Smudge’s Early Science is a set of activities for early years children (4+) offered by Storm Educational Software. The games are drag and drop, matching, or sorting mostly, but could be lovely as independent activities.
“Smudge’s Early Science introduces the basic concepts of science to children aged 4 years and above. Each activity has been created by looking at the requirements listed in different curricular activities include helping children to:
- Name Parts of Animals and Plants;
- Pairing to get to know the names of animals and parts of the body;
- Sorting to classifying animals and plants into different groups; and
- Life Stages covering several animals, plants and humans”(Storm Educational Software)
The life stages games cover the butterfly, chicken. Flower, frog, human and tree.
The properties of materials activity allows children to “test” materials such as plastic, card, rubber, cloth, food, metal, paper, sponge, wood, glass, paper and china to see if it will bend, scratch, stretch or smash to help them be able to classify it according to its physical properties.
The musical bottles game allows children to experiment with the sounds made after adding or taking away water to a glass bottle. I love the way it shows sound waves and lets children make a musical phrase, record it and play it back.
There is also a simulation game called Seeds to Plants where children choose the weather over four weeks to “grow” the plants in the game. The game starts with the sunflower seeds planted in a patch of earth. Too much cold will kill them as will too much sun! It took me 15 days to grow beautiful sunflowers – if only!
Smudge’s Early Science is lovely for the young, either sent home as a homework exercise. It could be done individually in class or done together on the whiteboard and will give children the opportunity to explore and talk about the scientific concepts covered.