Most Popular Books by Kathleen M. Reilly

Energy is a vital part of our lives. It powers our computer, lights our home, and moves our car. It also costs a lot of money and pollutes our environment. In Energy: 25 Projects Investigate Why We Need Power and How We Get It, kids ages 9–12 learn about the history and science of the world’s energy sources, from nonrenewable fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas to renewable sources such as solar and wind power. Sidebars and fun trivia break up the text, making it easily accessible and engaging, while hands-on projects encourage active learning. Requiring little adult supervision and using supplies commonly found in most households, activities range from constructing a battery to recreating an oil spill to see how difficult cleanup can be. By exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each energy source, kids will gain insight into the future of energy and its impact on our planet.

For a kid, watching a solid turn into a liquid or a liquid into a gas is nothing short of magic. In Explore Solids and Liquids! With 25 Great Projects kids experience the wonder of different states of matter. They’ll learn what matter is made of, how it can change, and how these interactions really work in our universe. With plenty of activities and projects, young readers gain a solid understanding of the matter they touch, see, feel, and experience every single day. As young readers discover the basic concepts and vocabulary of chemistry, they will experiment with household objects to discover how solids, liquids, and gases occupy space. Kids will dissolve solids into liquids and bring them back again, use salt and pepper to demonstrate water''s surface tension, and fly helium-filled balloons to see what happens to molecules at different temperatures. Illustrated with cartoon illustrations and filled with fun facts, Explore Solids and Liquids! makes science entertaining and exciting. Explore Solids and Liquids! meets common core state standards in language arts for reading informational text and literary nonfiction and is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.

The ground beneath your feet is solid, right? After all, how could we build houses and bridges on land if it was moving all the time? Actually, the ground beneath us really is moving all the time! In Fault Lines and Tectonic Plates: Discover What Happens When the Earth’s Crust Moves, readers ages 9 through 12 learn what exactly is going on under the dirt. The earth''s crust is moving constantly, but usually it’s moving too slowly for us to notice it. In Fault Lines and Tectonic Plates, readers learn about Pangea, the giant landmass that scientists believe existed long ago, and the tectonic plates that Pangea broke into, which we know as continents. And what happens when these slowly drifting continents bump up against each other along fault lines? Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tidal waves! Readers learn the geological reasons behind earthquakes and also practical ways of behaving in those types of natural disasters. In addition to earthquakes, tectonic plates create the landscape of our world over time. Mountains and trenches are the results of the slow movement of the earth’s crust. With science-minded projects such as a homemade earthquake “shake table” and edible tectonic boundaries, the complex and fascinating topic of plate tectonics is made accessible for kids to grasp, helping to raise their awareness about this amazing planet we live on. Links to online primary sources and videos make concepts clear and encourage kids to maintain a healthy curiosity in the topic. Guided reading levels and Lexile measurements place this title with appropriate audiences.

From the minute life begins, food makes you strong, helps you grow, and gives you energy. But do you take that ham sandwich for granted? You might not give a lot of thought to where your food comes from, how it got to you, what’s really in it, or what it does for you. Food: 25 Amazing Projects Investigate the History and Science of What We Eat gives kids some “food for thought” as they dive into exciting projects about the incredible world of food. Kids will have fun learning about all aspects of food in our daily lives—how vegetarians balance their diet, how some cultures rose and fell based on a single food source, the route from farm to market, how eating locally makes an impact, and much more.

When natural disasters happen they grab headlines around the world. People, creatures, and the environment are all impacted when nature gets out of control. Natural disasters can be upsetting to live through, but scientists today better understand their causes and how we can protect ourselves and others. Natural Disasters: Investigate Earth’s Most Destructive Forces with 25 Projects teaches readers about some of the natural disasters throughout history, what caused them, their impact on civilizations, and how people today cope with natural disasters. Readers of this book will make their own shake tables, create a cake batter lava flow, invent a wind tunnel, and experiment with avalanches. These hands-on activities engage readers and add depth to the text while ensuring that the learning is made lasting and fun.

