How To Be A Scientist – DK Book Review
Title: How To Be A Scientist
Author: Steve Mould
Published By: Dorling Kindersley, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4654-6121-6
Pages: 144
How To Be A Scientist
DK has a great selection of books you can choose from to encourage young readers to explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) content in a hands-on and fun way. How To Be A Scientist was my choice from the available titles but some of the other titles available include:
Maker Lab (see my review HERE)
Coding With Scratch Made Easy
My Amazing Body Machine
First Science Encyclopedia
Help Your Kids With Science
My children are already asking me about Coding and they are only 6 and 8 years old! I am not quite ready to tackle that topic with them but Science – I can handle science and thankfully, they love it too! When Colleen from DK Canada asked me which book I might like to review from the STEM Collection, I jumped at the opportunity to explore How To Be A Scientist by Steve Mould.
My children are avid YouTubers and I did a quick online search and stumbled across this short video demonstrating 3 of the projects included in the book and put it on for them to see.
Darla and Drew were coloring fish before the video was even over! The next thing I know Drew has the book and is putting little yellow sticky notes in to mark the experiments he wants to try first.
Making learning hands-on and fun makes it so much more memorable than just reading about a concept in a book.
With summer fast approaching (we only have 2 weeks left in school here in Ontario) I am starting to make lists of things I might need to have on hand to tackle some of these projects included in How To Be A Scientist, with my two children.
The book includes a variety of STEM concepts in a bright, fun and colorful way. The pages are filled with interesting facts, ways to explore different topics and colorful diagrams and images.
Before you begin exploring How To Be A Scientist, I recommend reading pages 4-5 which explains how the book works. Along with many fun activities for you to try together, simple scientific explanations are included to explain the “Why” of the results you achieve. You are also introduced to different famous Scientists along the way. The goal of the book is to teach your child how to think and act like a scientist. Page 6 and 7, is the Getting Ready section and it explores tools and different ways you can begin to think like a Scientist.
The contents included in How To Be A Scientist are separated into different modules:
Natural World
- Pine cone patterns
- Take it apart
- Sycamore helicopters
- Habitats
- Bug chambers
- Charles Darwin
- Egg roll
- Mary Anning
- Food chains
- Pond life
- Making Mold
Human Body
- Body Parts
- Taste test
- Fool your fingers
- Reaction challenge
- Test your nerves
- Rhazes
- Funny faces
- What do you see?
Chemistry
- What is a chemical?
- Dmitri Medeleev
- Cleaning coins
- Is black ink really black?
- Make a rainbow
- Materials
- Plastic bag puzzle
- Ice cube trick
- Make a bubble bottle
- Pineapple gelatin
- Marie Curie
Earth
- Weather
- Make a tornado
- Solar tower
- The water cycle
- Make a compass
- Structure of the Earth
- Grow Crystals
- Towel mountain
Physics
- What is energy?
- Hot-air balloon
- Flip the picture
- Stick explosion
- Singing bike tire
- Electricity
- Isaac Newton
- Paper Planes
- Feel the force
- Float the boat
- Secret shower
- Albert Einstein
Space
- The Solar System
- Create your own sunrise
- Phases of the Moon
- Make a sundial
- Galileo
- Make impact craters
- Watch a meteor shower
Along with the activities included in the video he watched, Drew also wants to try Sycamore Helicopters, Ice Cube Trick and Paper Planes. He has requested these to be the ‘first experiments’ we try – then we can do the other ones. Darla is very interested in the Earth section and the Human Body section right now but she loves science so thinks we can have a lot of fun with this book over the summer.
How To Be A Scientist will encourage young readers to think like a Scientist, to ask questions, discover amazing facts and do fun activities in a variety of different STEM areas. What type of STEM topics do your young readers enjoy?
You can purchase your own copy of How To Be A Scientist directly from Amazon.
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All images are used with permission from DK Canada Books. For more information about DK Canada Books – visit their Website, Facebook or Twitter!
Thank you Ana 🙂
This is a fantastic book!! My son will love it. Thank you very much!
Congratulations dor this wonderful blog 😁
I love great learning books that help provide different guidelines and activities to keep children interested. I’ll have to get this book for my grand kids.
Oh my goodness my kids would love this book!
I have seen this one around Facebook for a while, and my 7-year-old daughter pretty much demanded I click through to this post. 🙂 Thanks for showing it in a little more detail. It looks like an awesome book!
It’s never too early to foster a love of science!
I love books like these that teach learning can be fun, especially science.
I love science-y books like this, they make education so much fun!
I’ll have to link this page to my sister, who cares for her grand kids over the summer, I think they’ll have a blast
Looks like lots of fun. My grandchildren will love it.
This is an interesting book for children. If I had a young child, I would definitely be buying this book for them. I can remember going through an old encyclopedia book with science experiments in it. I would perform the experiments in class to show the other students the different things I learned from reading the encyclopedia. This is definitely a book for parents with young children to invest in.
I’ll have to look at this for my Granddaughter’s next visit.
This looks like a really fun book! The experiments look like they would be fairly easy too! 😀