Customer Reviews

Pint-Size Science: Finding-Out Fun for You and Your Young Child (A Brown Paper Preschool Book)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All the books in this series are user friendly and the activities use materials that you have on hand. I have often referred to them when trying to occupy my 3 year old son in a way that is also fun for me. In fact we played the float-a-boat game today. In addition to the actual activity, the author also gives little hints designed to improve your child's problem solving skills. My only disappointment is that these books are not as readily available as they once were.

This is a small book, but each lesson in it has several activities that are fun, packed with learning potential, and easy to put together. Few of them require much preparation at all, and in general they use items that are easily located in the house.

Love love love this book. It is full of great, easy ideas for how to support scientific inquiry in an everyday, easy kind of way. Some of the suggestions are common sense things most parents do with their kids like collecting things and cooking, but this book takes it further by giving lots of hints about how to make everyday activities more engaging. For example, turn your walk around the neighborhood into a theme walk (let's find seeds, or let's count cats) and support your child's observation skills.

Then there are the games/activities I'd never heard or thought of: Juicy Cubes (color mixing in an ice cube tray), Float a Boat (making aluminum foil boats and adding cargo for making predictions), Feelie Box (put objects in an empty oatmeal box and stretch tube sock over opening for mystery box), Collector Cards (sort and glue found objects on a card with labels), Bouncing Beams (using mirrors to reflect light around on different things). Oodles of other ideas are included for playing with bubbles, shadows, magnets, pets/bugs, etc. And each game/activity is explained in clear detail, including many different ways to vary it. And along the way the authors explain a huge amount about scientific inquiry - how kids learn to observe, predict, experiment and conclude. Great stuff here.

For a busy mom or dad or caregiver, this is a quick and easy idea book. The index is even sorted in categories to make it even easier to find an appropriate activity for any circumstance: while you wait, in the car, in the kitchen, on your own, one on one, good for a group, quiet time, outdoors...

The entire Brown Paper Preschool Book series is THIS good. Highly recommend them if you can find them!