BLAST Early Learning Parent Spotlight:
Science is all around you. Your backyard, your kitchen, and other areas around your home provide natural "laboratories" for children. Children are curious. Exploring with science can be lots of fun while also teaching them a great deal about themselves and their world.
- Provide a variety of items from around the house and a bucket filled with water. Ask your child to find out which items sink or float.
- Use small pitchers for pouring and measuring. Talk about the meaning of full and empty.
- Fill a variety of bottles with water. Talk about which has more and which has less.
- Take your child to the grocery store. Look at apples and talk about the different colors, shapes, and sizes. Use words like "same" and "different".
- Play "Guess that Taste" game. Put different foods on different plates (peanut butter, lemon, cheese, pretzel). Cover your child's eyes. Help him or her select food to taste and ask, "Which food do you think it is?"
- Go to the library to check out books about life cycles. Look for books that show how caterpillars turn into butterflies or how tadpoles turn into frogs.
- Make bubbles. Mix together liquid dish soap and water. Put the mixture in a cup and show your child how you can blow into it with straws to make more bubbles. Dip in a slotted spoon or other objects and wave them around the room to make bubbles.
- Fill one container with soap bubbles and another container with water. Talk about light and heavy.