We love science! In my Studying Habitats post I talked about the Science Fusion program we are using. And we love it, but we like to mix things up so we have some other books we like to throw into the mix now and then. Last year at the Orange County Children’s Book Festival we stopped into a booth with an Usborne book consultant and we loved the products. In fact, now that I’m homeschooling I’m thinking about becoming a consultant myself because of the awesome variety of non-fiction books, as well as fiction and activity books. I think it might be a great way to give us access to new material on a more regular basis.

Anyway, even though they’ve been read many times, we still use See Inside Science and Look Inside Your Body from Usborne as references. I’m teaching first grade science and we go back to the human body a lot, and I have a 3 year-old who likes to get in on the discussion, so Look Inside Your Body is a great resource to have. It’s full of facts and each page has flaps you can lift to find an answer or get a deeper explanation. For example, the “Eating Food” section shows your intestines and as you lift the flaps you find out how the process works and finishes off with a fun fact about the length of your intestines.

See Inside Science is like a general introduction to several scientific concepts: the solar system, molecules, energy, even the periodic table. Again, this book is full of flaps and super fun for little ones to read.

In addition to these and other regular books, we also have a backup science program. When I originally ordered Science Fusion, Houghton Mifflin mistakenly sent me the wrong science book. They sent us a different first grade science program but the standards seem to be more aligned with the younger set. When I called to see if I could get the correct order they immediately had the proper book sent out and they told me to keep the other one as well. Huge high five to the customer service on that one. I will definitely order from Houghton Mifflin again. The content is great and I love that the teacher material is all available on the CD-ROM that comes with the text, but it’s too basic for my advanced reader. We like to use it for the science experiments and I sometimes print out additional material from the teacher CD.

Our Backup Science Text

Finally, if you have a science lover like mine, Lakeshore has some fun science kits that are great for independent exploration. I got the magnification set and the magnet set and my kids love them. We use the contents often, and I like that it has a lot of the things we need to conduct the science experiments from our texts. You can read about these sets here at my previous blog.

What science programs or activities do you use with your kids? I’d love to learn more about what other people are using. Please share in a comment below!

P.S. No Affiliate links here – just me sharing with you!

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