Seymour Simon's Blog, page 5

Love the American Goldfinch!

I love watching American Goldfinches at out bird feeder during the spring and summer months. They’re smaller than sparrows and their colors range from bright gold to pale yellow depending upon the season and whether they’re male, female or young birds. They are usually in groups of anywhere to a few to more than a dozen. This is a photo of a juvenile goldfinch at our feeder (notice the spiky pinfeathers). I think what I love best is the way they fly and sing as they fly. They swoop down from nearby trees to the feeder in a kind of rising and falling flight, singing as they fly. Their song sounds like a series of "per-chick-a-rees" that rises and falls along with their flying. In other words, they sing the way they fly. Amazing! We use thistle in our bird feeder to attract them and they seem to love feeding on that seed. They feed all summer long at the feeder and also on the seeds that fall on the ground below the feeder. They are migratory birds and fly south in the fall and north in the spring. And I know that I for one will miss them when they depart for warmer climates in the fall.

Writing Wednesday: Thinking about Your Senses

It’s a new school year, and today is Wednesday…..so it’s time for a new WRITING WEDNESDAY! Today, we’re going to look at a Seymour Simon book that is an old favorite. It’s called PROFESSOR IQ EXPLORES THE SENSES. As you read the pages below, about our sense of sight, think about all the different ways that Seymour Simon and illustrator Dennis Kendrick provide information to the reader. Now that you’ve read these pages, think about the organization of this text. How does it support your learning? For example, are their captions, diagrams or illustrations that help your understanding? Does the design of the pages make a difference? How this book is different from other informational text you have read? If you need to, go back and read again, and then write several sentences about which features of this particular informational text you think are most helpful to understanding more about your sense of sight. When you have finished writing, click on the yellow "Comments" link at the bottom of this blog post to paste in your writing for others to see. As Professor IQ would say, "Every day is a good day to explore!"Note for Educators: Seymour Simon’s book is part of the affordable, streaming, narrated eBook collection from StarWalk Kids Media.Click hereif you would like to learn more about subscribing to this high quality, affordable collection of Common Core mentor texts.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM: Brand New!

Today HarperCollins is publishing the updated edition of one of my favorite books:OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. And for the first time, it is available not only in hardcover, but also as a paperback and an eBook. As a science writer, the one thing I can be absolutely sure of is that the "facts" as they are known at the time I write a book are sure to change. So although many of my readers are familiar with this book, you’ll find plenty of new information here (like adding a section about the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, in Russia in February 2013, injuring nearly 1,000 people). And, we’ve added many, magnificent photographs in the new edition - I’m very excited for my readers to see and read this book again. Thank you to my editor, Nancy Inteli, for all her hard work and guidance on Our Solar System. I’m very proud of it.

Plan a Perseid Midnight Picnic!

We are re-running this blog post, which was originally published in August 2010. Every summer we are treated to the Perseid Meteor Shower in the Northern Hemisphere. This year the peak viewing nights are late July and early August, since the full moon on August 10 will make it very hard to see the meteors. If the skies are clear where you live, you will be able to see dozens of meteors per hour——and you’ll see more after midnight than before. It’s about the most satisfying amateur astronomy experience you can have. One August when my daughter was in elementary school, we planned a middle of the night Perseid party for her friends and their families. Everyone was invited to come at 3:30 am, with pajamas being acceptable attire! We asked them to bring a pillow for everyone and quilts that they didn’t mind laying in the dewey grass. I guided everyone via flashlight to the pitch dark meadow behind our house, and we laid together in the dark, ooh-ing and ah-ing as if it were a fireworks show. Then at 5am, as the rosy-fingered dawn started to illuminate the horizon, we brought everyone up to the house for a middle-of-the-night brunch. It was a memorable evening. Of course, the trick to serving brunch in the middle of the night is to prepare everything in advance, so that you can sleep until the very last minute before guests arrive. I have a favorite quiche recipe which can be made in advance and quickly heated up in the oven or microwave. Cut up a fruit salad, set up the coffeemaker before you go to bed and you’re ready to go. For anyone who would like to try it this week, here’s my recipe. Enjoy it under the meteor shower! PERSEID BREAKFAST QUICHE Ingredients: 1 box pie crust mix 1 cup (1/2 pt.) Light Cream 8oz. Gruyere or Swiss Cheese (.5 lb) Nutmeg 3 eggs, beaten Salt & pepper to taste ½ c. bacon, mushrooms or other fillings as you wish 1 TBL butter ½ c. nonfat Milk Preheat oven to 450º. Cut the cheese into small cubes. Pre-cook any meat that you plan to put in the quiche and crumble into small pieces. If you are using vegetables (scallions, mushrooms, etc), cut them up and sauté in butter until they are nice and soft. Remove from heat and set aside. Make a single piecrust, put it into a pie dish and prick all over with a fork (so it doesn’t blow up into a big balloon!). I usually put some tin foil over the top edges to hold it up against the sides. Cook the piecrust alone for 5 minutes at 450 degrees. After the piecrust is pre-cooked, sprinkle your fillings (bacon, scallions, etc) on the bottom and cover them with the cubed cheese. In a bowl, beat three eggs. Add cream, milk, dash of nutmeg, sprinkle of salt and pepper. Pour over the cheese. Bake 15 minutes at 450º. Then, turn oven down to 350º and bake 10-15 minutes more, til knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let it cool completely before you put it into the refrigerator to save and serve later. Stefan Seip took the above picture over Riedseltz, France. The image shows 6 Perseids and one Non-Perseid meteor.

