Science at Home – Introduction and Activities
|Welcome to the very first “Science at Home” post here on Life At The Zoo. As someone who has an Engineering degree and did Sciences at “A-Levels” in school, I have always adored and loved Science. It is a love that I really want to pass on to my children and do hope that they enjoy it at school as much as I did!
So how do you do “Science at home”, especially if you do NOT have a science background or if you don’t have teaching background – how do you “teach” your kids science?
I will be co-hosting these Science at Home videos every 2 weeks with Inspiration Laboratories. We will have wonderful teacher/ parent blogs joining us on a regular basis, such as Science Sparks, Thinly Spread, Kids Chaos, Blue Bear Wood and The Imagination Tree amongst others.
So I got together with these teachers and parents to discuss ideas and “how to’s”, we discussed our approach to science, as well as shared some great projects you can do and ways to help you.
Remember:
- It is about asking questions
- It is about observing
- It is NOT about always having all the answers
- With older kids you can then go an research the answers
- It is about having fun and being “wowed” by the environment around us
Also.. Science isn’t all about explosion and untangible experiments – remember areas such as biology too – watching things grow, exploring our senses etc. Find the parts of science that you can relate to and start there. Now watch our video:
1) The first project we shared was the “Ice Colour Theory” – though I don’t go into detail over on Red Ted Art about the Science element of this experiment – the water going from a liquid state to a solid state based on temperature, it is a great and fun experiment for younger kids. My kids ADORE putting water in the freezer – often including toys in them. Waiting for it to freeze and then watching it defrost again. You can build on this experiment and time how long it takes to defrost – say on the kitchen table, outside and standing on a radiator – how does the immediate environment affect the temperature?
2) Inspiration Laboratories about cause and effect – Chain Reactions – a train knocking down some blocks. Why does that happen? How can we get it to knock down more blocks?
3) Science Sparks talks about how they like to explore science as a whole family and how simple shadow puppets are not only fun, but explore what happens to light.
4) Thinly spread talks about the fun in gravity. How things roll down surfaces. What happens when you drop a heavy item from the top of the stairs versus a light one. It is about exploration and finding the answers together.
5) Blue Bear Wood explores what happens with the steam from a kettle – I love the family’s approach to science in general.
6) The imagination tree shares the sprouting bean – a great way to see both the roots and the shoots developing and sharing how amazingly fast nature can grow (my kids ADORE doing this one!).
7) Finally Kids Chaos talks about how thermodynamics can help make ice cream! A really cool project to do at home.