science/social studies activities for young children?

[boricuaqueen327]

DD is attending public school and since my dad works there I know what their curriculum is like. They are really lacking in science and social studies. I am hoping to supplement with activities we can do at home to help her obtain these vital skills that she will not be working on very much at her school. I know she is very young so I am not looking for anything super structured, just fun activities we can work on together to expose her to these areas. Can anyone point me to resources for such activities? I figured it would be best to look here since you mamas/papas are familiar with where to find this stuff. TIA!

[notjustmamie]

Not sure exactly what sort of activities you're looking for, but for science, we're doing a lot of animal study. I've been using fact pages and videos from the National Geographic website to learn more about various animals, then we'll look at the world map and compare where the kangaroos (for example) live compared to where we live and we'll get out the tape measure and measure how high a kangaroo can jump and how far (most of the way across our apartment as it turns out!) and so on.

I also try to watch for science-y questions and we'll look stuff up on the internet together--like Why does yeast make bread rise? or Why are all the birds flying away?

We also visit the science museum and the zoo, but mostly don't try to incorporate specific "learning activities" with it, we just play.

For social studies, DD is really into maps, so we've been doing a lot of map skills stuff and basic geography. Also, we've talked a little about how animals and people interact (e.g. we were studying elephants a few weeks ago, so we looked up different ways that elephants are trained to help people and ways that people help elephants). We also talk a bit about history, but most of that is over her head still.

[Dakota's Mom]

For science the Let's Read and Find Out books are great. You can get them on all kinds of subjects. Why dio birds fly. Why do we recycle. Why do ducks swim. So many different topics. Amazon,com has them fairly cheap. Sometimes they have them for less than $1.00 used.

For geography there are post card clubs online that are great. You can send and receive post cards from kids all over the country. We used a map to mark where the postcards came from. We also had fun looking up facts to put on our postcards.

Kathi

[boricuaqueen327]

Post card clubs sound fun! thanks for the ideas. Keep 'em coming.

[meetoo]

Five in a row might work for you........

When my DD was in school we just did neat experiments there are tons of books, Mud pies to Magnets is one we have enjoyed. I'm sure other people on here would have more recommendations.
You could also do a lot of season activities. There are TONS of fall science ideas, migration, plant cycles, seeds, leaf changes, nature walks, food storage (can work in some history about how people used to need to store up food too. In the winter it can be hibernation, animal foot prints, arctic animals, different states of matter (i.e. ice vs water LOL). Winter is a good time to study space, because the stars come out so early........
Just pick a topic then visit the library and google! You will come up with some neat add ons. We use things like you-tube all the time in our homeschool.

[Wilhemina]

here's a geography game to try

Have your child close her eyes and spin the globe to pick a country. Read about that country in a children's atlas, then pack to go visit. We actually get out a suit case and pack.

Ex: When going to Kenya we packed clothes for warm weather, a soccer ball to play with the locals, binoculars to see the wildlife...

Lots of great discussion, including how would you travel to get there.

[AAK]

One of my favorite social studies "lesson" was to do a culture study. DD wanted to learn about Japan so we first found it on the map and found its capital and other interesting things. Then, we got books about Japan and about Japanese culture, and then read about Japanese Americans. This sounds like a lot of reading, but pick age appropriate books and just pick out what you want to read. Then, we learned some simple origami, we learned about the written language and tried to make a few of the characters, we had a tea ceremony, and then went to eat at a Japanese restaurant. If I were doing it again, I would also have dd listen to the language here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/japanese/

a list of all the quick fix languages:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/quickfix/

Amy