Bayer Is Making Extracurricular Science Make Sense For Kids

Science is important. It’s actually very important, for each and every one of us. We all know it, but do we do enough to show our kids how important it is each and every day in our daily lives? I’m not so sure we do, unfortunately. The funny thing about it, incorporating science lessons to our kids could done so easily if we just take a few minutes out.

Bayer is one company that is completely on-board having small and pertinent science lessons be a part of our kids’ daily lives! As a Life Science company, Bayer has its foundation in science and innovation. As a result, they are committed to science education for our kids as they have a unique understanding of the integral role science plays in everyday life.

Making Science Make Sense^® (MSMS) is an outstanding program I really wanted to talk to you about. MSMS is Bayer’s company-wide, presidential award-winning STEM education initiative that advances science literacy across the United States. MSMS allows students to learn science by doing science through hands-on, inquiry-based experiences that involve observing, experimenting, hypothesizing, analyzing and testing. Bayer creates exciting, hands-on lessons for kids starting in elementary school to ignite their scientific curiosity at a young age.

Check out the video below. It’s a great overview:

To dive into what parents think about this, Bayer’s Making Science Make Sense® initiative conducted a Back-to-School 2016 Survey. The study is really interesting and reveals that parents can do more to nurture their children’s innate interest in science by leveraging everyday activities, such a cooking, doing the laundry, or exploring in the backyard, as science lessons for the family.

Here are some insights I took away from the 2016 survey:

• Despite a high level of interest in science, parents provide extracurricular activities for English and math more often. Only one-in-10 (11%) parents provide extracurricular science opportunities for their kids on a daily basis, compared to 38 percent for English and 19 percent for math. More than half (56%) of parents say they provide extracurricular science activities only once a week or less, compared to 26 percent for English and 42 percent for math.
• The most popular extracurricular science activities parents provide for their kids include taking them to the museum (61%), encouraging them to read science books (54%) and watching science-oriented TV shows (53%). However, far fewer parents (39%) demonstrate the science behind everyday activities.
• Parents say their top source of ideas for keeping their children interested in science are blogs and websites (49%), and nearly a third (32%) are inspired by the science behind everyday activities.

Ok, so we can clearly see that it’s not only important to incorporate science lessons into a child’s daily life, but it’s also something that most parents know and want to do. But how? I have seven great suggestions from Bayer’s The Beaker Life page that I think you will love. Here’s a sample:

Make filling up the car on the way home a short lesson on how fuel helps a car get you from soccer practice back home. Gasoline is made up of hydrogen and carbon molecules that act as the “food” for a car’s engine. A spark in the engine creates mini explosions when it hits the gasoline, which propel the car forward each second. This is the same way an airplane engine works, but on a much bigger scale!

Float your boat: turn bath time into an experiment and see why some things sink and some float right to the top of the tub. Floating or sinking of an object depends upon its density. Things denser than water (like a penny) sink whereas things having less mass than water (a plastic bottle) will float.

What do you think? These are such simple ways to teach your kids and let them see how integral science is to their daily lives. This really makes them light up and opens their eyes to the subject and its importance. Hopefully, this will translate into heavy interest in school, too!

To find out more about this awesome initiative, please check out:

• Making Science Make Sense from Bayer
• The Beaker Life
• Bayer US on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook

This is a sponsored post. Guy and the Blog has partner with Bayer US. All opinions expressed are my own.