Science is one of those interesting subjects which can lead to exciting hands-on experiments, researching about volcanoes and earthquakes, and taking field trips throughout various outdoor trails to explore nature.
Home schooling multiple ages allows learning to occur at various levels while learning about the basics such as, how different rocks look to five-year-olds to investigating with teenagers and exploring deep into the Earth’s crust to see the various layers and finding out what type of rock exists within the deposits.
To make learning fun and appealing to various age ranges and teach to varied skill levels while instructing from home, here’s some excellent ideas to teach science:
~ Teaching tips
To teach to multiple age ranges, it’s best to tier lessons for each skill levels. Understanding Differentiated Instruction and organizing lessons, which are geared towards each individual child’s learning style, skills level, and abilities, is the best method to teach and learn in any setting.
Home schooled students have their classroom in their house and their teachers, whether it is mom, dad, or a family friend, still require the thoroughness within lessons. One of the most useful comprehensive websites to assist is internet4classrooms.com.
This site is divided in sequential order of where to begin, Learning Styles, then links to Instructional Theory, and Practical Tips for the Classroom – the Home Classroom, as well.
Key to using Differentiated Instructional methods is realizing even within the traditional classroom, skill levels vary by approximately five to six grade levels. So when teaching a multi-age range of students in the home, this age range usually translates into skill ranges and requires Differentiated Instruction.
~ Field trips
Outdoor field trips to investigate local natural habitats, explore rock formations, or study plants, can be experienced any day of the week no matter where the child is home schooled. The outdoors is full of wonderful science lessons.
One example good for any age, is a lesson which begin with a basic review of littering. The younger children can list or draw about littering, the older elementary student can write a story about littering, and the teenagers can research, write an essay, and explore ways to clean the environment.
The entire group can then go on a field trip and clean a local park or just clean up a street block. This is not only part of science, its community service.
~ Experiments/Science fair projects
Scientific experimentation is so much fun and something the entire group of children can participate in, learn from, and enjoy.
The group can take part in a whole-class experiment using the scientific method while learning the process together. The younger children can draw pictures and prepare the key words for a science board, the middle-aged children can gather materials and begin research, and the older kids can do a full investigation and write a research paper.
Scifair.org and Discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral are two good websites for project ideas. There are detailed examples and lessons for each of the different areas of science.
Science is one subject which allows for a lot of hands-on learning and field investigation incorporated with challenges of higher-level thinking. Science is also one of the best subjects to get students motivated to learn by capturing their attention within the mode they learn best while delving deeper into scientific discovery.
When teaching science at home, have fun and allow students to find an area of science which is intriguing to maintain motivation to read, to write, to research, and to learn while being offered continuous challenges.
