Let's Learn The Life Sciences

This game was designed for ESL learners. It’s a way to expand your vocabulary to include more of the natural things found on planet Earth.

Here’s a video game where your kid can take a tour of how biohazards in wastewater are contained.

There are many opportunities for vocabulary: your kid can name the equipment they pick up (mask, boots, etc.) or they can tell you what they did in detail.

This lets you first pick a list of words that are appropriate to your kid’s level (and make sure there are at least a few that they have to look up), and then there are a wide variety of word games available if you click the green “Play a game” button at the bottom middle.

The website is pretty vast and offers a lot; it feels more like a study guide. It may not be as flashy as Starcraft, but I’m sure your kid could find a way to have fun with it, and there are a ton of activities and word lists. (Golgi apparatus, any seventh graders?)

Here are a lot of online quizzes that your kids can do to challenge themself with the life sciences. They aren’t necessarily easy. And maybe they aren’t for six or seven-year-olds – or, at least, not without your help. Questions include “Name one living thing,” which your kid must be able to spell. (“E-L-E-F… no, wait…”)

Give it a try.

It’s “Go fish!” with a twist; rather than look for random numbers, you’re looking to grow your bugs from eggs to nymphs to fully metamorphosed insects.

It’s easy for kids – and it’ll take something that might turn them away or gross them out (“Ewww bugs!”) and make it into something fun. Watch the kids put away their princess costumes and grab a magnifying glass to look for nymphs in the woods behind the house.

Bonus: you can look up the names of the different life stages (if they have specific names) – like “caterpillar” for the larval stage of a butterfly – and you can write these on the cards.

The link above explains the whole activity. As a bonus, have your kid label the areas; either with colored markers or pencils or by sculpting letters out of play-dough or etching them into colored slabs of play-dough.

Wow your kid with just how fast the heart pumps blood by challenging them to replicate this using water. Your kid has one minute to move 1.3 gallons of water from one container to another with a measuring container of ¼ cup (which represents the heart’s size).

To sneak some vocab in there, have them add things like an “aorta” (a tube into which they must pour the liquid) and label them.

This activity will teach kids the names of their types of teeth (canines, incisors, molars) and their function – through the example of eating things. Turn your kids’ snacktime into a chance to learn.

In addition to the anatomical vocab, encourage your kid or kids to come up with other ways to describe how a human – or other animal – might masticate things.

Who says chemistry can’t be fun and hands-on? (And what kid doesn’t like ping-pong balls?)

The important thing here is that kids first understand the big word “photosynthesis.” If they don’t have this background, the activity won’t make a lot of sense.

Your children don’t have to be beekeepers to make a positive difference to our planet. This page states that one in four bee species is in risk of extinction. By building a hive, your kid will learn how the insects’ societal structure works, and the basics of making and maintaining a healthy community.

If you want them to pick up some vocab, have them put labels in sections of the hive for bees’ societal roles: honey-gatherer, nursery attendant, queen, etc.

Your kid probably knows that whales are big, but do they know just how big? In this exercise, they’ll find out just what it would be like to stand next to one of these behemoths of the deep.

To teach your kid some vocab as well, have them pick a whale species and then label the parts: blowholes, baleen, dorsal fin, flippers, rostrum, eyes… An example diagram with the parts labeled is here.