Ok, a little background.. I was homeschooled, my mom wrote many of the books in the Castle Heights Press curriculum. However, up until now, this very week, I have not had the chance to teach science to my children. So… now we are homeschooling, and my oldest is in preschool. We are using Alpha Omega’s Horizons preschool, which has great content for character building, Biblical application, and preparation for reading and writing. I especially appreciate how the curriculum integrates all the subjects with the scripture being studied. We are working through week 5, and studying the second day of creation, wherein God created an expanse (the sky) to separate waters from waters. The curriculum uses this verse to begin to study air, the content of air, animals and plants that need air, uses of air (to inflate things, the wind, to breathe, etc.)
So for science, the activity was to boil water on the stove, producing steam, and noting that the boiling water was putting water into the air in the form of water vapor. On this particular day, we didn’t see the steam very well, so we used a mirror to hold over the boiling water to produce visible condensation.
Now that was about the extent of the activity in Horizons, but we took it one step further, by printing an observation sheet from My First Science Notebook. With crayons in hand while the water boiled, my son (with a fair amount of coaching) was able to sketch the pot of boiling water with steam being produced, and (my mother would be proud) we labeled it very scientifically.
A quick plug: Using My First Science Notebook, you can take activities such as this one and practice the skills of science, in this case Observation. In the book, there are also worksheets to practice Recording, Measuring, and Reporting. We used the e-Book version of My First Science Notebook to print 13 blank drawing worksheets for use in upcoming science experiments. The book is for K-3, but as you can see here, with some coaching and patience, it can be started early!
I linked this blog post to Preschool Corner, where there are lots of other little preschoolers doing science experiments!