Making History - STEM Ideas to bring History to Life

  

Making History - STEM Ideas to bring History to Life

I was one of the participants in this NJ Makers Day Event, which brought together museum educators and librarians to share some of their ideas for interactive history.

A resource guide was compiled from those presentations - my slides are also reproduced below
(click on the Resource Guide link for full-sized slides & more info):

More info: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Archaelogy

Ancient civilizations: 

More info: 

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Ancient%20Egypt

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Ancient%20Greece

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Ancient%20Rome%20%28Pompeii%29

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Chinese%20New%20Year

More “Picture This” program ideas:

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Art%20%26%20Artist%20Programs

More info:

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Architects

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Empire%20State%20Building

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Houses%20%20Homes%20and%20Habitats

More info: 

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Brooklyn%20Bridge

https://tellingherstories.com/school-visits/

https://tellingherstories.com

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Bridge-Building

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Aviators has many other programs 

I also have several Telling Her Stories programs on female aviators, details at www.tellingherstories.com & https://tellingherstories.com/school-visits/

Details & more ideas: 

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Engineering

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Eggs

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Houses%20%20Homes%20and%20Habitats

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Recycled%20Orchestra

Many more ideas:

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/S.T.E.A.M.%20Storytime%20Surprise

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/S.T.E.A.M.

www.tellingherstories.com

Making History: A History Focused Maker Event
Brought to you by the League of Historical Societies of NJ, LibraryLinkNJ, and NJ Makers Day
10/22/2024
Piscataway Public Library, Kennedy Branch
500 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854

Tellebration: Soup & Thanksgiving Stories

 

Participatory Stories & Songs: Soup & Thanksgiving

Asked about everyone's favorite kinds of soup, then opened with a very strange recipe:

Book: Monkey Soup by Louis Sachar (child makes her father a special kind of soup to help get him well – silly! -- Don't try this at home! )   

Song/Flannel:  "Alphabet Soup" by Tom Chapin (another silly recipe, reinforces alphabet, lyrics here: Soup's On)

 

Book: Mean Soup by Betsy Everitt (how to handle a "bad day" - could also make "Mean Cheerios!")

Mentioned today we are celebrating the Trenton Soup Kitchen - community feeding...

Interactive story with props (pot, puppets, & veggies): Stone Soup  (Participatory storytelling, mentioned old story many variants – I use the Ann McGovern version with old lady and young man - script here: Soup's On)

Book/Cards/Song: Chicken Soup with Rice – Maurice Sendak, tune by Carole King from “Really Rosie” (audio & video available, concept: the names of the months, lyrics here: Soup's On)

Other possible books:

Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert (vocabulary, non-fiction concepts of gardening & food prep)

“Piggy Back” Song/Action: This is the Way we… make the Soup reinforces sequencing)

Armadilly Chili by Helen Ketterman (Armadillo fails to get help from her friends in chili preparation but when they return with "sackfulls of apologies plus apple cider, cornbread, and brownies, she finds sharing dinner with friends is best of all. This is a  folktale variant of "Little Red Hen"

That is NOT a Good Idea by Mo Willems

Soup Day by Melissa Iwai

Dumpling Soup by Jama Kin Rattigan

Last Stop on Market Street – Matt de la Pena -- grandmother & child travel on a bus to serve at a soup kitchen

More ideas & lyrics: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search?q=soup

Thanksgiving

Book: Duck for Turkey Day by Jacqueline Jules

Discussion: who came from a different country? parents? grandparents? – all of us came to this country at some time unless we are Native Americans)

Towel Folding Story: The Case of the Missing Turkey -- Rhonda Turley   Piedmont, OK via PUBYAC. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq4eojAsNlY  (or search youtube for towel and chicken).  Story & directions here: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2021/12/something-special-for-holidays.html

Flannel/Song: The Turkey Ran Away 

Song/Prop: I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie (based on the book by Alison Jackson – cut out mounted woman below) Story & directions here: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2021/12/something-special-for-holidays.html

Action Song: The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven – based on the poem by Jack Prelutsky (lyrics here: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2021/12/something-special-for-holidays.html)

Forgot to do:

Glove Puppets : Uno, Dos, Tres Amigos (reinforces idea that we all have come from different places but celebrate together; enumeration practice, learn/reinforce Spanish language numbers)
Diez Amigos "10 Friends" (glove puppets)Tune: “10 Little Indians” 
Uno, dos, tres amigos,
Quatro, cinco, seis amigos,
Siete, Ocho, Nueve amigos,
Diez amigos son.
One, two, three friends,
Four, five, six friends,
Seven, Eight, Nine friends,
Ten friends are we. 

More Thanksgiving book and song ideas: https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Thanksgiving

School Age Storytime: Apples & Pumpkins

 

A storytime for K-2nd grade celebrating the season

emphasizing empathy & compassion 

Participatory Storytelling/Props:  The Little Red House with No Doors & No Windows, a Chimney On Top & a Star in the Middle (Tip: instantly turn flannel pieces into hanging signs for kids to wear using plastic paper protector sleeves with stiff paper inserts & yarn ribbon to hang around each child's neck, act out the wind blowing the trees and the “plop” of an apple falling in the farmer’s backyard. Prop: real apple & knife to slice horizontally.)

Book: One Green Apple by Eve Bunting --This beautiful (and beautifully illustrated) story emphasizes understanding and compassion as Farah, a new student from an unnamed country, goes with her class on a field trip to an apple orchard (defined) and finds that though she is different and doesn’t know the language, she can be accepted and will find friends here.

Participatory Storytelling/Props: Big Pumpkin – from the book by Erica Silverman -- In this variant on the folktale, “The Great Big Enormous Turnip,” the witch, ghost, skeleton, and vampire are unable to pull up the pumpkin until a tiny bat ignores their derisive laughter and suggests they all work together.  I sing/chant this to a tune from an old Scholastic recording – feel free to contact me if you want to learn the tune.

Book: Pumpkins: A Story for a Field by Mary Lyn Ray – A splendid modern environmental myth in which a man, saddened by the thought that the field across from his house is about to be sold, sells everything he has, buys seeds, grows pumpkins, and then sends them all around the world (by planes, trucks, ships, and even flying carpets) to get enough money to buy the field and save it.  

Participatory Storytelling/Props: The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything based on the story by Linda Williams (1st grade only, Kdg no time)  props for children to use - shoes, pants, shirt, hat, gloves, pumpkin head, scarecrow)

Booktalked:

Non-Fiction Book: Rotten Pumpkin: A Rotten Tale in 15 Voices* – 577.16 SCHWARTZ – “UnCommon Core” at its best!  -- Told in the first person by the pumpkin, mouse, squirrel, slug, fly, black rot, bread mold, sow bug, Penicillium, earthworm, yeast cell, slime mold, soil, and seed, this is science “on the hoof.”  Wonderful writing & delightfully yucky photographs complete this unforgettable tour through the life cycle of a pumpkin that kids will find completely enGROSSing!  (Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell is a less-detailed version for a younger crowd. Sophie’s Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller makes a great fictional companion story.)

Book (K-2): Bear’s Bargain – Frank Asch (also published as Moonbear’s Bargain)  Bear wants to fly & Little Bird wishes he was big -- clever problem solving).

See more ideas at: 

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Apples

https://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/search/label/Pumpkins

Bedm K-1 11/1/2024