How to help with...science
Science is a core subject of the National Curriculum even at KS1 and KS2. In this instalment of Spark Island's "How to..." guides, primary school teacher Sean Callery offers some practical and probing tips.
In a nutshell
There are two areas in which you can help your child to understand and enjoy science. - The first is to have a scientific approach to what she wants to know.
- The second is to help her find out things.
'Let's look at this scientifically'
'Let's find out'
Twang your way to knowledge
Learning activities
'Let's look at this scientifically'
This sounds harder than it is. Children are naturally curious. Channel your child's curiosity with questions. Children who look at things closely, and think about how and why things happen, are behaving like scientists.
- Compare parts of your child's body. Are feet longer than hands? What are fingerprints? Do toes have prints too?
- Study the family pet - if you have one. What does he eat? How does he eat? How does he drink?
- Study the growth of a plant. How can you tell it has grown? Can it be measured? What would happen if it wasn't watered?
- The kitchen makes a great laboratory. Cooking things changes them. Can they be changed back? It's possible to melt chocolate, or wax, and make it solid again, but it's not possible to bake a cake and get the flour and sugar back. Why not?
- If you want to compare what happens, only change one thing at a time. This is called a 'fair test' and allows you to work out what the result of each change is.
- Blow bubbles with soap and sugar. How can you make them bigger? What makes them burst?
- How does your child's bike work? What are all the parts made of? How do the brakes slow her down?
- Record these experiments with pictures (much less of a chore than writing, yet still able to show what happens)
'Let's find out'
Children can learn a lot from practical activities. The science taught in primary school fits into these sections:
- Living things: This covers animals (including humans) and plants. How is it possible to know something is alive? What does it need to stay alive? Try growing a plant in a dark cupboard. Compare it with the same plant type grown elsewhere. What animals live in your house, garden, local area? Why? Why do you feel hot when you run or exercise? What happens to your heart beat?
- Materials: Compare different surfaces, like plastics, carpets, glass and wood. What is the same and what's different? Do they feel rough, or warm, can you see though them? Can they be bent or squashed?
- Physical processes: This includes electricity. How does a torch work? What makes the bulb go dimmer? Make a model that needs power (and therefore, batteries and a circuit). Another physical process is force. You can't see it, but you can see it working. Make boats out of paper, or moulding clay or wood. They float because the force pulling everything down (gravity) is balanced by the water pushing up (upthrust). Look carefully and you can see how the water surface is holding them up (this is surface tension).
Making paper aeroplanes is another fun way to learn about forces. Why does it stay in the air when a crumpled piece of paper falls? (Air resistance). Experiment to make it stay up longer. Change one thing each time to make it a fair test.
Twang your way to knowledge
Your child can find out lots of science facts from an elastic band. If she fire things with it, she is using its stored energy. She can increase this energy by stretching the band back further. If she twangs it and listens, she is carrying out a sound experiment. The tighter the elastic, the higher the pitch... the harder the twang, the louder the sound...
These are all simple, practical ideas that are fun to do. However, you can't find out everything this way, and a good scientist needs to be a good reader, seeking out information in the many wonderful science books in libraries, schools and bookshops.
Learning activities
Check out our Activity and resource finder where you'll find tailored learning activities to develop your child's skills in English, maths and science.
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