With a moo moo here, And a moo moo there, Here a moo, there a moo, Everywhere a moo moo. “Mom, will there be cows and pigs and chickens on the farm?” Home gardening isn’t quite as interesting to
Melody as the anticipation of getting up close and personal to cows and chickens and pigs. Her seven-year-old twin brother feels the same way. Waiting patiently for seeds to become yummy vegetables is not part of Mallory’s nature, and even waiting for lettuce seedlings to grow into salad material is too long. Better to dream about an adventure that’s only a week away. With an oink oink here, and an oink oink there, Here an oink…
Our main focus of BioFables is on illuminating STEM principles through entertaining stories. However, we need to emphasize that STEM knowledge and, especially, applying STEM in the real world require a balancing Humanities perspective. Science and Humanities represent the two sides of practical human learning, left-brain (analytical) and right-brain (creative).
This is why we are building several tools to help you determine the value of each BioFables book’s STEM and Humanities content in selecting which BioFables books to give to your young readers:
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- Outline of all STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Knowledge Gateways, Subjects and Topics
- Outline of all Humanities Knowledge Gateways, Subjects and Topics
- Table of STEM and Humanities learning topics by Chapter
The first outline presents a summary of all the STEM Knowledge Gateways (or branches, if you prefer), Subjects and Topics occuring in E-I-E-I-Uh Oh. This will give you an overvew of the entire book’s STEM lessons that are woven into the E-I-E-I-Uh Oh story.
The second outline provides the same information for the Humanities lessons.
The table of STEM and Humanities places the combined learning topics into the specific chapter where it occurs. We’re in the process of updating each book’s topic reference tables. The table shows the breadth of each book’s content, identified by chapter. Subjects and topics of the middle column appear in bold, followed by abbreviated versions of their Knowledge Gateway(s) in parentheses. The table should be helpful in discussing each book as your children progress through the chapters. Follow the links for further investigation. Child-friendly sites appear in orange.
Want to make things even more interesting? Learn about taking the BioFables Challenge.
Please be aware that subjects and topics are unique to each book, so the following outlines do not reflect a complete list of subjects and topics within any category.
Thanks for your patience as we build these resources for you.
| CHAPTER | SUBJECTS/TOPICS | RESOURCE LINKS |
| Helpful Hints | Family relationships (Social); Car pollution (Earth) | |
| Chapter 1 And Lettuce Seeds All in a Row |
Family relationships (Social); Gardening (Life Skills); Farming (Earth, Work/careers); Symbols (Math) | Equal, Less than, Greater than, Symbols |
| Family trees and gardens grow a lot quieter than Yellowstone’s whooshing geysers, but all of them are natural wonders. | ||
| Chapter 2 A Car of the Future? |
Hydrogen fuel; Water (Chemistry); Environment (Earth) | |
| Even Rufus (woof) gets to go on a 300-mile test drive of an experimental “clean air” car while the rest of the Maloney family learn about the fuel cells that power it. | ||
| Chapter 3 Down to Earth |
Generosity, graciousness (Values); Cow milking time; soil bacteria, use in antibiotics (Biology); pH (Chemistry) | How Fuzzy Logic Rice Cookers Work Testing pH of Soil Using Kitchen Ingredients |
| Seven-year-old Melody and Mallory explain to Aunt Martha what they learned about pH at Yellowstone, while Uncle Frank reveals what causes that nice “after-rain” smell. | ||
| Chapter 4 Brrr! |
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| Mallory loves the cold, but getting trapped inside an icy meat locker? Could he be a cold-loving “extremophile” (on the other extreme that his sister discovered at Yellowstone? | Skin sticking to cold objects (Physics); Calm reasoning; Gardening (Life Skills); Sibling loyalty (Values); Sausage ingredients; Cow eyes (Biology) | Why Does Skin Stick to Cold Things? |
| Chapter 5 A Chicken in Every Pot |
Catching, preparing chicken for cooking (Biology, Life Skills); Making a campfire (Life Skills); Hand water pump (Physics); Groundwater; Geysers; Climate zones (Earth); Aquifer – word derivation (Language) | What Is the Water Table? How Does a Hand Pump Work? Plant Hardiness Zones How to Pluck a Chicken |
| Mallory and Melody learn first-hand how chicken dinners start with catching chickens, not with a trip to the grocery store. And that you can pump water out of the ground instead of turning on a faucet. | ||
