Summer Science Journals for Your Home School

Do you want to improve your science program? Are you struggling to motivate your kids to write anything let alone something meaningful, especially in the summer? Are you trying to get the most out of those educational summer vacations? Try using science journals! The benefits of journals abound! Have you tried them yet? They are great even for the littlest scientists! Here are a few tips for a summer science journal. Hopefully you will be inspired to try them out this summer!

• Use something that is portable and durable for your journal. You’ll take it everywhere and use it in messy situations. You want it to hold up. Attach a pencil on a string to the journal. Bring some colored pencils or crayons along. Put the journal, pencil, and colors in a folder or a plastic storage bag.
• Bring your science journals when you go to various vacation spots. Children can journal about the ocean, fishing, the farm, the aquarium, berry picking, hiking, and camping experiences (think star gazing, and the like).
• Why not use your journal with some ongoing science projects at home? We have a garden that we journal about. (That’s a whole other post coming soon!)
• Put a title on the page indicating what the entry is about and where the family was. Write the date. (It’s important to maintain good records.)
• Have the kids include detailed, scientific drawings in their journals. They should label the drawings clearly and use appropriate colors in the picture. For example, color the ocean the colors that you see (green, blue, white, yellow), not just blue because blue represents water.
• Write observations in each entry. Little ones can dictate a sentence or two for you to write for them.
• Make the observations interesting and relevant to the topic, too. Don’t just say, “The ocean is pretty.” Try something like this, “When the waves crash on the shore, there is a lot of white foam. The water sprays up, and there is a loud crashing sound. I saw the water pull back slowly after it foamed up. I wonder what causes the water to pull back.”
• Add a layer of challenge by posing a question for the kids to answer before going out and adding the question on the entry page. Then the child’s entry must include the answer to the question.

Have fun with your summer science journal. You may just find that your children love them and use them all year long!

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