My son is always complaining that his school doesn’t do enough science. It’s the result, I believe, of the much maligned No Child Left Behind educational policy and its focus on core math and reading skills to the neglect of science, social studies, history, and other subjects. Not that the core skills aren’t important—but I firmly believe they can be taught through science, history, etc.
I’ve recently found a great resource for kid-friendly science at home, though: the “Science by E-mail” service of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Every week you’ll get an e-mail with an experiment you can do with your kids. The latest one involves embedding seeds in homemade paper to create a fun planter. In general, I’d say the activities are most appropriate for elementary school kids, but you can always adjust them to meet your own child’s skill level.
CSIRO also offers this nicely organized Web site of various science activities.
“Science by E-mail” has actually been around for 10 years now, and has over 40,000 subscribers. I’m glad I finally discovered it.
What other interesting educational services/sites do you and your kids enjoy?
(Photo credit: Paul)
As someone with school age kids, I agree with your son. However, I think the science that is done is what I’d call “arts and crafts” science. They give a little background info, then delineate an experiment that is a fairly canned experience with an expected outcome.
As someone who works in science education, I think this cheats kids of the opportunity to design their own experiment based on their own questions. I think we serve them better when we let them conjecture and make their own observations.
Science experiments, unfortunately, need to be done at home because teachers just don’t have the time for a long-term experiment that involves a lot of observation.
Just my two cents!
Hi,
We love
http://www.mathletics.com.au/ really fun way to learn maths including playing maths games against children across the globe. It is also an Australian product used globally. It has a sister product Spelodrome.
http://www.spellingcentre.com/sc_start.htm cdrom that teaches the first 200 words children need. However, has a broad Australian accent, my be disconcerting.
Spellingcity.com can use American or British spelling.
melissa
Mathlet