The books I read for this month covered an interesting mix of brain science and psychology.
Your Amazing Brain: The Epic Illustrated Guide
by Jessica Sinarski, illustrated by Luiz Fernando Da Silva
This book gives a great explanation of how the brain works. It covers many of the different functions the brain is involved in.
Cutting-Edge Brain Science
by Buffy Silverman
To take a brief look at how scientists study brains and to get a glimpse of the future of brain science, read this book.
Detecting Brain Disorders
by Rachel Kehoe
When something goes wrong with the brain, there are many ways doctors can figure out what’s happened. This book looks at these different tools.
This is Your Brain on Stereotypes: How Science is Tackling Unconscious Bias
By Tanya Lloyd Kyi; Illustrated by Drew Shannon
This is a book that takes a closer look at psychology. It specifically looks at how people develop and react to stereotypes and how they may be able to counteract them.
There is so much that can be done with this topic (or rather collection of topics). Most of the books have activities to try and/or resources to explore. Here are a few additional ideas.
Make a Brain Hat
If you’re looking for a great way to explore which parts of the brain do what, here’s the activity for you! Students can color and cut out the brain hemisphere hat. It shows what functions happen where in the brain. Since they can wear the result, they can get a really great idea of how their brain works. Sound awesome?! Here’s the link: https://homeschoolgiveaways.com/free-printable-brain-hemisphere-hat
Explore Your Bias
Take one or more areas of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) covered in This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes. Here is the link: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit There are tests for many different possible biases. What did you think of your results?
Conduct an Experiment
There are lots of experiments that can explore brain science and psychology. They can be a lot of fun, too.
Science Buddies guides students through science experiments. They have an entire collection of brain science/psychology experiments: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-projects/experiment-in-psychology/middle-school
Other ideas for experiments can be found at the sites below. For a guide on how to conduct a psychology experiment, check out this page: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-conduct-a-psychology-experiment-2795792
Experiment Ideas
More Activities
Other web sites have collections of activities that explore brain science. Here are a few.
- https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/brain
- https://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/subject/neuroscience
- https://opl.apa.org/index.html
Janet Slingerland is the author of over 20 books for young readers. You can find her online at http://janetsbooks.com. She is also now on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/janetslingerland.bsky.social.
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