Teaching Homeschool Science

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Science seems to be one of the most difficult things for many homeschool parents to teach.  It’s a complex subject with many different facets, and some homeschool parents don’t exactly understand a lot of it themselves.

Well, the good news is you can make learning science fun for your children AND for you!  You can learn together, and learning together makes it easier and more enjoyable.

While it’s important to concentrate on firm lesson plans and homework-style lessons sometimes, it’s also very important to get some hands-on experience.  This is what makes learning science easy and fun.  Trying to teach science without any hands-on work will not only be potentially boring, but it will be harder to grasp many of the concepts, too.

Here are some ways you can experience science hands-on:

• Visit a pond and take water samples.  View them under a microscope and describe on paper what you see.
• Visit the beach and take notes about the ecosystem.  What types of plants live on the beach?  Which creatures live in the tide pools?  What types of animals live in the ocean near the beach?
• Cook something like bread.  Explain how the yeast works to make the bread rise, what the various ingredients do for the bread, and what would happen if each ingredient were left out.
• Grow a garden.  Children can learn about botany, food supply, pest control, organic gardening, and where their food comes from.
• Get a chemistry set and experiment.  Did you have one of these as a kid?  They’re a lot of fun and very educational!
• Get a telescope and watch the stars.  Point out the various constellations and draw maps of the ones you see.
• Go on nature walks.  Identify plant species and animal species.  Document when and where you located each species, what they were doing, what time of day they were seen, and how many times they were seen.

Teaching homeschool science can be fun and rewarding for the entire family.  It’s just important to focus part of your time and energy on the hands-on part, rather than spending all of your time memorizing binomial nomenclature and the parts of cells!