Nina and the Neurons is awesome

Frida and I are in love with “Nina and the Neurons” on Cbeeies.
Nina uses her five senses to answer kids questions about how things work such as how an x-ray works..or a television or an echo. It is a really great show for 4-7 year olds. It has two thumbs up from SmallScience!

Human Anatomy ..for young children

Frida has recently become interested in anatomy. Not the parts of her body she can see…no that is old news…no she’s interested in what is inside her. This interest was sparked by a puzzle that she discovered at her new school. The first layer is clothes, then skin, then muscle, then organs and last the bones. What she has discovered through her constant questions is that all her friends have skin, muscle, organs and bones. Mommies and Daddies have skin,muscle, organs and bones, and yes Tigger, the cat, has muscles, organs and bones… oh and skin as well it’s just covered with all that fur. Now she starts to ask where the blood is and I’ve decided to try and find material for her curious mind. Perhaps this collection of books. Does blogland have any suggestions?

Update:
A friend of mine hooked me on this site which has short animated movies about the body.

Update Feb2008: Here is another great site for kids to learn about the body.

Early Spring

The winter in Switzerland this year has been extremely mild. In fact, we only had one week of snow. Unfortunately, during that period I was unable to try snowflake collecting. Let’s hope next winter brings more snow (can’t believe I just wrote that). This post will offer up some nice Spring activities involving flowers. Most of the activities are for Preschoolers:

Activities:

In Switzerland there is a lot of flower picking opportunities both free and pick/pay. First children can pick flowers of different kind and color. Flowers are brought back and sorted by color or kind and each category is counted. Cheap plastic vases and wood chips (with numbers painted on them) can be fashioned with Velcro and used to mark how many flowers are in each vase. This is an adaptation of FlowerShop homeschool activity. Counting and Sorting games are great for teaching math. I highly recommend looking at this site for other ideas.

Collecting white flowers, children can watch how flowers take up water. With white flowers, like Carnations or Queen Ann’s Lace, cut small piece of stem from bottom and place flower in vase containing water with a few drops of food coloring. Watch throughout the day as the petals change color. Details here

Don’t forget to have one group of flowers without food coloring to serve as a control.

When doing activities with flowers one possibility is to choose edible flowers. After main activity is finished the flowers can be tasted. If your child is like mine they may not readily eat the flowers. Why not sweeten the experience by preparing candied or crystallized flowers. List of edible flowers with comments on taste can be found here. Allergy prone individuals should not eat flowers.

More long term projects such as drying flowers and planting seeds are good for older children. Make a outdoor garden using an old baby pool. Make holes at the bottom of the pool then fill with dirt and plant flowers. Or a Baggie Garden by placing a a wet paper towel into a Ziploc bag and adding seeds.

Happy Spring

Introduction

I have been throwing the idea for a Science club around for a while now. To help myself along I’ve decided to start this blog. I actually want to do two Science clubs. One club for 3-4 year olds and one for 5-7 year olds. The first club is to share my interest in Science with my daughter who is nearing the 3-4 age range. It is also a way to teach myself what kids that age respond to as far as experiments go. The second club is also for me to learn what it is that excites and interests kids in that age range and also I think it may be more satisfying for me experiment wise.
I’m guessing the initial posting to this blog will be quite unorganized and sporadic…sorry. Right now this blog is more for me then you…but hopefully this will change.

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