March 1, 2012
Seymour Simon is preparing to travel to visit a school next week. It is easy to tell because we are getting so many comments from new readers on the Seymour Science blog. Students in the Menands, NY schools - this contest is for you!
Two lucky winners are going to receive personally autographed copies of Seymour Simon’s book WEATHER! Here is how you enter Seymour’s Cloud Watching Contest:
1. Have you ever heard the expression "March comes in like a lion, but goes out like lamb?" There is often blustery, snowy, windy weather at the beginning of March. And that means this month is a perfect time for cloud watching.
2. Do some research and tell us which are the three most common types of clouds. And, tell us which type of cloud are you most likely to see on a fair weather day.
3. You can find your information on this blog, in Seymour’s books about weather, or using other resources, like the library and the Internet.
4. Click on the yellow "Comments" link at the bottom of this blog entry to enter the contest by writing what you have learned about clouds.
5. When you write your information, be sure to also tell us your name (first name only), school and email address. If you do not have an email address, tell us your teacher’s name, so we can contact you if you are the winner.
6. Be sure to post your entry by midnight, Friday, March 9. The contest ends then.
Two winners will be chosen randomly from all the correct entries. Older students may enter individually, and we will pick one winner. Students in grades K-2 may enter as a class and work with their teacher to enter the contest; there will be one classroom winner. Both winners will receive copies of WEATHER, autographed by Seymour Simon.
So, get to work and send us your entries today. Your comments will be invisible until everyone has a chance to enter. Once the contest is over, we will post everyone’s writing.
Good luck!
For Families, Teachers and Media Specialists: Did you know that there is a free, downloadable "Teachers Guide" for WEATHER? In fact, there are guides for all of Seymour Simon’s Smithsonian books. Become a member of SeymourSimon.com today by clicking on the "Educators and Families" header. We hope you use these extensive, free support materials with your children.
Photo: Seymour Simon
Posted by: Liz Nealon
March 1, 2012
The Development Studies Center posted an extensive, new interview with Seymour Simon this week. Educators will enjoy reading it, and we think it will be very helpful for students doing Author Studies, as well.
Interviewer Jennie McDonald really did her homework, and she asked Seymour questions that no one had ever asked him before. The result is an interview in which you learn a lot about Mr. Simon, from how he learned to read, to how he decides what to put in and what to leave out of a book, to the story of a childhood experience like A Night at the Museum!
Click here to read for yourself. And then click "Comments" below and tell us what you think!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
February 29, 2012
We had some excellent writing submitted for last week’s WRITING WEDNESDAY story about the barn owl. Our writers appealed to the reader’s different senses (sound and sight), and used strong action verbs to describe the owl’s hunt for prey. The first author is a regular Wednesday contributor.
As the owl swoops around, blending into the sky, the owl is going fast without going wooossshhhh. On the hunt for mice. - Will in Ohio
Two students from Singapore also joined in on Writing Wednesday. For our North American readers who may not have studied Southeast Asia yet, Singapore is an island nation just to the north of Indonesia, and it is made up of 63 islands! Here is what they wrote:
The owl lifted off the branch with a powerful stroke of his spectacular wings. He let a hoot slip out and ring in the air. He listened to the silent night to hear the scurrying feet of his dinner. There it was, a nice plump mouse. He broke into a dive and opened his claws wide, as wide as they would go. He felt the warm body of the mouse and forced his claws closed over the warm body. Then prepared himself for a feast.
- Pollyanna
The Barn Owl glided through the air, flapping its wings in a perfect rhythm. Eyes narrowed down at the little mouse hurrying to get home. Swooping down the owl listened to the little feet of his dinner scurrying away. He folded his wings up tight, opened his sharp claws and dove in for the kill. After closing his sharp claws on the mouse the owl immediately lifted himself higher and higher into the sky and went back to his nest and put dinner on the table for the rest of the family. 
- Erin
Posted by: Seymour Simon
February 29, 2012
The Smithsonian Institution is celebrating Leap Day with fun facts about frogs and their leaping abilities. Did you know that before the New Guinea bush frog leaps at a strange frog it puffs itself up and shows its blue tongue? Now THAT would be a sight to see!
There are more fun Leap Day frog facts and a frog song on the Smithsonian website. Click here to see for yourself.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
February 29, 2012
Welcome to Writing Wednesday and Happy Leap Day! Every week there is a new opportunity to publish your own creative writing on the Seymour Science blog. This week, we are asking you to use your writing to help your friends understand Leap Year.
The Facts:
A leap year is a year when an extra day is added at the end of the month of February. This happens approximately every four years.
We have a leap year because a standard year is not actually exactly 365 days long - it’s 365.2422 days long. That is the number of days that it takes our planet Earth to make a full rotation around the sun. A long time ago - 46 B.C. exactly - the Roman emperor Julius Caesar realized that we had a problem. If we kept counting the year as only 365 days, that leftover .2422 days would start to add up. Gradually, over hundreds of years, our calendar would slip, until we’d be having a summery month like July happen in winter.
So, Julius Ceasar brought in a group of scientists who figured out that if we added a day every four years, we would keep our seasons on track. This became known as the Julian calendar, which pretty much the whole world still uses today.