Talking with Students about Cichlids

I received many notes from students in Mrs. Maggio’s class at James Fallon Elementary School in Wayne, New Jersey, with whom I Skyped just yesterday. They asked about the Rift Lake cichlids that I keep in an aquarium in my bedroom. The questions were great and I enjoyed reading them. You can read all of them in their entirety in the comments section of the original story, My Cichlid Tank. Here are some things they asked and said: Francesca wrote: "Wow!!! Those cichlid fish are the coolest fish that I have seen!!! They are so many colors and are really cool different patterns. I think that it is awesome that they react to their surroundings. I also agree to the fact that they are beautiful! I would also love to have a cichlid fish as a pet." Kevin wrote: "I like that they swim with purpose unlike schooling fish, could you also tell how big they get and what they eat in the wild?" Nehal asked, "how many eggs?" Liam asked, "how many do you have?" Here is my answer to their many questions: Cichlids swim individually and with purpose. They don’t school with each other and each seems to react to its surroundings. That’s why I like looking at them; each is an individual.I just went upstairs to take a new photograph for this story, and this fish swam right over to see what I was doing!These cichlids are all from the African Rift Lakes in the middle of the continent. They are hundreds of different Rift Lake species and they are found nowhere else in the world. Cichlids are egg layers and lay anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of eggs. Many species of Rift Lake cichlids are very colorful and they come in a variety of colors and patterns.In their native lakes cichlids eat a variety of smaller aquatic animals and insects. Cichlids are often belligerent and you wouldn’t want to keep them in a normal community aquarium, so I keep them in a separate cichlid tank.They sort of pick on each other but not so terribly. I purchased these six cychlids at Eddie’s Tropical Aquarium near Albany, NY when they were about an inch or so long and now some of them are three to four inches long. If they grow too large for my aquarium I will have to bring them back to the aquarium store in which they were purchased and they will place them in much bigger tanks. They are not the easiest fish to keep in a home aquarium, but for me at least, they are definitely worth it!

Happy Earth Day to all my Readers!

NASA celebrated Earth Day by compositing this magnificent photograph of our home planet using data captured by the GOES-East satellite. In honor of Earth Day, I’d like to share this poem by Norman Nicholson. THE MOTION OF THE EARTH A day with sky so wide So stripped of cloud, so scrubbed, so vacuumed free Of dust, that you can see The earth-line as a curve, can watch the blue Wrap over the edge, looping round and under, Making you wonder Whether the dark has anywhere left to hide. But the world is slipping away; the polished sky Gives nothing to grip on; clicked from the knuckle The marble rolls along the gutter of time- Earth, star and galaxy Shifting their place in space. Noon, sunset, cloud, the equably varying weather, The diffused light, the illusion of blue, Conceal each hour a different constellation. All things are new Over the sun, but we Our eyes on our shoes, go staring At the asphalt, the gravel, the grass at the roadside, the door- step, the doodles of snails, the crochet of mortar and lime, Seeking the seeming familiar, though every stride Takes us a thousand miles from where we were before.

A New Book about The Moon

Seymour Simon’s new book,EARTH’S MOON: A SHIPMATE’S GUIDE to OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, has just been published byStarWalk Kids Media. It is available as an eBook right now, and we hope to publish it as a print book in the next year. The Moon is our closest shipmate in space, and as Seymour Simon writes in the book, we travel together on our journey through the Milky Way galaxy. This fascinating book answers questions like: Why does the Moon change shape in the night sky? Why does it look as though there is a face on the Moon’s surface? And will we ever visit there again? This is the second installment in Seymour Simon’s important new space series, A Shipmate’s Guide to Our Solar System. The first book,EARTH: A SHIPMATE’S GUIDEcame out last year, and received an excellent review from Kirkus. You can view avideo trailerof Seymour Simon’s newest book and find out how the Moon was formed - it was a dramatic event!

Hello, Illinois!

I noticed that a whole group of students from Illinois commented on various stories yesterday. Thanks for stopping by - I’m glad you are enjoying my blog! Would someone like to comment on this post, tell me about your school, where you are in Illinois, what grade you are in, and what you are studying in science? I’d love to hear from you.—- Seymour

A First Research Project

Yesterday I Skyped with kindergarteners at Van Meter Elementary School in Iowa. They are researching and writing their first reports, about animals. We had a good talk about how to begin a writing project. I asked them each which animal they were researching and to tell me one thing about that animal. Their teachers, Lynne Caltrider, Christa McClintock,and district librarian/technology specialist Shannon McClintock Miller, are taking advantage of the many Internet resources available not only to teach these young learners how to research a topic, but also how to use EasyBib.com to create accurate citations in their work. It was fun to share my process with these students. Whether you are five years old or an experienced writer like me, every writing project starts the same way - researching your topic and making an outline. And it finishes up with rewriting…and rewriting….and rewriting again!We will be back online together in a few weeks, as the students share their finished projects. I look forward to seeing their work.Photos courtesy of Shannon McClintock Miller

My Cichlid Tank

This is a photo of my cichlid tank. All the fish in here are African cichlids (pronounced SICK-lids), which means they originate from 3 very deep rift lakes that run from north to south along the Eastern coast of Africa. I love cichlids - in fact, I studied them when I was doing my Masters Work in Animal Behavior at the City University of New York. They are intelligent fish who actually react to what is going on around their tank (like when you walk over to look at them). And they swim with purpose, rather than moving aimlessly around the tank like schools of tropical fish do. I think they’re beautiful, too, don’t you?