Educational Science Toys

My kids enjoy science. Kellen especially. After attending the October Sky Festival, he decided he was going to attend Virginia Tech and be an engineer like Homer Hickman. That is a fine choice by me, and probably a career that would suit him well. (Who knew in October, how VT would now be on every one's minds?)

Those choices are many years down the road, but for now we encourage him to learn about the things he is interested in. When it comes to science, hands on is the best. There are lots of resources for do it yourself science experiments, but if you don't have the time, or inclination for that there are also many science kits that come ready to go. These are the kinds of things that I encourage Kellen to ask for as gifts too.

Virginia Tech had some of their engineering students at the festival with activities for the kids. One of the activities was building robots. Kellen was hooked on this. All the other kids (my niece and nephew went too) were ready to move on, but Kellen stayed there for a long time!

I've thought about getting Kellen something like this for home. He could learn a lot from these kits about scientific principals, problem solving and electronics. Not to mention it would keep him very busy for a long time! :)

Of course, astronomy is always popular around here too. We keep saying we are going to learn more about the stars and constellations. This kit looks like it would be really helpful. In our last house, I painted Kellen's room with all the planets and made the ceiling a dark blue, (not an easy thing to cover when we were getting ready to move!) and covered it with stars. Wouldn't it have been fun to actually put the constellations on there correctly!

I would love to be able to locate the constellations! We have an amazing view of the night sky. Well, we do when there are no leaves. In the summer you have to walk to a spot we call the clearing. All I can locate are the dippers though.

My kids are into science. I enjoy watching them enjoy learning, and helping them learn about the things they are interested in.