Photo from www.greatlakespress.com

I was surfing the web late one night when I happened upon a very interesting discovery – another Engineering alphabet book!

I had been googling (that’s a verb, now, right :0)  “Engineering the ABCs” and wondering why my website was not in the 1^st thousand or so tier of Google hits (but that’s a different story for a different day…)  Amongst those thousand or so hits I viewed on my Google list, one buried near the end of my search caught my eye.  Words such as “project to increase engineering in children’s literature” and “alphabet book about Engineering” electrified my brain.

Since I began my search 5 years ago for engineering books for young children, I had not found a single book that truly represented an introduction to engineering for the preschool to grade 3 set, which is the reason for my current path in life.  So finding another engineering book for young children was a bit akin to finding other life forms in the Cosmos.

This engineering alphabet book is titled “Engineering From A to Z: It’s Everywhere” and was published a couple of years ago by Great Lakes Press.  This company also offers another engineering book for young children titled “My Mom’s an Engineer” – I really liked the title for that one!  The only problem is that in my bleary state the other night, I could not readily find how to order a copy, hmmmm….

"Coffee and Paper" by Suat Eman

Engineering and the Humanities are two subjects I generally do not put together.  And I don’t think I’m alone on that one.

But the Marketing Wiz (Melissa Wiaduck) from my publishing house (Nelson Publishing & Marketing) helped me see a new and different path.  Recently, she suggested I apply to be listed in the Directory of Humanities Professionals on the Michigan Humanities Council website.  In her words, “I don’t see anything on there indicating they are currently running an engineering education program for elementary students, so being new to them is good!”

Upon 1^st glance at their website, I couldn’t see the connection between educating elementary students about engineering and the Humanities Council.  Words like dance and history and music and culture swirled before my eyes.  I pondered the big question: “How does engineering relate here?”

Well, think horses → to cars → to airplanes.  Or paper & pencil → to telephone → to Facebook & Twitter.  Throughout the ages, engineers have helped shape our culture, our world, our history.

Thinking of it this way, how can we not put engineering & the humanities together?

Illustration from Page 6 of my book "Engineering the ABC's"

I was looking at my son’s 2^nd grade “Motion” booklet on Wed. evening, and I saw a great teachable moment for incorporating engineering into the lesson.

The Motion booklet is part of their science curriculum and has activities such as building paper planes and seeing how far they will fly.  Making paper helicopters and sailing some boats are included too. This science lesson aims to give children an awareness of motion in the world around them.

One page really caught my eye.  This page had the students run different cars down different materials with different slopes.  Then asked questions on the 2^nd and 3^rd rounds such as “what changed?” & “why.”  Oh this is engineering at its finest!

Engineers often conduct experiments such as the car one to discover the effects of various materials, the effects of varying slopes, even the effects of 1 car shape vs another or 1 car weight vs another.  A big part of engineering is finding answers to “what will happen if I do x or y or z or a combination of the 3?”

I could go on for pages and days, but I’m stopping there because that is enough for 2^nd graders.  Two sentences – that’s all that’s needed to give the students an awareness of engineering.

I encourage you to add sentences like these to your curriculum.  Let me help you.  Contact me today to review your lesson plans and together, we will find a few places to add a few sentences.

Engineering doesn’t need to be the “silent E” in your STEM program any longer!

Do you Twitter?  I don’t.  I signed up in January or February of this year and to date, I have 6 followers, 5 people I follow and 6 tweets.  Compared to some Twitter fanatics who have 10,000+ followers and billions of tweets, I am non-existent in the Twitter universe.

Why did I join Twitter?  Well, I thought it might be nice to learn something new.

Why do I stay with Twitter when I’m not tweeting? Well, I’m not really sure.  Something about Twitter keeps pulling at me.  Perhaps it’s the desire to truly understand Twitter.  Or to truly understand why millions of people are crazy about Twitter.  Or to learn a new technology.  Or maybe it’s because my kids think the name “Twitter” is absolutely adorable.  Or just maybe because that Twitter bird is so cute!

I really enjoy Facebook.  I like to see friend’s pictures, new Facebook games they’re playing, comments from others on friends’ status updates, etc.  I do like when Facebook emails me about writings on my wall because I do not check Facebook everyday.

Then there’s LinkedIn.  At first, I wasn’t sure about LinkedIn.  I liked the professional aspect to it, but it seemed lacking in truly connecting the various web networks while Facebook is amazingly good at connecting people.  Slowly, LinkedIn is getting better.  I really like the weekly updates from my LinkedIn connections.  LinkedIn sends these updates to my email and I can see at a glance, what many people are doing this week.

But Twitter is just Twitter.  It doesn’t email me to alert me to status updates.  It doesn’t send me a summary of weekly happenings in my network.  And to top it off, it can be difficult to jump in and out of Twitter.  I find that if I don’t read some people’s Twitter updates daily, I can’t make heads or tails of their Twitter pages chock full of @replies, retweets and status updates.

As I’m writing this post, I just remembered a recent email LinkedIn sent me about adding Twitter to my LinkedIn account.  Now that could be the smartest move yet by LinkedIn!

I recently decided that Twitter was just not for me (although I never canceled my account – it was on my list).  Then along came David Haslam.

Yesterday, I attended a wonderful meeting of local Michigan authors.  David was one of the authors at the meeting and he wrote “The Twitter Workbook.”  David got me excited again about trying Twitter and I purchased a copy of his book.  Maybe now, I can truly understand Twitter – I’ll keep you “posted”.

Do you Twitter? If so, what do you like about it?  If not, please share your reason for not “tweeting.”

Photo by Patty

I especially enjoy the Thanksgiving Holiday.  It fills my heart with such warmth when I “give thanks” for the many blessings of my life.

The past few weeks, my friends have given me such warmth and support.  Kind words of encouragement, sharing in my excitement and expressing genuine interest in my book.  For you, I am truly thankful.

Would you like to share what you are thankful for?

I am so very excited!  My book is officially at the printers!!!

In a few short weeks, I will be holding my book in my hands and yes it is a bit like a baby to me (although not that precious).

My dream is that many adults (teachers, parents, caregivers) will read this book with or to a young person.  I want young people to hear the word “engineer” at a time in their lives when they also hear about firefighters, teachers, doctors, musicians, lawyers, police officers and more.