Does your child hate science? Introduce science through innovative ways to kids
“The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one’s self a fool.” - William Least-Heat Moon
I found the above quote by William Least quite fascinating. Every other person on the planet has some fears and if we google a list of fears, search pages won’t end. One of the most dangerous fears is the fear of learning science and this has now been going on for generations.
Let’s talk about this more, what evokes the fear for science, be it in you or your children?
On researching, I came to realize that it is a cycle. So, taking an example… You randomly ask any student in a class and ask him “When is the bullet going to hit the target?”… The first thing that comes into a child’s mind is the anxiety of not being able to answer the question.
There are two scenarios here which are:
- Either the teacher was not able to explain their students well enough or
- The student is disinterested in understanding the physics concept lying behind the bullet target.
Makes sense? This cycle of not understanding the concepts and not participating in class and so not understanding the concepts even more is what makes this anxiety level in children go higher and higher after which then comes a point, where your child actually starts hating physics. Undoubtedly, this must be the same for other science subjects too.
To build interest in science in your kids, the first and foremost thing to do is to make your child curious about exploring new things by creating an innovative environment for the child. However, if your child in itself is not curious about asking questions, learning new things, then you can help tickle that hidden curiosity in multiple ways. Science-based board games are an easy way to tickle curiosity.
In this article, let’s discuss some innovative ways using which you can help your child build up interest in science, build that curiosity you are looking for, and show them a future they might get involved in. And to add, you totally need not worry about the hate part that your child has currently built up for science as “US” together will be helping them throughout on how they are going to learn while they play and gradually build interest on their own.
At-Home Science activities
It is said that parents are the first teachers and with no denial, your involvement towards your child education is inevitable. The base for your child always starts at home. The first and the most innovative way to introduce science to your kids is to build a science-friendly environment for them at home itself.
Studies have shown that when your kids are growing in science-friendly homes, a lot of things change which includes their perspective to see things, encouragement to explore more and ask questions, critical thinking abilities, reasoning abilities, enhanced reading and writing, creating innovative models, and many more. These little things which we are ignoring with growing days are actually the best and proven ways to generate that initial spark of curiosity into them.
Understanding what needs to be done
According to a study from EDC, parents have always wished and looked for ways to introduce science to their kids while at home but the hard truth is that they don’t know how to do that. Parents pointed out the pain point that ‘if they knew what has to be done, they would certainly do more science activities with their kids’.
One most efficient way that parents can follow is to go on the internet and start learning some simple, fun, and meaningful science activities that can be done easily with children. Looking closely, once parents get a knack of what ideas for science activities are going around, they can accordingly start developing their own ideas best suited for their child’s abilities. Check out these 50 Easy Science Experiments Kids Can Do At Home With Stuff You Already Have
Doing exciting things with daily routine things
Image source: Pexels
Now you need to understand what your child likes to play with. Most commonly children love to create a mess, play with water, play with interesting toys, and so on. So to begin with the first one that is creating a mess for them, for example, spray a heap of foamy shaving cream onto a metal cookie sheet and then encourage them to touch and play with it then you can experiment with adding colors to it and explaining you kid the science how the color travels through the cream and what shapes can be made with it.
When playing with water comes into the picture kids are the happiest ones. You can do certain experiments with water with them for example, fill up your kitchen sink and see what floats into the water and what sinks into it, and through this, you can help your kids know the science behind the floating and sinking of items. Apart from that, another one could be filling up a plastic bottle and then making a hole into that bottle and then do an experiment with it and explain the science of pressure and the speed of water with which the water comes out of that hole.
Find science workshops for your kids
This is a really great way for your child to build interest and explore science while interacting with other students of the same age group. In these workshops, they will have hands-on working experience and also learn science in a very fun manner. So, you can start to look for different organizations that offer these kinds of workshops for kids. There are multiple organizations which you can refer to.
Watch sci-fi movies with them which includes some aspects of real science
Image source: Pixabay at Pexels
Although we would also agree to the fact that many of the movies tend to be pretty mindless but also there must be one blockbuster movie which you can watch with your kids, and along with watching that movie your job there will be to point out those science-related questions such as, the phenomenon which is shown in the movie is possible real-time or not, how the abilities of Spiderman similar to spiders, if there is a movie related to space then helping them understand that is it possible to hear in space and what is the reason behind why the objects fly in space or maybe is it possible to survive in outer space. You can support their curiosity and make sure to answer their questions relevant or irrelevant to make them understand what is right and what is wrong in their thought process in a way so that it doesn’t hamper their curiosity to ask questions.
Last but not least search for some more innovative ideas, search for a place where you get very fun and engaging games, activities and also can schedule workshops for your kids. Where you get your kids to learn about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths in a very inexpensive way.
Happy learning!