Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Need Recommendations for the super science-y kid

Professional scientist opinion ahead, so feel free to ignore any of this if it doesn't seem to apply to your child.

Most of us were distinctly, noticeably scienc-ey by this age in some strikingly similar (probably predictive) ways-- but it doesn't always resemble what non-sciencey adults would anticipate. I mention this because the shop-talk over a few beers often turns to what kinds of wacky, off the wall things we did as kids. Pretty much every scientist I know has at least ONE of these anecdotes, and usually dozens. We were kids deeply devoted to our pursuit of understanding.

We were the neighborhood Macgyver kids. The kids who would melt metals with an open arc created with a marine battery, DIY napalm + tennis-ball launcher ( )or create a Guinea Pig-powered van de Graaf generator. The kids that would teach a parrot the most awful profanity imaginable... and keep records of the creature's learning rate in different conditions... the kids who broke windows and dented cars with home-brewed trebuchets and impromptu physics tests, created optical benches and tested how rapidly materials could be ignited with the beam, filled wading pools and bathtubs with salt, mud, and sand, played with urine, grew mushrooms in inappropriate places (like closets and attics), made glider wings out of sticks and a very large tarp, tested the tensile strength of kitchen utensils, etc, etc, etc.

We often started out like low-budget, opportunistic Mythbusters with the ethical constraints of raccoons or magpies, quite frankly. Understanding guidance might have been a good thing. Most of us lacked that.


Oh, sure, many of us were voracious readers as well. Some of us even liked the theoretical side of things. My advice applies to the experimentalist rather than the theorist at any rate. Most kids who have a sustaining interest in science are obsessed by tinkering with things that most people barely even notice or simply accept.

This is the age at which most HG+ kids with hard-core science interests are ripe for science fair project books. I think that we had one that was "science fair projects for pennies" or some such thing.

What I mean by that is those books that are intended for:

a) elementary/middle teachers to use as a resource for setting up simple demonstrations, and/or

b) late elementary/early middle grades students to complete 'AWESOME' science fair projects. (they surely won't be original, but anyway...)


No, not because those things are anything like a good idea for producing a science fair project. They aren't. We're talking visceral, immediate experiments in physical and biological sciences using convenient materials, though.



Why I like them:

1. They give kids who are into science a way to do more science. Independently, messily, and authentically. (Uhhhh, and without running afoul of animal cruelty laws or the fire department. This is important to adults, for some reason, because they have rules about all kinds of strange things.)

2. I also like that, because some of the experiments are twitchy and more about theoretical viability than empirical robustness, they don't always work the way they are supposed to. LOVE that, in fact. Because it's a chance to consider how it can be made to work, or why it doesn't. (Some physics examples are highly materials-dependent, some biology examples are dependent upon environmental factors or species-specific, and some chemistry examples are highly dependent upon both.)

3. The other thing that I like about this is the open-ended nature of it. Oh, sure, the stuff IN the book is rather formulaic. Happily, it also often uses readily available and relatively nontoxic materials. The real magic, though, is in taking what is in the book, trying it, and then thinking about ways to improve upon it, change it up, change which variable you're examining, that kind of thing.

A child that learns that baking soda and vinegar can be combined to produce gas.

Huh. How MUCH gas? Was there another thing in the book that measured a gas? Maybe we could use that method to measure THIS too...we can then tinker using that understanding-- that tinkering is really where the science exploration and learning is happening. (I am pointing this out only because as Grinity points out, not all parents are science parents.)

"Wow. I wonder what would happen if I used ALL of the baking soda at once??"

This is a very valid question. Of course, it may be helpful to ask questions as your young scientist is investigating things....

"How would you know that adding more baking soda was what caused that to happen? How could we be sure that it wasn't just having a bigger container and a bigger volume for our reaction? If we use ALL of the baking soda, we won't be able to do any more trials-- how could we try your idea and have some left?"

In other words, I like to use simple materials and hand-on experience to get kids who are truly science-oriented thinking in terms of variables, testable hypotheses, and flaws in experimental design. Make them consider sources of error, figure out appropriate controls, and alternatives to their explanations for observations. Investigate uncertainty and statistis by repeating experiments!

4. The final reason why I like such books is that they provide SAFETY cautions where appropriate. Oy, the things that my DH and I both did as kids.

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Really excellent science camps do this kind of rigorous inquiry-led learning-- sometimes, with some advanced kids. It's quite rare for it to be detailed or accurate in classroom instruction, however, until honors/AP high school work. The problem is that most kids at 6yo really aren't up to the task cognitively, so it tends to devolve into follow-the-leader-and-watch-the-show.

I had a BLAST with my DD at this age because she was the. most. fun. kid. ever. in this respect. We could use baking soda and vinegar to make 'rockets' out of old film canisters, and then study the physics of the projectile we'd created and make predictions, repeat our trials, graph results, etc. etc. It was terrific! We put things in the sun to melt, we hit things with hammers. We froze things, we made projectile launchers, we extracted things from plants, and we grew caterpillars and identified the moths-- we played with genetics in radishes, made pedigree charts of eye and hair color in our family, and we played games with dice and coins and recorded results.

I wouldn't be too concerned about re-reading, fwiw. My DD likes to do that sometimes, and often it's just about her enjoyment of it all. I also wouldn't be too concerned about gaps or haphazard areas of interest. He is only six, YK? At six, it's completely appropriate for him to delve into things he likes and skim things he's less interested in.

Science really isn't a series of facts and formulas to remember; it's a process and a way of examining one's perceptions and questioning assumptions. The content in books is just the outward trappings-- the real inner machinery is in the kinds of tinkering that I've been hinting at rather strongly. A true scientist is pretty much incapable of making an observation without following it with either; "Huh. I wonder why..." and/or "Hmmm. I wonder what would happen if..." Most kids lose that joyful uninhibited approach to things, and it's a real shame. I may be biased, but I'm kind of convinced that scientists are not really made so much as they're born. Adult scientists are merely the kids that couldn't be educated out of this unfortunate natural tendency.

Other science magazines your DS may like:

Kids Discover (DD only recently let her subscription lapse-- she's aged out of it now)

Science News (probably a little old for him yet-- my DD wasn't into this one until she was about ten)


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DD was a big fan of the science-oriented DK Eyewitness books at one point, but by age 6, she was keen for more in depth material. It sounds like this is where you're at with your son. Middle and High school texts are probably at about the right level. The ones from Houghton-Mifflin and Mcgraw-Hill often include embedded experiments which are very much like the ones in the 'science-fair-project' books.

Some survey course materials from Gen Ed college courses might be interesting, too. DD was about 7-8 when she became interested in my stash of texts for my Gen Ed classes (Forensic Science, Environmental Science, etc.)


Be sure to screen some Mythbusters and see if that might be up his alley. Most of the science there is pretty straightforward, and it's often very well explained. Oh, and it's revolting, dangerous or destructive, which really appeals to some kids (namely the kinds of kids I mentioned in the start of this post). Maybe it's just my kid. And my DH. And me.