For those looking for STEAM-themed entertainment, we have compiled some of our favorite books and activities from Tuesday Tales!

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
Suggested Activity: Create the most magnificent thing! 

• The best part about your magnificent thing is that it can be anything. It can look like anything, it can be made of anything. Every piece is exactly the right piece.
• Come up with your idea—do you want to make something that will solve a problem? Or something that will improve how we work, travel or play?
• Use household items such as cardboard, paper, bottle caps, straws, fabric, etc. to make your idea a reality.
• As you add pieces and parts and shapes to your design, give each of them a job or a purpose. Keep adding until you feel your thing is the most magnificent. 

The Snail and The Whale by Julia Donaldson
Suggested Activity: Create your own snail and whale adventure!

• Find your whale inspiration. Use the internet or your imagination to draw a blue whale. When you’re happy with your whale, color it and cut it out.
• Find your snail inspiration. Repeat the above step but with a small snail.
• Attach your snail and whale. Use glue or tape to affix your snail to the whale’s tail.
• Create a landscape. Use construction paper, fabric or tissue paper to make the landscape where your whale and snail have traveled.

Arlo Rolled by Susan Pearson
Suggested Activity: Make a flower! 

• Create the stem. Select one pipe cleaner to act as your flower’s stem. One step down!
• Create roots. Select another pipe cleaner (the same color or a new one) and cut it into smaller pieces. Wrap the ends of your root pieces around each other and the bottom of the stem. 
• Create leaves. Take another pipe cleaner (any color you’d like) and cut it into smaller pieces. Bend the smaller pieces into ovals with an open end. Wrap the open ends of the ovals around the stem to make leaves. 
• Create a flower. Tear off a piece of paper or tissue paper, ball up one end and wrap the top of your ‘stem’ around it.

Artificial Intelligence for Babies and Toddlers by Dr. Dhoot
Suggested Activity: Create your own robot friend! 

• Make the pieces of your robot. Cut out basic shapes—which will you need? Squares? Rectangles? Circles? All the above?
• Build your ‘bot. Use a glue stick or brads to connect your cut out shapes. Does your robot need arms, legs or other limbs?
• Final touches: draw on buttons, monitors or other equipment!   

Made by Maxine by Ruth Spiro
Suggested Activity: Make a thinking cap! 

• Cut out a paper or cardboard band, making sure it’s long enough to fit around your head!
• Decorate your cap. Use tissue paper, paper, pipe cleaners, crayons and other items to decorate your cap. Use decorations that look like they’ll charge up your imagination. Decorate until you feel inspired!
• Final touch: connect the ends of the band when you’re done so the cap will sit on your head. Tape or glue it into place.
• Put your cap on while thinking up your next big idea!

Rain by Manya Stojic
Suggested Activity: Create a rain stick! 

• Seal one end of a paper towel tube using paper and tape. 
• Fill the tube with rice, beans or beads (or all three!) and seal the opposite end. 
• Turn or shake the tube to make a rain sound!

Suggested Activity: Do your own rain demonstration! 

• All you need is a Mason jar, a rubber band, a paper towel, a little water and an eyedropper. 
• Place the paper towel over the open end of the Mason jar and secure it with the rubber band.
• Use the eyedropper to drop water onto the paper towel.
• Watch as water falls from the paper towel into the jar, similar to how rain falls from a cloud.

Me and My Place in Space by Joan Sweeney
Suggested Activity: Make a name rocket! 

• Cut out a construction paper square for each letter of your name.
• Glue the squares in a column on a black piece of paper and write one letter of your name in each square. 
• Cut out a triangle and place it above the first letter of your name.
• You’ve made your rocket! Now add planets and stars—you can cut these out and glue them to your paper or you can draw them using crayons.

Some Bugs by Angela DiTerlizzi
Suggested Activity: Make your own bug!

• Cut out basic shapes (from fabric, paper, etc.) and use them to make a bug. What shape is your bug? Oval? Round? Several circles stuck together? Use a picture of a bug you know as a reference, or imagine the craziest bug that ever crawled.
• Make antennae. You can cut these out like the body and add them to your bug. As a bonus if you have plastic headbands and pipe cleaners, use those to make bug antennae for you too!
• Make eyes. These can be simple little circles, but remember that some bugs have dozens of eyes. How many does yours have?
• Glue your pieces together. Try not to make a mess, but you're washing your hands a lot lately anyway, right?
• Give your bug a name. Is your bug friendly? Does it eat waste and help the planet? Or is it scary, and we should be wary of its bite? Only you can decide.

Dig, Dogs, Dig: A Construction Tail by James Horvath
Suggested Activity: Construct!

• Plan your project. What are you going to build? A house? A school? Perhaps a whole city? Use a paper and pencil to sketch your design first.
• Find your materials. Use blocks, boxes or any other stackable items to create your own construction project.
• Make your design come to life! Build what you imagined. Rebuild or continue to make other buildings once you are finished.

If You Had a Jetpack by Lisl H. Detlefsen
Suggested Activity: Make your own jet pack!

• Find your materials. You will need a cardboard box, paper and other materials such as pipe cleaners, crayons or markers, plastic cups and tissue paper.
• Cover your cardboard box with plain paper so you have a blank surface.
• Add your controls and other equipment using your materials or by drawing them on.
• Take your plastic cups and tape them to the bottom of your cardboard box, open side out. Rip red, orange and yellow tissue paper (or regular paper) and tape it to the inside of the cups to make the fire of the rocket engines – now you’re almost ready for takeoff.
• Use duct tape that has been folded over to create your jet pack straps.
• Blast off!

