Zombie Parent's Guide: Spring Into Science 2018 at Savage Library

Our local library has a "Spring into Science" program for the pre-school crowd. My prescholar attended the first session where the theme was "hibernation." We read some books about bears coming out of hibernation. One was a cute book about a bear couple waking up for Valentine's Day, celebrating, and going back to sleep (the book was The Valentine Bears). The other book was Bear's Big Breakfast, where a newly awakened bear goes in search of food, being assisted by a bunny, a bee, and eventually a boy who offers the bear berries. The craft was making a "b" book featuring the animals and the berries from the book. Work on the craft included using scissors to cut out the animal names, something our preschooler took a little too much delight in...

They let me use scissors!!

Gluing in the bear

Gluing in names with glee

In addition to the craft, the librarian also provided a science experiment. Bears eat a lot of food before hibernating to get a layer of fat on their bodies. The fat provides both energy and insulation against the cold winter. To demonstrate the insulating ability of fat, first we tried holding a ice cube in our bare (not bear) hands.

"It's cold, Daddy!"

Next, we used ziplocks full of fat as an insulator (it was vegetable fat, not actual animal fat). It did do a great job insulating against ice.

"Am I even holding an ice cube?"

We finished up the craft by daubing some berries on the back page baskets.

Berry bashing boy

The final product

The second session we attended (which was the third in the series) had "tracks" as the theme. The librarian told us all about ways to track animals and things that they would leave behind. We read the book Moose Tracks!, about a home full of moose tracks. The book was written by Karma Wilson from The Bear series. We also did tracking bingo with a sheet of items an animal might leave (with items like web, skin, gnawed wood for spider, snake, and beaver).

Ready for bingo

The first stamp

The first craft we worked on was another book. This time, we made a book of animals and their footprints. Putting the book together was fun if fraught with peril since we used scissors again. We had a fun time stamping the footprints in at the end.

Gluing pictures into the book

Stamping the tracks into the book

One table had all sorts of animal leftovers, including sea shells, snake skins, feathers, and an abandoned bird's nest. My son's favorite thing on the table was the magnifying glass, which he said made me look like I was under water. My favorite thing was the snake skin where you could see the eye sockets!

Magnifying the fun

A shark tooth!

Feathers and the nest

snake skin

Close up of the head

Another craft was to make an outdoors scene with some animal tracks. All that was involved was some gluing and stamping, so it was much less stressful for me.