: Re: Making science for toddlers easy to remember I have been intending to create a book for toddlers with basic scientific notions in it. Most books for this target readership that I have seen

@Goswami879

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It's been decades since I was a kid watching cartoons on TV, and I can still sing some of the Schoolhouse Rock songs.

Schoolhouse Rock, for those unfamiliar with it, was a series of short (2-3 minute) bits of educational programming interspersed among Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Bullwinkle, et al. Each episode taught one concept -- math, grammar, US history, or science (later they added others). The episodes were memorable because of the following factors:

focus -- one concept, no complications, e.g. today we're talking only about conjunctions
catchy melodies with refrains (repeated sections) -- earworms work!
simple, entertaining animations that aligned with the structure (so refrains repeated animation too)
relatable, sometimes humorous or absurd, visuals

Examples on that last point: The main character of "I'm Just a Bill" (... sitting here on Capital Hill) is a rolled-up piece of paper with a face, arms and legs. "Conjunction Junction" involves a railroad operator pulling "trains" of words together, using cars labelled "and" and "or". The visuals reinforce the content, just like the music and poetic structure make the words memorable.

Schoolhouse Rock was aimed at kids in early grades in school, not toddlers, so the audience is more advanced. And you're writing a book, not producing a TV show, so you have different tools. But you're not the first person to write books in verse for kids (consider Dr. Seuss as a prominent example), so you do have some models. Putting all of this together, I suggest:

Use art liberally, and use a style that is age-appropriate. Use characters, not abstractions. Make them caricatures -- maybe you personify gravity as a lazy-but-still-cheerful slug, for example.
Focus on one topic at a time. In your chapter/story about gravity, do not get distracted by air resistance, acceleration, and other gravity-related topics. Those are discussions for another day.
Use a motif of some sort, whether it's a particular verse structure with lots of repetition, or alliteration, or something similar. If you're aiming at toddlers, assume that somebody is going to be reading the book to the child, so favor things that have a strong effect on the oral form. Kids can latch onto meter and rhymes even if they can't read yet, but they might not notice acrostics, for example.
Simplify. You want to explain science as it really is, but toddlers don't have the foundation for that yet. If you find yourself saying "well, actually..." or "technically it's really this..." while writing, stop and refocus. I'm not saying to talk down to kids; they'll hate that. I'm saying to teach the 95% that's accessible and mostly true and just not talk about the exceptions yet. Then you can have another story that builds on that foundation and talks about special cases, if you want.

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