Monkey Time by Michael Hall
Suggested Activity: Make your own monkey clock!

• Create your tree out of construction paper or cardboard. Cut out a large, green circle. This will serve as your clock face and as the leaves of the monkey’s tree.
• Make your monkey. Draw or cut out a monkey (look online for inspiration; you’ll need a head, a body and maybe some big ears) and place it in the center of the clock face. If you choose to draw the monkey, hold off on adding his arms; next.
• Add the monkey’s arms (clock hands). Cut out rectangles and stack them. Take a brad (paper fastener) and punch a hole near the top of the rectangles. Stick the paper fastener through the center of the clock face. Be sure to make one arm a little longer to be the minute hand.
• Add numbers. Write numbers 1 – 12 around your clock face.
• Start telling time! Move your monkey’s arms around the clock to tell time.

Walter's Wonderful Web by Tim Hopgood
Suggested Activity: Weave a web!

• Cut out the center of a paper plate.
• Hole-punch as many holes as you would like around the edge and in the center of your paper plate.
• Use a thick thread or yarn and weave shapes through the punched holes to make your web.
• Make a spider! Cut out four short and thin rectangles. Arrange them like a letter X so that the ends come together. Stack the ends over each other and glue them together. Then glue the stacked legs to a pom-pom. You’ve got a Walter!
• Affix your Walter to the web!

Deep in the Ocean by Lucie Brunelliere
Suggested Activity: Create an under-the-sea submarine window scene!

• Cut three large ovals on a piece of paper, then tape plastic wrap to the underside of the paper so that the oval holes become windows. Now look through the windows – you’re inside the submarine!
• Take a blue piece of paper and draw or fasten cut-out sea creatures onto the paper. This is your seascape. Think about what you might see through your submarine windows.
• Staple the window paper on top of the blue seascape. Now you have a view of the ocean through your window!

The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle
Suggested Activity: Create a color-changing chameleon!

• Color one paper plate any way you like. Use any colors and draw any pattern.
• Take another paper plate and sketch the shape of a chameleon. It can be very realistic or kind of silly. When you are happy with your chameleon, cut it out.
• Attach your chameleon paper plate (the one with a chameleon-shaped hole in it) to your colorful paper plate with a brad (paper fastener).
• Spin your chameleon plate and watch the colors change!

Runaway Tomato by Kim Cooley Reeder
Suggested Activity: Protect a tomato!

• Use household items to create the safest casing for a tomato or cherry tomato. Boxes, cups, cans, shapes cut and taped together out of cardboard or paper… try different kinds.
• Add more protection inside your casing. Line the walls with bubble wrap, fill it with packing peanuts, strap your tomato to the wall with a masking tape safety belt. Whatever you think will keep your tomato intact.
• When you’re ready, test your tomato container. Drop it from eye level to the ground (in a safe and easily cleaned location). Is your tomato unbruised? If you’re successful, try starting it even high, maybe using a ladder or platform with an adult’s help.
• Catalog your results. Which materials and construction methods worked best? How high is too high? Would your methods work for something else, like an apple or an egg?

Bee: A Peek-Through Picture Book by Britta Teckentrup
Suggested Activity: Make a new bee-st friend!

• Color a clothespin to look like a friendly bee (or other insect if you would like). Yellow, brown and black are good colors, but your bee can dress up any way you’d like.
• Add small googly eyes to the clothespin. If you’ve got plastic ones that stick on, great! But you can also draw them and cut them out.
• Bend a pipe cleaner to create two loops, open the clothespin and pinch the pipe cleaner in between, giving your bee (or any other flying insect) wings.

Pluto's Secret: An Icy World's Tale of Discovery by David H. DeVorkin and Margaret A. Weitekamp 
Suggested Activity: Fly a rocket on a balloon!

• Create your rocket. Draw and cut out a rocket OR find a rocket image that you can print and cut out. Color it however you would like!
• Make your flight path. Take a long string and fasten one end to a chair. Then thread a straw onto the string. Finally, tie the other end of the string to a second chair.
• Collect your fuel. Blow up a balloon, but do not tie it closed. You may need someone to help you hold the balloon while you do the next step.
• Build your launchpad. While holding the balloon closed, tape the side of the balloon to the straw with the open end facing you. Tape your colorful rocket to the other side of the balloon.
• Prepare for takeoff! Move the chairs apart so that the string is stretched tight. Count down from 3 and release the balloon to watch your rocket fly across the room.

Hey, Hey, Hay by Christy Mihaly
Suggested Activity: Make a standing sheep.

• Take a paper plate and fold it in half so the bottom of the plate is on the outside. Cover one half of the folded paper plate with cotton balls – this will be the sheep’s wool!
• Now, cut out an oval from a piece of construction paper for the sheep’s head. Cut out two smaller ovals for the sheep’s ears, as well as five small rectangles – four for feet and one for a tail!
• Add eyes and a mouth to the sheep’s face! You can draw these features or use more construction paper shapes – or googly eyes!
• Glue the sheep’s head, feet, and tail to its ‘woolly’ body.
• Once all your glue has dried, try standing up your sheep with the open end of the folded paper plate down.