We are huge supporters of our local library but one of the strategies I have discovered since we started our home education journey is the power of a good selection of permanent books in the house. My kids will often browse through our bookshelf, pull out a few books and start reading. This simple act will normally lead to questions and discussions about what they have been reading. Very simple but for us it has been the starting point of a lot of the kids learning. And the simple fact that we have certain books on our bookshelf means my daughter can read something, put it back, think about it in her time and come back to it when she has processed the information and can continue reading.
So no big surprise but with my two we have a ton of animal themed books and they love them but I am very aware that we don’t have lots of other Science books (Physical Science). And I desperately want to start building a small collection of books that deal with these concepts but deal with them in a child-friendly way.
Our first book which fits this is the My First Book of Quantum Physics
Straight away let me say this book is marketed for kids 8 years and older and I do agree just because of the concepts covered. It is written in an easy way without using mathematical equations and the concepts are explained simply. But they are complex concepts. For us this is the perfect type of book for our home bookshelf as it is a book that my daughter will read slowly bit by bit. She covers one idea, puts in back thinks about the concept we chat a bit and later on she will dig it out. It is not the type of book that fits into her library reading (ie something she can take out and sit and read it cover to cover and then be finished with it).
The book does cover a lot. It is set out in the order that the “discovers” were made and each time it comments on who the person was (we liked this fact).
They also include lots of useful diagrams to illustrate what they are explaining.
And I really liked the useful timeline at the end of the book.
But let me stress this is written for children, so the concepts are introduced and explained but it is not a detailed academic book with lots of long detailed paragraphs or equations explaining how they came to the conclusion.
Having said that I found reading the book myself quite useful as it reminded me of some Science I learnt at school (and seem to have forgotten) and it also taught me a few new things.
We think it is a perfect book to start our Science collections. It is a book I think I will be referring back to for years to come.
This book was given to us by GMC Distribution. We were under no obligation to write or say anything. All opinions expressed are mine.
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) and the other is flowers (
). The author starts the book by introducing watercolour basics like paints and brushes (the book is not actually a children’s book it is a book written for beginner watercolour painters). Then in the middle there are 8 different pictures – in the grey outline and printed on thick watercolour paper – the pages are also perforated which makes tearing them out very easy.
. My kids love these.
ofamily learning together 