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Starting tomorrow with Earth Day (April 22) and all the way through Arbor Day (April 30), Please Touch Museum will be celebrating Earth Week with the goal of promoting environmental awareness and stewardship. By building for their own futures and understanding their role or place in the world, children grow to care for nature and learn about individual responsibility.

Join us for Earth Week themed Story Times in the Story Castle where families will receive "Creative Re-Use and Play for Everyday!" booklets, which are filled with wonderful ideas on how they can be "green" while playing with their children and having fun. The booklets are printed on recycled paper and offer tips on how to support environmental awareness by using recycled materials, reducing waste and learning to practice creative re-use at home. In addition, Earth Day Kits donated by Plan Toys will be given out tomorrow, April 22, specifically for Earth Day. Be sure to get yours!

Check out this list of educational programming:

• Recycled print making and 'decorate the museum' with high school ACES students in the Program Room on Saturday, April 24 by creating recycled collages on chairs to be used in front of the Kids Store.
• March, move, shake, rattle and roll using recycled musical instruments at the End of the Day Parades.
• Hide and Seek out author Dan Lipow's Original Prints from "I Love Our Earth" (pictured above and below).
• Take a trip to the great outdoors without even leaving the Program Room during the Creative Dramatics Camping Kids Playtime.
• Join the silly Chefs Charlene, Sean and Sheldon at the Kooky Cooks Recycling Show in the Supermarket as they discover how to renew, reuse, and remake using everyday household items, a little imagination, a very special cooking pot, and lot of laughs!
• Look for appearances from Corny the Acorn Puppet: Corny is often seen in the Exploring Trees: Inside and Out exhibit, making sure visitors are doing “Oak-Kay” while they play and learn about trees and nature.

Looking for ways to celebrate Earth Week at home?

• Read Dr. Suess’ book "Lorax" and Dan Lipow's "I Love Our Earth"
• Plant flowers
• Sign up for a park or community clean-up
• Create a family tree, literally! Get together with your family to spend the day outside and plant a tree. You will be able to watch it grow as your family grows!
• Enjoy the outdoors by taking a nature walk through Fairmount Park

Click at the top to change the fish! Use your mouse to make it swim!
Above all, protect the environment and Earth!

Mission Planet Earth is written by Sally Ride and Tam O'Shaugnessy on one of those topics that is very close to my heart. I think that kids today really really really need to read as many books about saving our planet as possible, in order to truly understand what the future generations are facing in terms of conservation, energy use, and how we have broken our Planet Earth with our actions.

This book is a pretty basic introduction into what we as humans have done to the planet with our wastefulness, pollution, and overuse of natural resources. Parts read a bit technically, but for the most part, we get a clear overview of the issues. There are some pretty awesome (yet devastating) photographs that accompany the text and further explain the need to take some serious action when it comes to the planet.

Before seeing this book I had no idea that Sally Ride, the first woman in space, had written books! Apparently she's written a few others as well, but I was pretty impressed with this one. A very nice addition to libraries.

To learn more or to purchase, click on the book cover above to link to Amazon.

Mission Planet Earth
Sally Ride and Tam O'Shaugnessy
80 pages
Non-Fiction
Roaring Brook Press (Flash Point)
9781596433106
March 2009

Molly Bang always does a wondeful job on her books, both in authoring and illustrating and this title is no exception. Joined by author Penny Chisholm, the book Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life has been born...and beautifully so. Perfect for my Earth Week series!

Our young readers are going to love looking at the beautiful illustrations, while learning about the seemingly complex subject of photosynthesis and how necessary plants are for survival on Earth. The Sun narrates the story of how light gives us plants, plants give us oxygen, and how we need to care for those plants and the Earth in order to allow the process to continue successfully. Without those plants, we would have no oxygen to breathe.

There are four pages of more factual notes at the end of the story, to really hit the idea home. Though photosynthesis typically is deemed a "boring" topic or one reserved only for school, Living Sunlight was a delight to read and will definitely be enjoyed by kids.

Great for library shelves, an Earth Day/Arbor Day display, or for kids that just loooove nature and learning.

To learn more or to purchase click on the book cover above to link to Amazon.

Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life
Molly Bang & Penny Chisholm
40 pages
Non-Fiction
Blue Sky Press
9780545044226
February 2009

What a wonderful book I've stumbled across, combining faith and conserving the planet. Gardening Eden: How Creation Care Will Change Your Faith, Your Life, and Our World is written by Michael Abbate, with a foreword by Randy Alcorn.

The summary (which is much better put than I could ever write) is as follows, with my thoughts following that:

Before the snake, the apple, and the Ten Commandments, God created a garden, placed humans in it, and told them to take care of it.

“Spiritual environmentalism” did not start out as an oxymoron—it was an invitation. Yet today, many believe God’s original job description for humankind has been replaced by other worthier pursuits. So when did this simple instruction become so controversial? How does one sort through all the mixed messages? Is making the world a healthier place for the next generation really a responsibility—or even possible?

Gardening Eden is a new understanding of how the spiritual dimensions of life can find expression and renewal through caring for our incredible planet. Empowering, simple, and never polemical, Michael Abbaté outlines the Bible’s clear spiritual benefits of caring for creation, exploring new motivations and inspired ideas, and revealing the power of our basic connection to all people and living things through the growing interest in spiritual environmentalism.

Green living is no longer a fad—simple lifestyle solutions are now available to everyone. Gardening Eden shows readers how this shift transforms not only our world, but their very souls as they’re drawn into deeper harmony with the Creator. This book invites them to discover the powerful spiritual satisfaction of heeding the call to save our world.



At some points I thought Gardening Eden was a tad bit dry, but overall author makes the topic extremely intriguing. He also included some great Bible verses, each of which really made me think about the underlying meanings...taken literally or figuratively, each pertains to us caring for our Earth, because in reality it isn't even ours. It's God's Earth.

"The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters" (Psalm 24: 1-2)

"For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible..."(Colossians 1: 16)
"The the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east... The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it." (Genesis 2: 8, 15)
"Because of this the land mourns and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying." (Hosea 4:3)

Overall, a pretty good, interesting read. A great choice for libraries and for my celebration of Earth week!!

To learn more or to purchase, click on the book cover above to link to Amazon OR follow this link to Random House:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307444998&ref=externallink_wbm_gardeningeden_sec_0309_01