Explore Gravity!: With 25 Great Projects

Explore Your World

by Cindy Blobaum, Bryan Stone (Illustrations)

How can something that grounds us and keeps us here on this earth be so invisible and mysterious? We’re not talking about anything abstract and undetectable. We’re talking about GRAVITY! Gravity is a force that affects everyone and everything. Gravity is something we can easily understand, even kids, especially if they have the right tools to teach them.

Explore Gravity! With 25 Great Projects will introduce kids ages 6-9 to the basics of gravity, including concepts of matter, attraction, and gravitational pull. Projects include creating a working model of a scale to learn what “weight” really means and how it’s affected by gravity. By playing with various weights to make a marvelous mobile, readers learn about the center of balance and how martial artists use this knowledge to throw their weight around. All the projects in this book are easy to follow, require little adult supervision, and use commonly found household products, many from the recycling box! The fun facts, trivia, jokes, comics, and hands-on activities will help kids discover the captivating science of gravity. Furthermore, the informational text and hands-on activities will excite kids about STEM, the interrelated fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

With wanderlust and curiosity that knew few bounds, Cindy Blobaum worked and traveled around the United States and Australia before settling down in Iowa. Her jobs have included positions as a seasonal zoo keeper, quality control technician at a potato chip factory, carnival barker, waitress, and ice skating guard.

Her professional life is as a naturalist (aka field trip lady), educator, and mom. Time and experience have shown that her strengths lie in making science understandable and fun through activities and unusual explanations, which she channels through her books, programs, elementary science methods classes, school presentations, and WFH curriculum writing.

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First reviewed on Redeemed Reader

Explore Gravity is part activity book, part experiment book, and part textbook that explores gravity-related concepts (cause of gravity, effects of gravity, past discoveries) and features coordinating activities and experiments. Explanations of complex scientific concepts are very student-friendly. Most activities could be accomplished at home with basic household supplies. The book is well organized and includes a good glossary as well as resources for further study. In addition, there is a timeline that showcases a nice history of gravity-related discoveries and famous scientists (space and astronomy concepts; Copernicus, Gallileo, Kepler, and others). Remarkably little evolutionary language is used for a book that references space, but some readers may be disappointed in the use of BCE/CE references for dates. All in all, this is a nice resource for extra science enrichment and provides an opportunity to explore a fascinating element of creation, particularly when we remember that all of creation holds together in and is sustained by Christ Himself.

[Susie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember who recommended this to me, but I will be adding it to our school library. So much information and activities packed into one book! Some of my favorite suggestions: if you're stuck in an avalanche, spit or cry to see which direction the liquids go; that will help you determine which way is up; I know you can put a scale in an elevator to help measure g's, but I might really do it this time.

Only one small qualm; some times zero gravity is mentioned, then microgravity. As the book explains, everything in the universe experiences gravity! And there are few gas molecults floating around near the moon, but I wouldn't characterize it as no atmosphere.

I plan to check out the other books in this series as well.

[Chantia Singleton]

With vocabulary words like matter, velocity, attraction, gravity and more, literacy instruction and integration would be impossible to miss with this book. It would be great in a science center library. Last semester, I wrote a paper on how the integration of science and literacy aids in maximizing learning opportunities on both ends of the content spectrum. This book would have been a perfect example of why. There are so many literacy factors about it and could aid in creating a pretty rad science word wall.

[Teresa Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the "Focus on Science" series, this fascinating large-format paperback book introduces children to the concept of gravity, and provides 25 projects they can use to test, prove, and explore gravity. That doesn't sound particularly enthralling, right? However, the book is filled with fun facts, interesting insights and even some history on the development of our understanding of gravity. To be frank, it was fun to read, and children will enjoy the projects. Black and white illustrations abound. This is a book that merits a place in school libraries.

[Terry]

A teacher used this with her class and it worked fairly well. The text was easy to follow, the content was good and projects were very interesting. The topic is well researched and the projects well thought out.

To read our full review, go to the Reading Tub.