Back
🔬

Science

Living things, earth science, and physical science

Grade:

Elementary science introduces plants, animals, the human body, weather, space, and materials. More importantly, it introduces a way of working: ask a question, make a prediction, test it, and see what happens.

Children arrive with strong existing ideas about how the world works, and many of them are wrong. Teaching science at this age is largely about surfacing those ideas and testing them, rather than filling an empty space.

What the subject covers

  • Living things: plants, animals, habitats, and the human body.
  • Earth and space: weather, seasons, the solar system, and day and night.
  • Materials: states of matter, changes of state, and properties of substances.
  • Working scientifically: predicting, observing, recording, and drawing conclusions.

Supporting a child in science

  • Ask what they think will happen before doing anything, which makes their existing idea visible.
  • Let experiments fail. An unexpected result is more instructive than a tidy confirmation.
  • Answer why questions with let us find out rather than guessing, which models how science actually works.
  • Use everyday situations: cooking, weather, and the garden all contain real science without any equipment.

Frequently asked questions

What science do children learn in elementary school?
Typically living things, materials and their properties, Earth and space, and basic forces, alongside the practical skills of predicting, observing, and recording.
How do I answer science questions I do not know?
Say you do not know and look it up together. Modelling that is far more valuable than an invented answer, and it shows that not knowing is where science starts.
Why do children hold on to wrong ideas about science?
Because their existing explanations usually fit their everyday experience. Simply being told the correct answer rarely displaces them, which is why testing predictions works better.