32 Fun and Creative Ways to Teach Your Child About Science

32 Fun and Creative Ways to Teach Your Child About Science

Adding science into your daily home preschool curriculum doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. Just take a look around your home, outside, or in your car, you can easily have a wide variety of options to teach your child science concepts or you can try several ideas below:

In the Car:

•  As you are driving around town or running errands, it would be the perfect time to teach your child about the law of motion. For example, as you are going up and down hills, rounding corners, changing driving speeds, braking, and how your body tends to lean in the direction of a curve. Don’t forget about those bumpy roads, you can teach your child how differently the car sounds when you are traveling on a smooth road compared to a bumpy road.
• Talk to your child about car accidents. You can show them the IIHS, crash test videos. If you do this you should preview the video first to make sure that the video content is safe for young children.
• Talk about the weather. If it is raining, you can talk to your child about how to the windshield wipers work to help clear the water off the windshield so that you can see objects in front of you as you are driving.
• If you are out driving at night, ask your child to follow the moon with their eyes as you drive to your destination. Ask them if it appears that you are getting closer or farther away from the moon.
• Discuss the different building structures as you drive around town.
• Have your child chase their shadow on the ground.

Ideas for the Kitchen:

• Grab a few of your pots, pans, 2 plastic spoons, 2 metal spoon, and a few different sizes of plastic bowls.  Take the into the living room and sit on the floor. Turn the pots, pans, and bowls upside down. Take the spoons and have your child make music. Then discuss with your child how each make a different sound based upon their size, shape, and what the item they are using to tap on the pots, pans, or plastic bowl.
• Next time you are preparing a meal. For example, have your child help you bake cookies. This is a great way to show them how different ingredients when mixed together make a new texture and taste. Note: Make sure that the ingredients are safe before allowing your child to taste them. Also, allow them to feel the different textures.
• Grab some clear or see through cups and fill them with equal amounts of water. Then grab food coloring and show them how to mix colors, make different variations of colors based upon how much food coloring you add to the water. (For example, 1 drop of red will be a very light red compared to 4 drops of red.)
• Show your child how an ice cube melts or a pot of water will boil when it is on the stove. Make sure that your child doesn’t touch the stove, when doing this science experiment.
• Make play dough, moon sand, gak, or cloud dough for your child to play in. As you are making the recipe, have your child help you and talk to them about the reaction that takes place to make the compounds stick together.
• Mix vinegar, food coloring, and baking soda together in a bowl and show your child the chemical reaction (aka homemade volcano).
• Buy some celery from the store and fill several cups up with water. Then add several drops of food coloring to each cup of water. Place a stalk of celery in each cup and watch what happens to the celery.
• Hard boil eggs on the stove using various cook times. Once you have cooked several different batches, have your child crack open the eggs and investigate the yoke of the egg.

Outdoor Playtime Activities:

• Go on a nature walk with your child and have them find different textures of things. You can use rocks, tree bark, leaves, flowers, animals, and bugs. Use each object they find to describe the object. For example, have them pick up a rock and identify whether it is smooth, rough, or jagged, what color it is, ect.
• Play with bubbles.
• Go to the park and test out the different slides, swings, and other play ground equipment. Teach your child about the different motions that each activities makes. For example, you can teach your child that different slides can make you go faster or slower depending on it shape. Use a ball to demonstrate if needed.
• As you are playing outside, you can teach your child about the sky, sunshine, wind, rain, ect.
• Play in rain puddles and as they start to evaporate or run off, talk to your child about evaporation.
• Play in the sandbox. They can dig, pour, scoop, and use toys to play in the sand. Have your child describe the texture, color, add some water to make wet sand (shows them about difference between wet and dry sand), and have them make sand castles.
• Use a water table to allow your child to play in the water. They can scoop and pour water, use toys to transfer water from one container to the next, ect.
• Toss a ball back and forth to each other. You can talk to your child about the different speeds and distance that you can throw the ball. Also test different sizes of balls to see if they travel at different speeds.

Indoor Activities:

• Play games in front of the mirror.
• Teach your child about their body and how it works.
• Make a homemade lava lamp.
• Find a long hallway in your home and grab several different size of balls. Roll the balls down the hallway and talk to your child about the speed that you have to roll the ball in order to make it all the way down the hallway.
• Watch Sid the Science together with your child. After the episode is over, talk to your child about the concept that they discussed.
• Create an I-spy bottle (seek and find bottle). You can find small objects or trinkets that you can find laying around the house. Then fill the bottle up with rice. Shake it up and have your child find each object.
• Visit the local library and find books about science concepts.
• Create different colored paint using shaving cream or evaporated milk.
• Make a homemade latch board.
• Visit the science museum.