rampancy: A lot of the activities in this and past Make-themed HBB have immediate relevance to
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)-related activities and classes, for obvious reasons. Not everything will be feasible of course for students at the elementary/middle/high school level, but for kids looking for
science fair ideas, there's a lot of great stuff to be had here.
The "Make Like The Pioneers" book also has relevance to teachers who want to take an interdisciplinary approach and do class science projects that have relevance to history as well. For educators or youth workers working at places like science camps (or who leads science camp-type groups, like at a summer camp or an after school program), these materials will also prove highly useful. Again, not everything will be immediately useful, but an enterprising teacher can figure out ways to sub out more expensive or harder to find materials for those which are more readily available, or modify activities to suit their particular situation.
Ah, that's why I wasn't much interested and also didn't know how this stuff could be used in education - I'm personally not a STEM person and I'm more oriented instead to what is generally called "Humanities" -History in particular. (which reminds me -I really don't like the fact that History is lumped with the other humanities, as it isn't the same thing -I don't even like Ancient Greek myself for example!).
As for mentioning science fairs, I think this is kind of limiting the uses of this material a bit, as only place I've seen them is in American movies -it isn't a thing schools around here do...
As for the interdisciplinary approach with the "Make like the pioneers" book, again this isn't really relevant outside the US, as schools in Greece and Cyprus study mostly the history of Greece and Cyprus, much less European history, so nothing is taught about the colonizing of North America by the settlers (no doubt most other schools in Europe also don't teach US history) -case in point, whatever I know about the subject myself, I learnt it from reading history books by myself and also by Oregon Trail (I played the emulated AppleII version a couple years ago).
Anyways, guess I just replied because I figured I wanted to expand on why these books while they sure would be formidable in the right context, much of their use is diminished outside it (e.g. outside the US regarding the pioneers book).
So in order to close this chatty reply of mine, I thought I'd also mention the fact that, if I'm not mistaken, most non-fiction and non-comics book bundles are STEM oriented, and I'd personally really like and wish to see a History Books Bundle or something like that, but I guess Humanities just aren't popular enough nowadays...
