The Curious Kid's Science Book: 100+ Creative Hands-On Activities for Ages 4-8 Paperback – September 8, 2015

This is a book about the scientific process. The focus is on taking children’s questions, designing activities to explore them, then trying out lots of variations on the basic experiment (where they change only one variable at a time to see the effect on the results - will it work differently with salt water than sugar water, etc.) There are several things that would fit well into everyday family life – give your child vinegar and baking soda while you’re making dinner, and let them explore. Exploration and process are the goal, not any kind of polished finished project, or finding the “one right answer” to a question. Good graphic design, and fun engaging photos. Some things that could be better: Concrete step-by-step instructions: Some of these activities include instructions, but many do not. Description of results to expect: Some experiments share one child’s results, such as the child who watered 4 plants with 4 different liquids. The club soda plant died quickly, the lemon juice plant died, the milk plant lived but had lots of mold on the soil and the plant watered with water did fine. This is interesting as a process experiment with that child, and would lead to a good discussion with them. However, I wonder whether the club soda result would replicate. So, while I like the example of what a child experiences, I’d also like a summary of what we would typically expect. For non-scientist parents, it would also be helpful to have more explanation of the scientific reasons for the results to give them the background to talk about it with their kids.

I received a review copy of this book before its release, but I had actually already ordered one myself -- it's going to be the perfect gift! We loved Asia Citro's 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids: The Very Best and Easiest Playtime Activities from FunAtHomeWithKids.com!, so I was really excited to hear about this book, because my son loves science. I have so many more tricks up my sleeve now for his pretend science lab in our backyard.I love, love, love that the focus is on guiding children to design their own experiments to learn more about the things they are curious about. It's hard to know how to do that with younger kids, so I'm glad to have specific ideas to explore and questions to ask for the activities. And, as always, the photography is as tempting as any glossy cookbook, so flipping through the book together is a great way to get kids excited to do the activities.I can see these activities working well both at home and in a school setting, so this would be great for teachers, too. The activities are divided up into eight chapters, which is going to make it so easy to incorporate these activities into homeschooling my kindergartner this year. So excited!

What an amazing resource for fun things to do with your kids! I purchased all three books and I must say they are all wonderful and well worth the investment. We have completed several of the projects already and plan to do some every week. There are so many fun things and variations that it will take us all year to complete and then we can start all over again! What I love most about the projects is most of them use every day things you have at your house and if you don't have something it's not an expensive item to buy especially if you are a member of Sams or Costco. I highly recommend the liquid watercolors as they are fun to work with, do not stain and have a much more vibrant color. I honestly don't know who is having more fun, the kids playing in all of our creations or me getting to prepare and make the projects! It is fun for the entire family and gives you plenty to do inside or outside. The learning that happens is absolutely wonderful!!

The book was very eye catching and the directions were easy to follow. I'm a teacher and my students quickly picked the book up and spent a long time leafing through it. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 because the majority of the "science" projects don't explain the science behind them. If my students are doing an experiment they need to know why they are doing them, what they are looking for/ monitoring, etc. I had to spend too much time coming up with these rationales on my own.

Things I love about this book:- the addition of color - food color to liquids, colored masking tape for construction etc all make it attractive to kids- simple supplies - baking soda, soil, seeds vinegar, recycled plastic/paper all inexpensive, convenient- simple to execute - kids have short attention spans so that's super helpful- kids (girls & boys) in the photos with big smiles! what a nice change to black/white schematics of beakers and liquids- the division into sections on plants/food/engineering/bacteria etc little groups of experiments in each sectionMy 4 year old will request a few experiments as bed-time reading on weekdays and then on the weekend we'd find time to do one of the easy ones. Convenient and entertaining. I've gifted this to others with little kids.

This is a good book of experiments and 9 Min crafts and I really crabs but they're all experimental things that you can teach your child but it is for ages you know up growing so you start at 4:30 and 4 but a lot of the things that are the bigger experiments are make more for the 7 to 12 year olds so I think the 4 four to seven ears is just things you need to get a lot of items for so you have to be ready to travel but it's it's fun they're all fun thank you