One of the best ways to teach physics for children can also be used to teach physics to adults. How can you make physics fun to learn for your kids?
Consider present the children with a set of real-world objects that they show interested in. This objects should also show the various principles of physics. From this joyful learning will automatically follow. When it comes to children, the objects that will naturally be most interesting for them are toys. Children love toys!
Since kids can spend many hours occupied with creative play time and even exploration with toys. They will become absorbed in the toy until they start to have a feel of how it works. They will learn all the tricks to get the most fun form of it.
When the toy shows some principles of physics, then it is these principles that your child will have a feel for. In the early development stages, the abstraction of physics is not necessary.
What can kids learn in the early development stages?
Toys also involve lots of physics simply by the way they work. For instance, if a child looks at a toy car race in a vertical loop and not fall, they will get curious as to why it does not fall once it gets to the top.
The important thing is for kids to have the exposure to it. It’s this exposure that will plant that very key seed for curiosity and future academic pursuits in the sciences. Luckily, kids today have access to tablets and smartphone apps that explain inertia, gravity, and other physics principles.
How can your child make the most of these apps? And which are best for them?
Below we will look at some of the best apps and games for learning physics for kids that help get your kid’s gears turning by getting them to participate in virtual games and learning.
Meet Science: Force And Motion
For someone who remembers high school physics, it’s then possible they are physicists. When not, just know that motion and force are a large part of it. This app will get your child excited about these 2 guiding principles. They will get to know more about these principles by teachings offered by flying spaceships and animated animals.
Just to note, if your teacher was a rocket or a lion, it is very likely that you would today recall the Law of Conservation. This app can be used by kids aged between 9 – 11 years.
Tinybop Simple Machines
This app introduces the 6 basic mechanics elements— wheels, levers, screws, pulleys and axles, wedges and inclined planes — these are used in solving little playful physics puzzles, such as cracking open ice boulders using wedges or laying siege to a caste using levers.
That is usual real-world stuff that your child might face some day.
Since it’s physics, the physics game provides a downloadable companion, a Simple Machines Handbook. This helps your child better understand and explain what’s going on. This app can be used by kids aged 4 years and above.
Super Nano Trucks
This game is easy to play right away. It has colorful graphics that can easily be read even when your kid can’t.
By pushing a hard hat prompts your child can try out challenges using questions. And depending on what the question is asking, a child can help pick up dirt lay down roads, and also complete other tasks to earn hard hats.
Also, they may also drive around bumping into things and dumping rocks everywhere as a way to test the law of inertia. This app is suitable for kids aged 3 – 8 years.
Crazy Gears
The Crazy Gears app focuses on STEM problem solving, by using several gears to build different complex machines.
One advantage of this app is that there is no wrong way for your child to put these gears together. It allows your child to go nuts trying out every possible way to get to their own solution.
Parents will be pleased with this app since it has lots of projects and fun facts to challenge them. At the same time you — during the learning process. This app is suitable for children aged 6 – 8 years.
Monster Physics
This app has numerous games that allow your child to choose what they want to play.
How does it help your child learn physics? All is required is to select the game you haven’t played, then set up the contraption in motion.
Monster Physics game is the place for building contraptions, giving a large variety of building block materials like magnets, tiles, and propellers. The settings for the game can be adjusted depending on your skills level or as the patience level becomes less advanced. It’s suitable for kids aged 9 – 11 years.
How Can Children Use What They Learn In Physics?
Physics is one of the richest and broadest of all sciences, in regards to an everyday phenomenon, physics is one of the most relevant science to people’s daily lives. For instance, physics of sports is rather popular and highly discussed on the net.
Most people partake in playing sports and so it’s natural for them to want to know the physics behind their favorite sport. For those individuals who are otherwise not interested in physics, they may be interested in understanding the physics of playing their favorite sport.
In Closing
Teaching kids physics through the use of toys may be a really practical approach.
This approach will give them a good foundation for studying and growing interest in physics. And it does this in a manner that is already quite interesting for them anyway, by using play time with their toys. Such an approach can be an important addition to the learning they are doing during their science classes.
On the bright side, kids today can also use tablets and smartphone apps for their learning. These apps will explain to them inertia, gravity, and other key principles in physics that makes physics an interesting subject to learn!
For more science-related articles to help your child, please refer here:
A Closer Look At Why Students Hate Physics and How to Do it Differently
Curiosity In Singapore Children: Is It A Good Thing Or Bad Thing?