Balloons (Boston Children's Museum Activity Book) - Softcover

James Beard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0688083242 ISBN 13: 9780688083243

Publisher: William Morrow & Company, 1971

Synopsis

Text and experiments introduce scientific principles that can be demonstrated with balloons and other inflatable toys

About this title

About the Author

In His Own Words...

"When I was a kid growing up, I would often mess around with my father’s tools in the basement of my house. I built all sorts of things. One time I borrowed a book from the library and built a bunch of model boats from scraps of wood, copying the drawings given in the book. Other times, I took things apart to see how they worked. Usually I couldn’t get them to work after I put them back together. Once I took a mechanical clock apart and reassembled it into a motor.

"This messing around was a big part of my elementary science education, because I never had science in elementary or middle school. In fact, I had only two science courses in high school before I majored in chemistry in college. A lot of the science I knew came from tinkering and from reading books that I borrowed from the library.

"Looking back on my childhood, I think I would have found the kinds of books I now write very useful. That’s one reason I have written them. I hope that they excite the imagination of children while giving them practical directions about exploring some basic everyday phenomena. The books in-clude many activities exploring the same phenomena in different ways, and that helps readers develop a good intuition about a phenomenon’s essential properties. This can be the basis for understanding science concepts introduced in school.

"To make sure that what I have written is interesting to kids and that the activities are ones they can carry out, I have tested all of them in elementary schools and sometimes in after-school and museum programs. These experiences have helped me to understand how children think about different phenomena and what children are capable of doing with limited instructions. The combination of working with kids and then writing books for them has been a real pleasure, because it has allowed me to pursue my interests in art, science, and education."

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Publication date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688083242
• ISBN 13: 9780688083243
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206