Science Time

With a degree in Physics and a minor in Geology I have a love for science, but that wasn't slways the case. In school I was terrified of science and math. I worried that I would be a failure and the teachers often left me in the dust of confusion. In college I had to take intro science courses. When I received my associates degree and was looking to transfer to a 4-year college I realized my best grades were in Science - no one was more schocked than I. Now I hope to give that love of science to my own boys.

With Spring almost upon us we're going to be doing Butterflies. We are purchasing the kit so the kids can watch the butterflies 'hatch' then set them free. It should be cool. We studied states of matter by freezing a bucket of water and experimenting on changing it back to water (liquid) we did this at the same time we studied the water cycle. We froze the water (solid) then ran warm water over it to turn it back to liquid, then boiled it (to make steam - gas) I froze a hardcover book and carefully held it at an angle in the steam and we watched the water droplets collect then run off (this is how we get rain). It really drove the point home. We love doing little experiments. When studying nutrition (we did another lapbook on it) we over fed a plant and watched it die, this drove home how important good nutrition is to all living things. We used playdough to make a planet when we were studying the layers of the earth.

Here are some links we use when looking for new ideas:
http://www.education.com/activity/kindergarten/science/
http://hastings.ci.lexington.ma.us/staff/SLee/science/
http://www.educationaltoyfactory.com/science_experiments_activities.htm
http://sciencecastle.com/sc/index.php/home/index
http://www.easy-kids-science-experiments.com
http://www.kidzone.ws/
http://www.kindergarten-lessons.com/science-lessons.html