Transform and recycle household objects into your very own home-made toys and machines!
Learn about the centre of gravity by making a balancing bird, create a toroidal vortex with a smoke-ring machine, and turn a spoon into an electromagnet. Chances are you won’t need to buy the materials required for these machines because they’re all in your house right now. Every child can be an engineer with the help of Mr Shaha and his marvellous machines.
Written by a science teacher and dad, Mr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines is the highly anticipated sequel to Mr Shaha’s Recipes for Wonder. This book gives clear, step-by-step instructions for over 15 projects. Whether you’re a master engineer or a total beginner, it will spark inspiration for fun activities to engage young people in the marvels of machinery.
Scribe Publications
I follow Alom Shaha on twitter and really appreciate how keen he is for families to play together to develop a passion for science and technology. Mr Shaha’s Recipes for Wonder is a great book so, when I saw that he had a new title coming, I asked him a few questions:
Do you have a favourite project in the book?
My favourite project in the book is probably the Rubber-band Racer. I think it was the first activity I knew I would include in the book because it just met all my criteria for a “marvellous machine” – it’s made of stuff most people will have lying around the house, is relatively straightforward to build, illustrates some sort of scientific principle, and, above all, elicits a sense of utter joy when you’ve successfully got it working.
This is your second published book, after Mr Shaha’s Recipes for Wonder. Why do you think it is so important that families engage with science and technology, learning at home?
This is actually the third book of mine to be published! My first was “The Young Atheist’s Handbook” which was published in the UK, Australia, and in a Turkish translation. There was even a successful campaign by Humanists UK to raise money to send it to every secondary school library in the UK. But to answer your question, I think it’s important for families to engage with STEM learning at home because I believe strongly that science can enrich our lives as much as literature, art, or music can, when we approach it in a way that is appropriate to our own needs and wants. There’s also research that suggests strongly that parental attitudes towards science plays a key role in children’s success, or lack of it, in science at school. I don’t think parents should leave their children’s first encounters with science education to schools – I want to encourage parents to become their children’s first science teachers. Parents are usually the ones who introduce their children to reading, numbers, painting and drawing, playing music and so on, and I wanted to give them the confidence and tools to do the same with science.
As a science teacher, what is your favourite part of the curriculum?
Oh, that’s a tough one. I’d have to say that I love teaching all the ideas that generate a sense of awe and wonder in my students, from the counterintuitive nature of Newton’s First Law to the mindboggling fact that we can know, with a high degree of confidence, what stars are made of, and how they work.
In an ideal world, what kind of events would you want to do with children, and what age groups?
I love doing family workshops with primary aged children. I ran many when promoting “Recipes for Wonder”, and plan to do the same with “Marvellous Machines”. It’s really satisfying to watch parents and their children work together to do the activities in my books.
Library staff will appreciate your desire to get the book into the hands of those who can’t afford to buy it. Other than libraries stocking it, what would you like to see people do to promote its use?
I’m going to release videos of the activities from the book on my YouTube Channel, “Mr Shaha’s Books” (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcv9_0EdBq0Xi4n_wJe4NCA), so that the message and ideas from the book are freely available. I’d love to see people sharing these videos, and perhaps their own videos of the activities, through their social media and other networks.
Alom sent me a picture of the introduction, which is a wonderful explanation for why the book exists, and shows some more of the wonderful illustrations by Emily Robertson that really bring it all to life:
The text can be read more clearly on his blog here
Mr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines is published on 8th July, it is aimed at 5-12year olds and their families, so Bea and I are looking forward to having a go at making some contraptions!
