SCIENCE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
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Taste can be added to the scientific exploration. Can he taste the difference between two different colors when he sees the colors before tasting them? Can he then name the color when he tastes six pieces of different colors in random order with his eyes closed? Experiment with items with more distinctive flavor differences, such as jelly beans. Can he name the color or flavor without seeing the jelly bean first? If so, can he name the color or flavor if he eats it with his eyes closed and nose held? (People with anosmia, the absence of a sense of smell, cannot distinguish most different food flavors because much of our brains’ interpretation of taste comes from olfactory, or smell, input.)
Science and Sports Predictions On a rainy or snowy day when your young sports-lover is stuck indoors, she can make predictions, deductions, and hypotheses about the characteristics of different balls. Gather an assortment of balls, perhaps several of each type—one new and one old, or with different amounts of inflation. She can consider possible investigations, such as which balls bounce higher or the greatest number of times. How high does she need to hold a ball from the floor to have it bounce exactly three times? How does this height compare between high- and low-inflated balls of the same type or among different types of balls? Similar comparisons can be made by measuring the distance a ball travels after it rolls down a homemade ramp, such as a shelf removed from a bookcase.
PLANT WORLD ACTIVITIES AS learners As your child walks through a park, have him collect leaves that have fallen from various trees to examine further at home. Using a book that identifies different types of trees, your child can write or dictate some observations about each type of tree, including details about the leaf. For a syn-naps activity, the leaf can be pressed between the pages of a thick book and later covered in cellophane and taped to a notebook— your child’s personal tree-science journal. If your child likes poetry, she can write similes to complete the following sentence: “A fern is like_____because_____.” For example,
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