Explore Life Cycles! takes kids on an amazing journey, where they''ll learn about the changes plants and animals experience throughout their lives. Kids ages 6–9 will discover what happens inside those magical cocoons to transform a caterpillar into a butterfly. They''ll explore how frogs breathe underwater as tadpoles, then use lungs as an adult. Explore Life Cycles! will examine how plants and animals are born, develop, and live their lives. Activities range from creating edible life cycles of insects to making a mealworm nursery. Using an eye-catching combination of cartoons, fun facts, and exciting projects, Explore Life Cycles! will bring the mysteries of life right into kids’ hands.

Planet Earth: 25 Environmental Projects You Can Build Yourself provides an engaging guide to the natural world and encourages children ages 9 and up to get their hands dirty and actively connect with the environment. It then introduces key environmental issues—wind and solar power, pollution, endangered species, global warming, and recycling—and posits potential solutions. Trivia, fun facts, and 25 captivating hands-on projects investigate ecology basics, such as the food chain, oxygen, and animal habitats, as well as ways to lessen the strain on Earth''s resources by reducing human consumption and waste. With Planet Earth kids will learn how to respect and protect our unique planet.

Kids will be amazed at all the action that’s going on right inside their own bodies, from understanding just how that apple turns into energy to how the “leftovers” make their exit. The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects Illuminate How the Body Works will engage kids with hands-on activities that will show them all the fantastic, well-orchestrated systems at work in their very own bodies—they’ll see exactly how smoke affects the lung, how the heart really acts as a liquid pump, and how the different joints are structured and serve different purposes. Kids will gain a concrete understanding of their bodies—and realize in the process just how amazing they really are.

To a child, a city is a chaotic, vibrant community whose workings can seem quite mysterious. How did people create subways? How does the water get to the very top of a skyscraper? Is there any organization to a bustling metropolis? Cities: Discover How They Work gives kids a view into the inner functioning of urban areas. They’ll learn about all the parts that come together to make cities work and how they’ve grown and changed since the very first riverside settlements. Fascinating sidebars, unique illustrations, Words to Know, and fun Did You Know facts combine with age-appropriate hands-on activities to make learning about complex urban environments fun and reinforce learning. Projects include creating subway cut-aways to understand how transportation systems work, building an aqueduct to learn how cities get water, and experimenting with skyscraper design and water filtration. This STEAM title, which integrates science, technology, engineering, art, and math includes a glossary, list of resources, and index. Cities meets common core state standards in language arts for reading informational text and literary nonfiction and is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. Guided Reading Levels and Lexile measurements indicate grade level and text complexity.

Soil! We walk on it, play in it, build with it, grow our food in it, and get antibiotics from it. But what exactly is soil? What makes it so important? Can we survive without it? In Explore Soil! With 25 Great Projects, young readers learn how vital soil is to our lives. It filters the water we drink and the air we breathe, and most of the food we eat either grows in soil or subsists on plants that grow there. Soil is a very important part of our daily diet! Activities such as exploring soil runoff, composting, and analyzing soil composition offer kids the chance to get their hands dirty while coming face to face with the study of soil. Kids learn concepts within the fields of life science and chemistry while discovering the dangers soil faces. Explore Soil offers fun, practical information about something kids already love: soil!

Contains twenty-five projects that teach weather and climate, including creating a storm in a bottle and touching clouds.

Offers 25 hands-on projects that help to answer the how and why behind the what of weather.

"Đất là thành phần quan trọng đối với hành tinh của chúng ta cũng như với mọi loài sinh vật sống trên đó. Đất không đơn thuần là nơi con người sinh sống, chăn nuôi và trồng trọt, bản thân đất đã là một hệ sinh thái vô cùng phức tạp, mà nếu bị phá hủy, thì loài người cũng không thể tồn tại. Nguồn lương thực của nhân loại phụ thuộc vào đất, nguồn nước uống bắt nguồn từ đất, do đó, giữ đất sạch khỏe chính là bảo toàn cuộc sống khỏe mạnh của loài người." --