Your assignment: Write a paragraph explaining Leap Year to your fellow Earthlings!
How to make your writing powerful: Read and re-read the three paragraphs above. What are the most important details to include if you are explaining Leap Year to someone? Which words do you think are important to include?
When you are finished writing, click on the yellow "Comments" at the bottom of this post to enter your writing. Happy Leap Day!
Use your Extra Leap Day to learn about the Solar System with Seymour Science! 30% off planetary eBooks until March 2nd for all Earthlings!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
February 28, 2012
Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" shows the caretaker at a crocodile breeding center in Nepal brushing the teeth of a narrow snouted crocodile. This endangered species is bred in captivity and released into the wild once they can live on their own.
Photo: Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters
Posted by: Seymour Simon
February 24, 2012
On a recent blog post about Snakes, I received this very smart comment from one of our readers:
Dear Seymour Simon,
I read your SNAKES book and I found a mistake! Snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Venomous means to inject venom and poisonous means to touch or absorb it. I learned this at Lake Pleasant in Arizona. It was my field trip. My name is Jack R. I’m a student at Wildfire Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona. I still love snakes and reptiles.
Thank you, Jack, for taking the time to write. You clearly learned a lot on your field trip!
In fact, I have received several letters lately because one of my old favorites, a book called POISONOUS SNAKES, has just been re-published. Since it is a book for kids and almost all kids (as well as adults) refer to snakes as ‘poisonous’ or ‘non-poisonous’, we decided to use that term in the title of the book when I wrote it years ago. These are also the words used in searches by kids. So, my intention was not to deceive anyone or use incorrect words, only to make the book easier for kids to fine, and to plainly label what the book is about if they were to look it up.
Jack is correct, though. Venom is injected by snakes and other animals, and poison is ingested (eaten), like when birds eat some kinds of butterflies. So technically, snakes are not poisonous or non-poisonous….they are either venomous or non-venomous.
Here are two examples, to help you understand the difference.
This is such a beautiful photograph of a lionfish, but you can’t always trust your eyes. This lionfish is venomous and dangerous to humans as well as other marine animals, because it uses those sharp spines to inject paralyzing venom.
A monarch butterfly, on the other hand, is poisonous because its larva eats milkweed, which contains a poisonous chemical. If a bird or other predator eats a monarch, it eats the poison. But you can touch a monarch without any danger - you’re safe as long as you don’t swallow it!
Notice that both the lionfish and the monarch have bright colors and patterns on their bodies. These are known as "warning colors," which keep predators away.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
February 23, 2012
The latest period of heavy solar flares erupting on the surface of the sun continues (as do the beautiful auroras that they create for us to see here on Earth).
Solar flares are actually great bursts of superheated plasma. There is a NASA satellite that can capture amazingly detailed images of the sun’s surface, and scientists pieced together photographs snapped every five minutes to create this amazing video of recent solar activity.
Each of the loops of plasma that you see in this video is two to three times larger than Earth. What an amazing sight!
You can see more photographs and learn more in Seymour Simon’s book, THE SUN.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
February 22, 2012
Welcome to Writing Wednesday! Every week there is a new opportunity to publish your own creative writing on the Seymour Science blog. This week, we are asking you to describe this barn owl in flight.
Background: Most owls have broad wings which have quite a large surface in comparison to the rest of their bodies. These large wings make it easy for an owl to glide for a long time without a lot of flapping, and they also allow the owl to fly quite slowly - so that it can hunt for prey on the ground below.
When a normal bird flies, the air rushing over its wings makes a lot of noise, kind of a "whooshing" sound. But owls have feathers called "flutings" on the leading edge of their wings. These feathers are almost like a comb, and they comb through the air as it rushes over the wings, breaking it up and muffling the sound. Because of these special wing feathers, a huge owl can glide almost silently through the forest, watching and listening as it searches for prey.
Your Assignment: Look at this photograph of a barn owl in flight and write a paragraph that describes the bird’s silent search for its prey.
Tips to Make Your Writing Powerful:
- Set the scene by appealing to your reader’s senses and imagination. You could write about what it feels like to soar through the air, what the world looks like from up there, or describe the "sound" of the silence.
- Include descriptive details about the owl, or about its prey on the ground below.
- Use strong verbs to capture the action of the scene. For example, instead of saying the owl is "flying," you could use an action verb and say it is "darting" or "swooping."
When you are finished with your paragraph, click on the yellow "Comments" at the bottom of this post to enter your writing.
Happy writing!
Photo: Major Gilbert
Posted by: Seymour Simon
February 21, 2012
Do you remember our story late last year about the rescue effort to save Blue Penguins, who were at risk after an oil spill of New Zealand? They have made great progress cleaning up the spill, but wild life rescuers are still collecting little sweaters, to have on hand for penguins who are rescued in the future. These penguins in their sweaters are so cute that we decided this qualified as our "Cool Photo of the Week"!
When they are soaked in oil, penguins need to be prevented from trying to preen themselves, so that they won’t ingest the toxic oil. And they also need help staying warm. Sweaters are the perfect solution to both of these problems, and knitters all over the world responded by making and sending penguin sweaters.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
