Energy The Power to Move Us
This picture book introduces young readers to the idea that energy is everywhere and takes many forms. It moves from everyday examples like a running reindeer and a speeding rocket into clear definitions of kinetic and potential energy. Later pages show chemical energy in food and fuel, light energy in plant growth, and wind energy turning into electricity, ending with the simple message that energy powers our lives every day.
About the Book
This picture book introduces young readers to the idea that energy is everywhere and takes many forms. It moves from everyday examples like a running reindeer and a speeding rocket into clear definitions of kinetic and potential energy. Later pages show chemical energy in food and fuel, light energy in plant growth, and wind energy turning into electricity, ending with the simple message that energy powers our lives every day.
Prerequisite Requirements
No formal science background is needed. A child who has noticed moving things, felt the wind, eaten food after playing, or seen a light turn on already has the everyday experience the book builds on.
Learning Benefits
Children can practice observing energy in familiar scenes, build vocabulary for movement and stored energy, follow simple cause-and-effect transformations such as a diver leaping, and connect science ideas to daily life through food, cars, plants, and wind turbines.
Structured Knowledge Path
The book is an early physical-science introduction to energy forms and transformations. It presents kinetic and potential energy as foundational ideas, touches on chemical energy through food and fuel, and connects light and wind to electrical energy. These ideas can later grow into deeper study of energy conservation, electricity, photosynthesis, and motion.
Advancement
Future study can extend these examples into formal physics topics like work, force, and energy transfer, as well as biology topics like photosynthesis and food chains. The habit of asking what form energy takes and how it changes also supports everyday reasoning about food, fuel, electricity, and the natural world.
Knowledge Points
- Energy is the reason things happen around us, and it appears in many forms.
- Kinetic energy is the energy something has because it is moving.
- Potential energy is stored energy, such as a book held high on a shelf.
- Energy can change from one form to another, as when a diver's potential energy becomes kinetic energy during a jump.
- Plants use light energy from the sun to make food through photosynthesis.
- The food we eat is turned into energy that lets our bodies move and play.
Skills
- describe-chemical-energy
- describe-kinetic-energy
- describe-potential-energy
- identify-energy-forms
- trace-energy-transformation
Vocabulary
- energy
- The power that makes things happen around us; it comes in many forms.
- kinetic energy
- The energy of movement, such as a running reindeer or a speeding rocket.
- potential energy
- Stored energy, such as a book held high on a shelf because of its position.
- chemical energy
- Energy stored in substances like food or gasoline that is released during a chemical reaction.
- light energy
- Energy from the sun that plants use to make food through photosynthesis.
- electrical energy
- Energy that can power homes, such as the electricity produced by wind turbines.
Reading Guidance for Teachers and Guardians
- Page 3: Pause on the words 'makes things happen' and ask the child to name something they saw move or change this morning.
- Page 5: Compare the two pictures and help the child say the difference between movement energy and stored energy.
- Page 7: Before turning the page, ask what they think will happen to the diver's stored energy when she jumps.
- Page 10: Look closely at the plant and talk about where a plant gets the energy to grow.
- Page 12: Connect the page to a recent meal and ask how that food helps them run, jump, or play.