontaneous Arctic study.

I picked up North: The Amazing Story of Arctic Migration by Nick Dawson, illustrated Patrick Benson (affiliated link to book depository) at the library the other day

and it proved to be just the right thing for little C. who’s fascinated with Arctic animals at the moment. D. read about the voyage of Pytheas  to the northern seas in Into the Unknown by Stewart Ross, illustrated by Stephen Biesty  (affiliated link to book depository).

We looked at the map of Arctic and Antarctic in our Maps book. We also read in Russian about types of movable houses nomadic people of Polar Regions make, also about igloos (“Дома мира” Ольги Колпаковой- Серия Настя и Никита).

After that C. drew a picture of whales migrating to the Arctic Ocean.

In the end of the day kids created a lovely play scene on the floor- as always nothing more than a blanket and colorful pebbles in addition to our stash of Schleich animals. Well, actually we did use old towels to create icebergs and C. insisted that we have Antarctic too, a couple of magical creatures joined the party and Lego Flynn Rider was on his way to shore (but he was careful to avoid a hungry orca)

We made some ice to see if our animals can ride on the iceberg. We kind of failed here, because our iceberg was only half frozen, still kids had tons of fun playing with water

drifting 🙂

the hungry orca

That was our spontaneous Arctic Day (it’s quite cold outside too, if the weather keeps we might be lucky enough to try and build a snow fort tomorrow).

Interesting posts on the subject I came across:

Kids Dioramas and Small World Play at Artful Parent

Simple Ice Experiment

ETA: Movies to watch

Arctic Tale Trailer

To The Arctic Trailer

Learning about Galileo

Today is Galileo Galilei’s birthday, we decided it would be a good idea to learn about this amazing scientist and inventor.

Mozart week in Sunflowerous House

This past Tuesday, January 27, was birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Sunflowerous kids love Mozart. It was first composer C. started to recognize without fail every time when she was very little. We listen to Mozart quite a lot. So naturally, we decided to celebrate the composer’s birthday in out own little way.

BOOK PILE: Pop-Up Books

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Pop-Up books are just great, aren’t they. These books are true treasures, the craftsmanship is amazing, and although fragile, they provide many opportunities for entertainment and joy.

Here is our little list of Pop-Up Books that we love:

THE BEST SEASON OF ALL 2014: DAYS 21 and 22

Happy Winter Solstice!

Our first calm days were met by powdery snow! After a few weeks of warm temperatures and sun it’s a bit of a shock, but a White Christmas as a possibility is very very attractive!

Bird walk

Last Sunday we went birding for the very first time. Local Audubon Society does monthly walks in different locations in Denver Metro Area and most of the events are free or low cost. It was a wonderful 3,5 mile walk and me and children learned a lot about spotting, identifying and recording our sighting from Master Birders. We will absolutely be back for another walk at the first opportunity. Find an Audubon Society near you via their website 

There is and excellent book list with activities on Cornell Lab of Ornithology page. We are only just starting our adventure in bird watching, but the simplest activities are easily implemented , the feeder can be built from simple materials at hand such as milk carton or bottle, simply watching birds in one’s own backyard and enter sightings into e-bird database

Some pictures from our outing:

will we be lucky today?