Science Activities for Ages 4-6 or So

by Liesl - Homeschool Den

In writing my series for new homeschoolers about choosing a science curriculum, I came upon this post from last year. Since many people are planning or just starting the new year, I thought it was the perfect time to share this again.

We have always done a lot of hands-on science. In the early years, I just want the kids to think science is cool!! We’ve done a lot of science experiments and I shared some of our favorite science experiments in this free packet. These are some of the experiments we’ve done when the kids were 4-6 or so…

Here’s another post with a few more experiments appropriate for the kindergarten age (roughly 4-6).

Three Fun Science Experiments for Kids

Other years, we’ve done various science units and really delved into one topic or another. I’ll link to some of the ones we’ve done at the bottom of the post.

This year, we may repeat some of these experiments, but I’m going to rely on some other resources to continue introducing ED to some basic science topics. What I decided for this year was to use a wide selection of science books and use those to jump off for a day or so. I typed up a list of our 50+ science books… most of these are probably at your local library.

I’m using many of these read aloud books as jumping off points. For example, this week ED and I read a couple of books about the solar system (below). I brought out our pretend solar system and some oriental trading planet sticker scenes I bought a while back. We talked about the planets, their sizes and distance from the sun, how hot and cold they are, etc. as she and DD put the stickers on the page. (No surprise, LD, my oldest, wasn’t interested in this. He did, however, quickly read through the books and said, “Whoa DD, did you know it takes Pluto 248 years to orbit around the sun!)

There are lots of resources out there to go into much (much) more depth. We could have done a whole unit on the planets, the moon and all that , but since we have a lot on our plate and since we’ve covered this before, I just wanted to touch on this with ED. For example, we did a lot hands on activities about the moon, etc. some time back. I’ll put some links in down at the end of this post…

The kids had a blast making this 4M Solar System Planetarium (affiliate link). They got to paint the planets and place it on the stand:

The other three main resources I’ll be using for ideas for ED’s kindergarten science are from

Cut and Paste Science,
Science Starter (I liked the questions and topics in this book. It’s probably available used at Amazon) and
The Pre-Level 1 Biology from Real Science for Kids.

For ED my goal is to touch on a lot of subjects that we might not get to otherwise. She’ll also participate in the units my older two are doing (coming up soon — Simple Machines).

We also have some “fun” science activities squirreled away. This week ED has been working on a dinosaur dig (yes, she’s in her pjs!! She wasn’t in a big rush to get dressed yesterday!)

So that’s what we’re doing with ED. She’ll be covering a lot of basic science through those books, fitting in short activities. Meanwhile, she’ll participate in the science units I have planned with the older kids.

You might also be interested in some of our previous astronomy activities:

Inner and Outer Planets — Activity – ED still has this in her science notebook. We took it out and looked at the inner rocky planets and our gas giants… and the asteroid belt.