Science is all around us. Here are some simple ways you can nurture your young scientist's curiosity and help him discover more about his world.
Sight: Look at a picture of a rainbow and talk about all the colors. Then go outdoors and help your child find and identify objects of the same colors. You can also take along simple magnifiers and binoculars so your child can further examine shapes and patterns.
Touch: Find objects with different textures that come from living things, such as cotton, fur, pinecones, wool, feathers, or seashells. Put each object in a paper bag or a box and ask your child to reach in and try to guess, by touch alone, what each item is. Ask her to tell you what helped her decide.
Hearing: Tape record the silence in the room and see if it is completely silent. Take a tape recorder outdoors to record the sounds of nature and see if your child can recognize the sounds when you play them back later.
Taste: Have a tasting party where your child and his friends sample different foods. Ask them to describe how each food tastes and to explain why they think it tastes that way.
Smell: Place strong-smelling foods or spices in paper cups, then cover the cups with foil punched with holes. See if your child can identify the food just by sniffing.
Make a bulletin board or poster labeled "Living Things" and "Non-living Things." Brainstorm the list of things that belong in each category. Then find photos or magazine pictures and sort all the pictures into living and non-living things. Help your child display them in each category.
Your child can water a plant and record its growth through pictures and simple measurements. You can set up a window garden where she can grow her own plant. Start by letting her experiment with all kinds of seeds and growing methods, including soaking them in water, planting them in different kinds of soil or containers, and putting them in sunlight or darkness. Marigolds and beans grow fast from seeds, and potatoes grow great sprouts when suspended in water. Place cut off tops of carrots or onions in gravel and water and watch them grow!
Ask your child to draw his favorite animal. He can choose any animal he wants – a pet, something he saw at the zoo or in his neighborhood, something that lives in another country, an animal from another time, or even a favorite animal from a book or television show. Write down what he tells you about the animal, and place his words with his pictures to create an animal book.
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