Science project experiment and activities are available for elementary, middle school or high school science.
Learn science terms, build a solid science foundation, and exercise your higher-level thinking skills with these fun-to-do, and often challenging, science puzzles. 195 puzzles for home or school! (227 pp., softbound) By: Nancy De Waard and Jack De Waard
As parents and teachers ourselves, we have a strong interest in encouraging learning. Some of the strongest motivators for learning are wonder, fun, and competition. We have also found that one of the biggest barriers to adults learning science is the intimidating vocabulary involved. (One researcher has found that introductory biology involved learning more new terms than in a first-year foreign language class.) However, the "vocabulary barrier" is more in the minds of teachers and parents; children don't know that science words are hard until some adult tells them. Thus, if kids are left to have fun, explore, and complete, they can grow up enjoying learning science terminology, gaining a solid foundation before they realize they weren't supposed to like it.
Background
The word lists upon which the puzzles in this book are based were drawn from the most widely used fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade science textbooks. Thus, they comprise much of the specialized vocabulary that most upper elementary students will be expected to master.
Organization
The book is organized into four units that mirror the major areas of science that most elementary science programs cover--Life Science, Earth/Space Science, Physical Science, and the Human Body. These units are further broken down into topics such as Plants, Motion, Solar System, and Digestive System. While most modern elementary programs integrate multiple disciplines into each of their chapters, our goal was to provide a generic volume that would be useful to all.
Each topic has a single word list consisting of about twenty words that are used to construct five different types of puzzles--matching, word search, fill-in, crossword, and word jumble puzzles. This sequence introduces the children first to the words and then to the puzzles in a topic, they will have mastered the age-appropriate vocabulary usually introduced at the upper elementary level.
Contents
Life Science
- Animals
- Birds
- Plants
- Mammals
- Insects
- Adaptation
- Ecology
- Biomes and Habitats
- Food Chains
- Heredity
- Evolution
Earth Science
- Dinosaurs
- Earthquakes
- The Moon
- Natural Resources
- Oceanography
- Rocks and Minerals
- Solar System
- Space
- The Stars
- Volcanoes
- Weather
- Weathering and Erosion
Physical Science
- Dinosaurs
- Earthquakes
- The Moon
- Natural Resources
- Oceanography
- Rocks and Minerals
- Solar System
- Space
- The Stars
- Volcanoes
- Weather
- Weathering and Erosion
The Human Body
- Digestion
- Circulation
- Human Body
- Hygiene
- Nutrition and Health
- Safety Senses
- Skeletal-Muscular System
Puzzles are a fun and challenging way for kids to learn science terms. When a child sovles a puzzle, there is more going on thatn rote learning. For example, solving the fill-in puzzles involves quite a bait of logical thinking, a higher-level skill. This is also true of the word jumble puzzles. However, we don't want to mislead you--the purpose of this book is age-appropriate vocabulary development and fun! Anything else is a bonus.
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