How Is the Sun Also a Star?

October 02, 2009

The scientific education of a preschooler is an amazing thing to witness. A child who looks into the daytime and the nighttime skies hasn’t the slightest idea that the sun, that great big ball of yellow warmth, bears any relation to the twinkling dots that cover the inky darkness of the night.   The day will come, however, when someone or some

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How Do Birds Fly?

October 03, 2009

How do birds fly? is a classic question. And one that, when asked by a child, stumps many parents. It's tempting to answer: because they have wings! And feathers! But what if your child wants a more informative answer? What if your child wants to know the actual mechanics of how birds' bodies are built to lift off the ground and coast through

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How Do Fish Breathe Underwater?

October 05, 2009

You never know when certain inevitable kid questions will strike. You’ve taken your child on countless visits to the aquarium. So why is today the day your four-year-old is suddenly struck with an urgent need to understand how fish breathe underwater? Perhaps she’s just taken with a particularly cunning little angelfish swimming around in

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How Do Plants Grow?

October 06, 2009

Children love accompanying their parents to farmers markets and sowing seeds in their own backyards, but one day they may want to know the real nitty gritty surrounding the whole process . How does this seed turn into an apple? What makes it grow? And just what does the sun have to do with it all anyway?  Delving into the science behind the

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How Do Things (Like Cars!) Move?

October 07, 2009

Some of the questions our preschoolers come up with are harder to answer than others. We think of ourselves as knowing quite a lot, we adults. We’ve been hanging around this world for a few decades, and fancy that we understand how many, if not most, things work. Then along comes a three-year-old to stump us with: how does a car move? Seems we

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