Artificial life in labs

I saw this on the internet this morning and had to share this human advancement with you

From Times Online : Scientists create artificial life in laboratory

Synthetic life has been created in the laboratory in a feat of ingenuity that pushes the boundaries of humanity’s ability to manipulate the natural world.

Craig Venter, the biologist who led the effort to map the human genome, said yesterday that the first cell controlled entirely by man-made genetic instructions had been produced.

The synthetic bacterium, nicknamed Synthia, has been hailed as a step change in biological engineering, allowing the creation of organisms with specialised functions that could never have evolved in nature. The team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, is investigating how the technology could yield microbes that make vaccines, and algae that turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon biofuels.

Cool! Now what?

Integration of literature in science books for kids

One major concern of parents is their kids lack of interest to read math or science books and learn. In order to increase their appeal for science books for kids, try picking books that integrate a story to the science. As a matter of fact, the advantage of a science book for children that integrates literature is that you child will get to read an interesting story and learn scientific concept all at once. Also, these books will give your child the opportunity to improve their writing and reading skills as they offer a much more diverse vocabulary and a more sophisticated use of the language (such as poetry) than a regular science book would.

Also, it is important for the child that their parent read with them. Having a parent reading with them will increase their interest in reading the book, and you have to remember that your child may not be able to read all the words, therefore you may need to be around in order to help your child.

Socio-economic environment vs writing

Exposure to writing can be done in several ways, and will depend on influences coming from the child's socio-economic environment (social environment, child's own family, neighborhood, etc). Those influences will allow the child to obtain more knowledge and help the child develop writing skills.

The importance of preschool reading and writing

It is important that as parents and educators, we awake to young children reading and writing to and to make it one of our major concern, to promote it so it becomes part of all of our educational system, families and communities. Introduction to reading and writing should begin at a very early age, when the child can neither read nor write, and should be first introduced in an non conventional way. As a matter of fact, reading and writing should be part of a child's life long before he or she starts school. School should not have the full monopoly on children's development and new less conventional methods needs to be adopted in order to help children learn a language. The awareness of reading and writing can be done through different types of books, science books for kids, poetry books, image books for babies and younger toddlers, etc. The period between 0 and 6 years is marked by what the authors refer to as the emergence of writing (Strickland and Morrow, 1989; Giasson, J, 1995; Theriault, J., 1995).

The importance of science books for kids

The more children get into books and understand how they are written, the more they will want to read them, watch them and understand them.

This is why it is important to increase awareness of children reading for literature and science books for kids.

I will try to share with you, as far as possible, my knowledge about language and reading with kids.

-Sokane