What's in Our Homeschool Science Corner?

We're about to embark on our second year of homeschooling. My oldest wants to become an engineer that designs and builds robots, so there is gonna be a lot of math and science involved. For the purpose of this post I will focus on the science area of our homeschool year. This year I decided to add a little science corner to our homeschool area. I wanted to get them excited for science by having them feel like scientists during our science class. In this post I will show you how I set up our little science corner.

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We follow a homeschool curriculum, and in that curriculum it was suggested to set up a science corner. To be honest, the idea had not crossed my mind. I was thrilled with the idea. The only challenge was to figure out how and where I would make the space for it. Ideally, I wanted to make use of the space I already had. After brainstorming possible ideas, I figured out how to make it work. I reorganized and made use of the cubical shelving we already had. Funny enough, it was already in the corner of our living room. It is now, literally, our science corner. Ha!

After deciding where our science corner would be, I needed to set it up. A science corner should have science tools (magnifying glasses, microscopes, telescopes, empty jars to fill, etc.), science books, things to observe/study, and a place to store their notes and observation recordings. The first thing I did was gather all the stuff we already had at home. Luckily, I already had some science tools for the kids.

Then I proceeded to purchase lab coats (pictured below) for both of my kids. I found this set on amazon, it fit my 9 year old perfectly! However, the fit on my four year old was a little big, but I made it work by rolling up the sleeves.

The lab coat kit (link) includes two coats, two safety goggles, and ID badge card holders. For the ID badges, I took pictures of each kiddo, adjusted the size in a word document, printed them out, and taped them to the card. My kids love it! Before we begin science class, they must show me their IDs in order to get in the "Lab".

Because I have two kids, a 9 year old and a 4 year old that wants to do everything big brother does, I found age-appropriate microscopes for each child. The microscope (link) for my 4 year old brings a tons of already prepared slides to observe, and it talks! When the child puts in a slide the microscope will say information about the specimen on the slide.

For my 9 year old , we have a more standard microscope, pretty much the same as he would have at a school. The microscope (link) came with a lot of add ons, such as prepared slides, unprepared slides (slides for him to prepare), sample collecting tubes, and more.

The first chapter in the science book we are using this year goes into What is Science and Where do Scientists Work, so having science tools in hand was an excellent way to get them excited for science!

We will also be learning about the solar system, so I figured the telescope should be included in our science corner. This one I already had, it was a birthday gift for my oldest son last year. I am really pleased with it, in my opinion, it's a great starter telescope! Perfect for kids to learn how to use a telescope.

To the left is a photo I took of the moon using our telescope, keep in mind that the photo doesn't look half as good as it did through the telescope. Using the telescope we were able to observe the moon and its craters.

Lastly, I added science books to our science corner. I gathered as much of our science related books we already had and I checked some science books from our library. My goal was to have reading material that was closely related to what they would be learning in science class this year. I use the books to introduce some of the new topics. Click here for some awesome science book recommendations for elementary school aged kids.

My next project is to add a basket full of sea shells. I plan to to take the kids on a sea shell collecting field trip so they collect sea shells to display in their science corner. I'm optimistic it's gonna be a great homeschool year.

Stay tuned for more science corner updates from yours truly!