Menu Close

THE SEASONS and the Science of Phenology

THE SCIENCE OF SEASONS

 Franklyn M. Branley’s Sunshine Makes the Seasons (HarperCollins, 2005) in the Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science Series clearly explains how the earth’s tilt and rotation create seasons. Included is a hands-on demonstration using an orange and a flashlight. For ages 4-8.

Gail Gibbons’s The Reasons for Seasons (Holiday House, 1996) is a brightly illustrated explanation of seasons, solstices, and equinoxes, with notes on seasonal behaviors of plants and animals. For ages 5-8.
Cool project: track (and graph) the changing seasons by recording sunrise and sunset times.
Khan Academy has an excellent (free) series of short, well-done videos on the reasons for seasons. Topics covered range from the Earth’s tilt to Milankovitch cycles and precession.
From TeacherVision, Seasons has activities and printables for each of the four seasons, categorized by season or discipline (Art and Music, Reading and Language, Social Studies, Math, Science, and Weather).

Janice Van Cleave’s Science Around the Year (Wiley, 2000) is a collection of (very) simple and (mostly) seasonally themed experiments, grouped under Spring, Fall, Summer, and Winter. Each experiment is introduced with a scientific fact and a paragraph of background information, and followed by a short associated book list and an extension activity. For each season, there’s also a list of scientific and/or historical “Dates to Mark on Your Calendar.” Recommended for ages 9 and up but can be used for much younger.

SEASONAL POEMS

 Bill Martin, Jr.’s picture book The Turning of the Year (Sandpiper, 2007) is a rhyming celebration of each month of the year. (“In February, bound with snow/I sled the hillside, top to toe.”) For ages 3-7.
Paul B. Janeczko’s Firefly July (Candlewick, 2018) is a collection of very short poems for each season of the year, with gorgeous illustrations by Melissa Stewart. For ages 4-8.

Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months (HarperCollins, 1991), originally published in 1962, is as catchy now as ever. (“In January/it’s so nice/while slipping/on the sliding ice/to sip hot chicken soup/with rice.”) What better way to learn the months of the year? For ages 4-8.

Joyce Sidman’s Red Sings From Treetops: A Year in Colors (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2009) is a wonderful multisensory celebration of the changing seasons through colors. In spring, for example, red “sings from treetops” and “sprouts in rhubarb spears;” green “peeks from buds,” and yellow “slips goldfinches their spring jackets.” For ages 4-8.

Nicola Davies’s Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature (Candlewick, 2012) is a collection of evocative (and informational) poems, categorized by season, and illustrated with a creative multimedia mix of collages, woodcuts, watercolors, and ink. The book is a thoughtful lesson on the wonders of observation, as readers explore such phenomena as the life cycle of frogs, the sprouting of toadstools, and bird migration. For ages 4-8.

Sid Farrar’s The Year Comes Round: Haiku through the Seasons (Albert Whitman & Company, 2012) has an illustrated nature-themed haiku for each month of the year. (“The morning rain bursts/dandelions from the earth like/countless little suns.”) For ages 4-8.

Miriam Weiner’s Shakespeare’s Seasons (Downtown Bookworks, 2012) is a lovely collection of short (very short) excerpts from Shakespeare’s poems and plays, illustrated with elaborate collage, cut-and-paste, and origami images, arranged in order by season. For example, a snippet from Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”)  is paired with a summer beach scene. For ages 4-8.

By Anna Grossnickle Hines, Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts (Greenwillow Books, 2003) pairs simple seasonal poems with wonderful photographs of colorful season-themed patchwork quilts. (Try a cloth or paper quilt-and-poetry project of your own.) For ages 4-9.

Bob Raczka’s Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010), with delightful illustrations by Peter Reynolds, is a collection of short poems about boys’ (just boys) outdoor activities throughout the year. (“The wind and I play/tug-of-war with my new kite./The wind is winning.”) For ages 5-8.
See How to Guyku for instructions, hints, and printables.

In Leo and Diane Dillon’s To Everything There Is a Season (Blue Sky Press, 1998), the famous verses from the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes (“To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven…”) are illustrated with exquisite art representative of a wide range of periods and cultures, among them Egyptian tomb paintings, Japanese woodblock prints, Greek red-and-black ceramics, Australian aboriginal bark paintings, Russian icons, and more. For all ages.

The title of Joseph Bruchac’s Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back (Puffin, 1997) refers to the native American legend that the thirteen scales on Old Turtle’s back represent the thirteen lunar months of the year. For each moon – among them the Moon of Popping Trees, Baby Bear Moon, Moose-Calling Moon, and the Moon When the Wolves Run Together – there’s a seasonally descriptive poem and a gorgeous oil painting by Thomas Locker. For ages 6 and up.

Julie Andrews’ Treasury for All Seasons (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2012) is a beautifully illustrated collection of poems and songs celebrating the seasons of the year. Included are works by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, Jack Prelutsky, and Langston Hughes. For ages 6 and up.

Compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Sharing the Seasons (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2010) features twelve poems by various poets for each of the four seasons of the year, with wonderful illustrations by David Diaz. For ages 8 and up.

One of the excellent Poetry for Young People series, The Seasons (Sterling, 2005), edited by John N. Serio, is a 48-page illustrated and annotated collection of season-based poems by such poets as Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, e.e. cummings, and William Shakespeare. For ages 9-12.

By Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark, A Year Full of Poems (Oxford University Press, 1996) is an illustrated collection of seasonal poems – several for each month of the year – by a wide range of poets, among them Elizabeth Coatsworth, Louis Untermeyer, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, and David McCord. For ages 9 and up.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,