These are some interesting books that I thought I'd share. One I've had for a while, and the other two I recently bought at a library book sale.
Science Experiments & Amusements for Children ~ 73 easy experiments (no special equipment needed) ~ Illustrate Important Scientific Principles by Charles Vivian - 1963 This one is really cool and everything I looked at required simple items that will usually be found around the house. Some of the projects are:
- A Paper Saucepan That Will Not Burn
- Miniature Iceberg (this would be fun in conjuction with a lap book)
- A Liquid Sandwich
- Miniature Diving Bell
- On The Smoke Trail
- The Candle at the Door
- Finding the Center of Gravity
- Make Smoke Obey
The second books is Rocket Science ~ 50 Flying, Floating, FLipping Spinning Gadgets Kids Create Themselves by Jim Wiese - 1995 This one has a lot of neat stuff. What I really like this and makes it especially usefull for homeschool is the way the contents are laid out. At a quick glance I could find an experiment under mechanics, air power, water energy, electricity & magnetism, chemistry, acoustics, and optics. Each section is further broken down from there into different categories and then the experiments. At the end of the experiment, there is also an explanation about why it works. As with the other books, most items are commonly found around the housre or the local hardware store.
- Mousetrap Car (James got really excited when he saw this one)
- Water Rockets
- Kodak Cannon
- Paper Tube Kazoo
- Kaleidoscope
- Electrochemical Plating Machine
- Cartesian Diver
- Paper Plane
What I especially like about this one is that a lot of it's really fun stuff (paper planes, instruments, sail boats, etc.) that I could make with the kids and they would learn without even realizing it! And it gives me ideas of questions to ask him to direct his mind and make him think. The cool thing is that I only paid $1.00 for the two of these books and there is a ton of awesome fun science to do with the kids for fun and learning.
The other one is 365 Ways to a Smarter Preschooler by Marilee Robin Burton. I've had this one for some time. There are (you guessed it) 365 different projects. Everything from science to math to art. You really could do something every day and it would be a lot of fun with the kids. It's just simple stuff. I don't have the copy available to give you an idea of any of the projects, but they were fun and the kids always enjoy doing it.
Jun. 5, 2007 - Ahhh, ha!
Have a great day!
J.