Summertime Science
Electricity For Young Makers; Mason Jar Science; The Outdoor Scientist
Late summer check-in. We’ve managed to survive, so far! Our kids have two more weeks until school starts, and the last two weeks have been blissfully unstructured for our eldest, who has mostly been immersed in video games. (Our 5.5yo’s preschool is blissfully year-round.) Eldest also has a propensity for reading every day, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Recently, I’ve been keeping the science project books handy. I started to build our collection of this genre when the pandemic turned the world upside down and it seemed like we might have to fully reboot civilization. They’ve come in handy as both kids have developed a budding fascination with anarcho-chemistry (thanks Grandpa!). If your kids are also on the verge of returning to school, they may have a similar dedication to jackall. The great thing about all three of these books is that they are supremely browsable and the projects are pretty easy to pull off spontaneously in not too much time. I recommend leaving such books out casually as if you don’t care whether they do anything productive or educational. Older kids can largely self-direct, but you should definitely take a close look at the projects ahead of time to be aware of safety requirements/considerations. You know what your kiddos can and can’t do on their own.
I picked up Electricity For Young Makers when our eldest was one or two years old. It was premature, but I’d been a fan of Make Magazine and loved attending the Maker Faire, so I knew it needed to be in our home. The six builds in this book all produce tangible, interactive demonstrations of simple electricity concepts. We’ve enjoyed the projects with LEDs and the rotating copper wire project (also demod by one of my favorite parent-educators, @thedadlab).
Electricity For Young Makers. 2017, Marc de Vinck, Mike Gray. Target age: Gr2-6 [flip-through on IG, libraries, book stores]
Mason Jar Science is cool for its promise that each project is going to fit into a small, affordable, practical container, and chances are good you already have some in your cabinets. The 40 experiments are organized by branches of science: chemistry, earth science, botany, biology, and physics. Most of the projects are shown in a single, well-organized two-page spread, so they feel very approachable, and many have photos accompanying each step of the instructions. For a while, it seemed like my feeds were full of questionable rubberized egg demonstrations, so I’m glad to have a good roadmap for exploring this in our own kitchen.
Mason Jar Science. 2018, Jonathan Adolph. Target age: Gr3-7 [publisher trailer, libraries, book stores]
Temple Grandin’s science book for kids was also a supremely easy sell for me. I admire her work and advocacy, and I think the public discourse around neurodiversity owes her a tremendous debt. The Outdoor Scientist is a celebration of the power and inspiration of observation. The book’s chapters, organized by setting, each offer a mix of project/experiment ideas, personal stories from Grandin’s childhood reporting how she’d do those same projects, and profiles of influential scientists who have worked in related domains. There is a lot of text, but reading even a few pages at a time delivers a lot of insight. All of the projects require some some kind of collection or observation, many are creative, and many include an element of reporting, either in a personal notebook or as part of a citizen-scientist project.
The Outdoor Scientist. 2021, Temple Grandin. Target age: Gr3-7 [book launch event with the author, libraries, bookstores]