Review: What's Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew?

The book opens describing the size of a pygmy shrew relative to an elephant, then relative to a ladybug, and proceeds smaller and smaller, each smaller item compared to a new even smaller item down to atoms, quarks and electrons. The book wraps up by describing how everything in the entire universe is made up of atoms. This book dovetails nicely, by the way, with another of this author's books, Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?.

Suggested age range for this book is 4-8 yrs. I used this with boys ages 8 and 5. The 5yo grasped some of the concepts, but really a lot of it was over his head as he could just not grasp it totally. The 8yo was much more enthralled with the whole idea, having used a microscope before and really understanding it better. It is one of the most user friendly books I have found though to put it in a true real world perspective, as most science texts simply start with what an atom is without really trying to explain how incredibly tiny that is.

We thoroughly enjoyed this book, even mom as a refresher, before starting in on our basic chemistry textbook for my 3rd grader. :) My kindergartener will stop here with this brief intro, and is enjoying paging through the pictures again and again.

And, by the way, I'm not paid at all for my review. I am just sharing a book we liked! :)

Review: Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?

Today we had the pleasure of reading Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is? by Robert Wells. And by the way, this is not a paid review, nor did we receive the book free or anything. I review this simply because I want to share a great book! :)

This selection is part Sonlight's P4/5 core curriculum which we use for Noah right now.

It is a slim little book, a nicely illustrated picture on each and every page, and an amount of text appropriate for a preschool attention span. It begins by showing the relative size of a blue whale to other common animals (elephant, lion). With that as a jump point, each page takes us progressively larger relative to the current topic, from whales, to mountains, to planets, to suns, stars, on and on until we reach the size of the galaxy. So a hard to grasp concept of a galaxy's size is broken down into bite-sized pieces. This is a perfect introduction to comparative sizes, concepts of millions and billions (great intro to that on the first page) and brief astronomy for a young child.

This is geared towards ages 4-8. Based on our experiences today, I would say that is pretty accurate. Noah is 5 now and enjoyed it, getting a lot out of it but not grasping it 100%. The pictures were engaging, and the text was approachable for his understanding level. His attention stayed put through the book. Zach is 8 now, and enjoyed it as well, listening to me read it and then grabbing it for a second read on his own, completely grasping the content and staring in wonder. He has a much firmer grasp on just how unimaginatively big a galaxy is after this book. The astronomy of course was more of a review for him, but that is great too, as we are off to build on that for him later on with more in depth astronomy, while Noah will stop here...