| Chapter 6 A Farm Chore Turns Fun |
Farming life, sharing household chores (Social); Sunrise, sky color transition (Earth); Cow milking techniques (Biology); Software engineering (Work) | How to Milk a Cow |
| Tradition and advanced technology are part of farm life, such as hand-milking cows the old fashioned way and steaming vegetables using a “fuzzy-logic” cooker. | ||
| Chapter 7 Dark! |
Night sky; Big Dipper (Earth); Taking care of tools; Telling time by stars (Life Skills); Writing Poetry; Telling stories (Arts) | Finding the North Star in the Sky |
| On a dark, clear night, you don’t need a compass to know which direction is north, or a watch to tell time. The twins enjoy Uncle Frank’s story about how the Milky Way came about. | ||
| Chapter 8 Back to Familiar Life |
Traditions (Social); Extremophile; Aging eyesight (Biology); Dry ice, temperature (Physics, Chemistry); Chemical composition (Chemistry); Airplane pilot; Retirement (Work); Play on words (Language); Clean fuel (Earth) | What Is Dry Ice? (Links, including child-friendly) |
| The twins learn that “dry” ice isn’t ice at all, but it’s a lot colder than ice made from ordinary H2O. They also learn that Grandpa was an airplane pilot during his military days. | ||
| Next Adventure | Gardening (Like Skills); Nutritious meals; healthy aging (Health); Reducing pollution (Earth); Generosity, gratitude (Values); Play on words (Language); Creating star map (Art) | |
| On a black mat, the twins arrange stones, then connect them with string, and sprinkle sugar to create a portion of the night sky’s BIG picture. |
STEM Content: Entire Book 2, E-I-E-I Uh Oh
Branches and sub-branches in Book 2:
- Biology: Microbes/Bacteria; Plants; Animals; People
- Chemistry: Structure; Function
- Physics: Mechanics; Heat and Temperature
- Earth, Space Science: Astronomy; Geography; Geology; Environment
- Math: Symbols; Software
- Technology: Physics (Mechanics)
- Engineering: Math (Software)
Specific subjects and topics appear in the right column, next to their respective branches and sub-branches.
| BRANCHES/SUB-BRANCHES | SUBJECTS AND TOPICS |
| BIOLOGY | Life and living things |
| Microbes/Bacteria | Soil bacteria: used in antibiotics, cause of “after-rain” smell |
| Extremophiles: could a little boy be an extremophile? | |
| Plants | Planting a vegetable garden |
| Animals | It’s 4:30 AM. Time to milk the cows! Cow eyes, sausage ingredients |
| People | Declining eyesight: Often due to aging |
| CHEMISTRY | Substances, their structure, behavior, interactions |
| Structure | Hydrogen fuel: not as scary as it sounds |
| Water: liquid that all of biology needs to live; comes from rain, groundwater |
|
| Function | pH: Chemical condition of a solution, from 0 to 14 (H2O = 7, neutral) |
| PHYSICS | Properties and nature of matter and energy |
| Mechanics | Suction (partial vacuum) raises water to a higher level |
| Heat, Temperature | How cold is cold? Temperature of “dry ice” |
| Low temperature alert! Bare skin can stick to cold surfaces | |
| EARTH, SPACE SCIENCE | Related to planet Earth and beyond |
| Astronomy | Above Earth: space, planets and stars, the universe |
| Stars, planets | Telling time by movement of stars in the sky |
| Geography | Continents, countries, oceans and other waters, and their features |
| Farming | Experiencing first-hand how a farm family practices agriculture (a fancy word for growing crops and raising animals for food) |
| Climate zones | Areas of the world defined by temperature and precipitation |
| Geology | Earth’s physical structure, substance, history, processes |
| Groundwater | Walk on a water table: underground water held in a layer of porous rock or other materials, called an aquifer |
| Geysers | Impact on groundwater depends on rain, rivers, other natural ways of replenishing eruption of water |
| Environment | Physical, chemical and biological conditions that impact people, animals, plants and microbes |
| Pollution |
Reducing harmful substances in cars: clean fuel |
| MATH | Numbers, quantities and analysis |
| Symbols | Marks take a lot less space than writing “greater than” and “less than” |
| Software | “Fuzzy logic” software is used in many products we use very day |
| TECHNOLOGY | Tools (products) and techniques using science |
| Physics: Mechanics | Get water out of the ground with a hand pump |
| ENGINEERING | Application of technology |
| Math: Software engineering |
Using computer science to improve or fix problems arising from programs and other information used by computers |
NOTE: Tables of Humanities and Values content for E-I-E-I Uh Oh are being prepared and will be uploaded as soon as possible.