A new curriculum that we have added this year is the book Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Volumn 1, Grades K-2. This will be the core of our science studies for the next few years. At first I thought DJ was still too young for it but after reading a few reviews and scanning the table of contents, I realized we had already done some of the lessons through our Montessori work (living vs nonliving, plant vs animal, land & water forms). So I decided to start it this year and do one lesson each month. 

The book is divided into four “learning progressions” which include Nature of Matter, Life Science, Physical Science/Engineering/Technology and Earth & Space Science. As you work through the lessons you move back and forth between the four progressions so they child gets a sense of the synergies and flow between the different areas of study. 

In September we started with Lesson A/B-1, Organizing Things into Categories. The book suggests teaching this lesson by sorting the ever-present “junk drawer”. As is typical of me, I read the lesson and then didn’t look through the drawer to see what to expect before starting the lesson with DJ. So we discovered what was in the drawer together. 

As it turned out, we had a lot of food packets – sugar, soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, chili peppers – as well as some plastic condiment lids, a bunch of plastic silverware, some corn cob holders that had been lost for awhile, cake decorator candles and a bottle brush. 

At first DJ suggested we sort by shape, so we had the circles (lids), long, thin shapes (plastic wear, brush, candles) and rectangles (all the food packets). But the rectangle pile was so large, we decided to sort it by type – soy sauce, cheese, chilies, etc. We talked about the items that didn’t belong in any “type” category – the bottle brush and the random tea packet we had. 

After cleaning up the junk drawer, I brought out our books for the 5 classes of vertebrates and a bunch of animal miniatures. If you look closely enough you can see how DJ sorted the animals onto their representative book covers. Here we talked about some of the characteristics of each group (hoe their young are born, where they live, how they get oxygen). And we talked about how some animals are very different from the rest of their group but they are more like their group than any other (such as a penguin that doesn’t fly like other birds or a platypus that is much like other mammals but lays eggs)

DJ then decided on his own to categorize his MagnaTiles. He chose to sort them by color. We then talked more about reasons to sort items by different criteria so DJ did another sort by shape, because he tends to use specific shapes when he plays rather than specific colors, so a sort by shape is more useful. 

Later we did an extremely important sorting project. We ordered a new Lego storage unit and sorted DJ’s collection by color with the bottom drawer for random people, tires, windshields, etc. This makes building the sets from the instructions so much easier. So DJ and I talked about how organizing things into categories helps us understand those items better. 

In October we started lesson A-2, Solids, Liquids, and Gases and Change with Tenperature. I set out some solids, a pink cube, a pen and a pat of butter. Then we poured into milk & olive oil into cups. At the same time, I had him pour some water in a pan and put it over heat on the stove. We had a third glass that I breathed into to represent air. 

We talked about the different natures of matter while DJ decided to mix them all together and stir. He had a lot of fun with it. He noted that the solids kept their shape as he moved them around and that the liquids took the shape of whatever container they were in. He also noticed that gas couldn’t really be seen and didn’t have a particular shape. 

As he was mixing and playing, the water on the stove began to boil. You can’t make it out in the picture but there was a good amount of steam coming out of the pot. So DJ and I talked about how the water was changing form from liquid to steam (gas) as it got hotter. As we were doing this lesson our region is preparing for a major fall storm, so that led to talking about how the storm clouds of water vapor (gas) were about to turn into a deluge of rain (liquid) that will likely cause some significant flooding. And then I poured out the water and placed the pat of butter into the hot pan. DJ had already gotten on board with the butter being a solid and he was quite surprised when the butter quickly melted and he realized it was now a liquid. I poured the liquid butter into a glass. Then DJ poured cold juice into the same glass and we were both surprised to set the butter set again into a strange solid that looked almost like wax from a candle. 

Finally, I printed some “green banded” paper and I wrote out DJ’s words to define the three states of matter. When we finished, DJ drew pictures above each definition (although they are hard to see in the scan because he doesn’t press very hard with crayons. I should have had him use markets)