My kids are very interested in birding (this is a family interest). If your child is interested, there is a lot out there for kids--events, nest watch/feeder watch in the yard, etc, a lot of it with an explicitly scientific bent. Look up the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. DD has an account on eBird, a site where you enter bird observations. Some amazing citizen science has come out of eBird. There are many other citizen science projects your child can participate in--there is one where you plant sunflowers and observe the bees that come. Again, you are actually contributing to valuable science when yout ake part in these. I know this isn't a "mix things together and see them foam" kind of thing, but I find my kids learn a lot about the scientific process and scientific thinking from this stuff. I'm not such a fan of the "make it go boom" style of science teaching because there often isn't much theory behind it. We have and love Snap Circuits, but I don't know that the kids are really processing the concepts.
