Monday, May 25, 2009

Living media: The Way Things Work videos

Our family enjoys David Macaulay books, from Cathedral, Castle, and Underground to The Way Things Work; soon we will have The Way We Work on our home science shelves, too.

The Way Things Work introduces basic science concepts, often using brief stories involving mammoths. It then has wonderful illustrations of all sorts of inventions that operate based on the concept introduced. (See my review on the Shelfari widget.)



The book has an accompanying video series. We recently borrowed the Electricity DVD from the library. Instead of just being a reproduction of the work, the video is actually an expansion of the mini-stories introducing science concepts.

If these were books they would be excellent living science books. Instead they are great animated science tales. My kids keep asking to watch them, so we'll be renting more soon!

7 comments:

Cheryl said...

This is an awesome find! Thanks for the tip, I'll be looking for these!

Dana Leeds said...

Yes. Thanks for the tip! We just borrowed our first of these books this week. We've been reading the one about how your body works. It's a wonderful book!

Our library has 24 of the videos so I just requested our first of these, too. I can't wait to see it!

Shez said...

Thank you so much for the review. I am going to look for them. My kids have just watched all the Bill Nye videos and loved them.

love2learnmom said...

Sounds great! Have you seen his Building Big series? We really love that one!

Unknown said...

I was very pleased to find out my library system has these and have requested three to start! Thanks so much for the resource!

Kris said...

We like Bill Nye, too--classic science video filled with fast moving facts and experiments!

I have seen segments of Building Big at Teacher's Domain and I have the book. That is live action, great for middle school kids.

I understand PBS also made a video based on the Mill book--another one I'd really like to see.

L a u r a said...

Amazing! Just yesterday, I was searching our library system for some of Macaulay's books (Pyramid & City) and also noticed a collection of these videorecordings. I can hardly wait to get my hands on these books and videos. We love his The Way Things Work books! Always good to get your thumbs up on these things too!