Homeschool Science

Getting Your Kids to Love It!

Your goal in teaching homeschool science should not only be to fill your children's heads with knowledge, but to instill in them a love of science.

Textbooks have their place. Be sure and read my article called Textbooks - What Good are they Anyway?.

Textbooks can be great for older kids, but sitting down and reading from a science textbook to your little guys is going to bore them out of their minds - if you can get them to sit still!

This is the time to do science experiments, take "adventure walks", write and draw, and play science related games.

By doing these things, you will teach your children several important things ~

• science is fun
• learning is fun
• learn to think and reason
• learn how to question and explore

Let's look at different ways to teach homeschool science so you can accomplish do this.

Regardless of what grade you are teaching, you need to have several elements involved to make learning educational, fun, and interesting.

For younger children, you need a science reference book or a set of books like DK or Eyewitness Readers would be great. For the older child, 7th grade and up, you can use a regular homeschool science textbook like one of the Apologia Science Books. Use these books to plan your lessons, schedule, and set your goals for the year.

You might want to try one or two days per week reading, answering, and discussing questions from your reference book, but for the third day of science, do a hands-on activity that relates to the science subject you are studying.

Here are some ideas:

• Adventure walks

  - If the weather is cooperating, load up the kids and take what our family refers to as an "adventure walk." I named these walks adventure walks because that is what they are.

  They are guided totally by the kids.

  We start out and whatever the kids see that is interesting we investigate.

  Whatever they want to play around on - we play.

  These are great for animal studies, insect studies, tree or plant studies, wildflower studies, pond, lake, or ocean studies (whatever you live near), weather studies.

  The idea is to get out and include in the walk whatever relates to your subject.

  You can collect bugs, leaves, wildflowers, or rocks.

  You can look for and cast animal prints.

  You can draw pictures of trees, flowers, bugs, or clouds.

  You get the idea.

  Learning is so much more than sitting behind a desk, or in our case, a kitchen table. When you spend hours on an "adventure walk" the kids are a lot more excited about "doing homeschool science" than they are about worksheets and I guarantee they will learn a whole lot more.

• Science Experiments

  Ahhhhh....science experiments. Kids absolutely love doing science experiments.

  They love the hands-on activity.

  They love seeing the reactions to the experiments.

  They love the mess...Moms...not so much!

  However, whether we moms like them or not, science experiments are necessary at some point in teaching homeschool science.

  To make this as fun for the kids as possible and as easy for the moms as possible, I recommend you get any book by Janice Vancleave. Her experiments always use everyday, household items that you probably have on hand and at the front of her books she has a complete list of what you will need for every experiment in the book. Nice.

  I also recommend that you check into getting an all-in-one homeschool science kit. These kits come with instruction manuals and all of the supplies so you aren't running all over town trying to find a beaker or petri dish.

  I recommend Thames & Kosmos ~ Little Labs - Stepping into Science. This is an all-in-one kit that covers five areas of science -

  * nature * physics * chemistry * air * water

  It comes with a 48-page guidebook and teaches science fundamentals with hands-on experiments.

  For your older kids, try Thames & Kosmos Core Science MS-1

  This is an all-in-one kit that is great to supplement whatever science books you choose to use. It comes with a full-color 95-page instruction manual for 135 science experiments.

  It focuses on 45 themes that you will be studying in grades 4-6 like:

  * mass and volume * the human body * chemical reations * soil analysis * optics * rockets * electricity * circuits

  So as you are studying these things, you have a kit with all the materials, instructions on how to use them and it covers three different levels of learning with easy, moderate, and advanced so you can adjust it to fit your child's needs.

  I have found having all-in-one kits like the two mentioned above really saves me time and money - I don't have to do all the planning myself and the materials are cheaper when packaged together.



• Write, Draw, Photograph

  Okay...kids aren't usually too crazy about writing, but if you combine it with drawing or taking pictures, they are usually pretty agreeable.

  Combine art and writing together to put together mini-scrapbooks or folders on one particular subject. For example, wildflowers. Let them draw a standard diagram of a flower and label the parts, then incorporate writing by doing a short report (one paragraph - depending on the age of the child) about the flower, and then take pictures.

  Let them "scrapbook" these items together in a special binder that you can put together about wildflowers.

  The kids are usually VERY proud of their work and you have something to show to Dad and the grandparents.

  If you and your kids think you can't draw, I recommend using any of the Draw Write Now! books. These are for younger children but they combine drawing and writing for you. If your children are a little older and are ready for more serious artwork, try my favorite - Textbooks can be great for older kids, but sitting down and reading from a science textbook to your little guys is going to bore them out of their minds - if you can get them to sit still!

  For writing, I would start with Shurley Grammar. This method teaches writing a basic paragraph in the easiest possible way.

  Check the art and writing curriculum sections for a complete discussion for writing and drawing curriculum and I'll tell you why I like each of these books and which children they would be best for.

• Play Science Games

  All kids love games and they're fun for the moms too! There are a multitude of games that are related to the different areas of homeschool science that you can play with your children. I won't go into them all here, but you can check the

  science curriculum section

  section to get an idea of some of the games you can buy. These are good because they are ready-made and will save you time.

  But if you have more time than money, check the homeschool science resources section for ideas about games to make that won't cost you a thing.

Hopefully, this article has given you plenty of ideas about how to get your kids to love homeschool science. Just remember to keep it hands-on, interesting, and fun. By combining these suggestions, you shouldn't have any trouble getting your kids to love science and to learn a whole lot more than just sitting at a desk reading a textbook.

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