In continuation from the last post we are talking about easy to do activities for elementary level home school science students. These activities help them gain a better understanding of the scientific processes that surround us, grounding them well in building a base for scientific understanding in the future. We spoke of forces, energy, magnets and electricity and now we move on to even more complex scientific principles.
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Move into the Light
It is best to keep to simple and familiar concepts like light and sound when dealing with elementary school science students. These are things that they already know about, then you can introduce a few more details about them. For example they can be shown how to reflect light with a mirror, or split a ray of white light into all the colors of a rainbow using a prism.
Talk about natural light from the sun, electric lights at home, and even camp fires flames that you can build up on a camping trip. Why restrict yourself to light, try and make them understand the concept of shadows as well. A shadow puppet show is a fun way to explain how shadows are formed and how they can be used. You can even do some experiments on absorption of light rays.
Journey into Sounds
Sound can be as fascinating as light. Soft sounds, loud sounds, vibrations of a knock on the door, adding a string of sounds on a drum to make a beat, even using the piano or synthesizer keys to create music are great ways to help your child learn about the nature of sounds. Help them discover the concept of volume. How some things are best heard at a soft volume and others enjoyed better louder.
It can be fun to take away the sense of sight by asking the child to close their eyes and then play at creating different sounds using a multitude of things. You can use a pencil to drum the metallic pencil box, you can drop a book on the table from a height, you can simply clap your hands. Come up with different sounds and then ask the child to guess what made that sound. Repeat the sound when the child’s eyes are open.
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