The use of calendars dates back thousands of years. Why are we driven to record time, and what would happen if we did not? Who created the concept of calendars? Why do different cultures use different calendar systems? And why are calendars so important to us? It is about "time" we found out! Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this Smithsonian Informational Text builds reading skills while engaging students' curiosity about STEAM topics through real-world examples. Packed with factoids and informative sidebars, it features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for use in a makerspace and teaches students every step of the engineering design process. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from actual Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Discover engineering innovations that solve real-world problems with content that touches on all aspects of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math!

The use of calendars dates back thousands of years. Why are we driven to record time, and what would happen if we did not? Who created the concept of calendars? Why do different cultures use different calendar systems? And why are calendars so important to us? It is about "time" we found out! Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this Smithsonian Informational Text builds reading skills while engaging students' curiosity about STEAM topics through real-world examples. Packed with factoids and informative sidebars, it features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for use in a makerspace and teaches students every step of the engineering design process. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from actual Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Discover engineering innovations that solve real-world problems with content that touches on all aspects of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math!

Palaces of Time resurrects the seemingly banal calendar as a means to understand early modern Jewish life. Elisheva Carlebach has unearthed a trove of beautifully illustrated calendars, to show how Jewish men and women both adapted to the Christian world and also forged their own meanings through time.

What is time? When did we first use it? Does it always work? How do animals tell time? A fun and fascinating look at time from the first calendars and clocks to the digital watches and precise time-keeping methods of today.

It's "time" to learn how different cultures have kept calendars for thousands of years! With a hands-on STEAM activity and career connections, this 6-Pack uses real-world examples to teach how the engineering design process is used to solve problems.

Time has fascinated humans for thousands of years. We have struggled to find ways to keep track of time and predict patterns in nature. Ancient people watched the skies to study nature's cycles and mark them in time. From these, calendars were born. Though we may not be aware of it, we live by the time we keep. Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this book builds students' literacy skills while fostering curiosity, creativity, and innovation. The hands-on STEAM challenge is ideal for makerspace activities, and guides students through every stage of the engineering design process. This book features: Real-world examples provide insight into how the engineering design process is used to solve real-world problems; Content that highlights every component of STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art, and math; Career advice from Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields; Dynamic images and text features enhance the reading experience and build visual literacy. This 6-Pack includes six copies of this title and a lesson plan that specifically supports guided reading instruction.

The only small, popular book on the important subject of ancient calendars. The study of heavenly cycles is common to most ancient cultures. The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Babylonians all tried to make sense of the year. But it fell to the later Mesoamerican Maya to create a series of calendars that could be cross referenced. In doing so, the Maya discovered many strange numerical harmonics. Their lunar calendar was extremely accurate-far more so than the Greek Metonic cycle; they tracked Venus to an accuracy of less than a day in five hundred years and their tables could have been used to predict eclipses seven hundred years in the future. This book will provide a much needed compact guide to the Mayan calendar systems as well as covering the essentials of calendar development throughout the world.

Travel through time with the maestros as they explore the amazing history of timekeeping! Did you know that there is more than one calendar? While the most commonly used calendar was on the year 2000, the Jewish calendar said it was the year 5760, while the Muslim calendar said 1420 and the Chinese calendar said 4698. Why do these differences exist? How did ancient civilizations keep track of time? When and how were clocks first invented? Find answers to all these questions and more in this incredible trip through history.

In Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy, and the Cosmos, Prudence M. Rice proposed a new model of Maya political organization in which geopolitical seats of power rotated according to a 256-year calendar cycle known as the May. This fundamental connection between timekeeping and Maya political organization sparked Rice's interest in the origins of the two major calendars used by the ancient lowland Maya, one 260 days long, and the other having 365 days. In Maya Calendar Origins, she presents a provocative new thesis about the origins and development of the calendrical system. Integrating data from anthropology, archaeology, art history, astronomy, ethnohistory, myth, and linguistics, Rice argues that the Maya calendars developed about a millennium earlier than commonly thought, around 1200 BC, as an outgrowth of observations of the natural phenomena that scheduled the movements of late Archaic hunter-gatherer-collectors throughout what became Mesoamerica. She asserts that an understanding of the cycles of weather and celestial movements became the basis of power for early rulers, who could thereby claim "control" over supernatural cosmic forces. Rice shows how time became materialized—transformed into status objects such as monuments that encoded calendrical or temporal concerns—as well as politicized, becoming the foundation for societal order, political legitimization, and wealth. Rice's research also sheds new light on the origins of the Popol Vuh, which, Rice believes, encodes the history of the development of the Mesoamerican calendars. She also explores the connections between the Maya and early Olmec and Izapan cultures in the Isthmian region, who shared with the Maya the cosmovision and ideology incorporated into the calendrical systems.

Calendars in the Making investigates the Roman and medieval origins of several calendars we are most familiar with today, including the Christian liturgical calendar, the Islamic calendar, and the week as a standard method of dating and time reckoning.