Eat Your Science Homework - A Review

My family recently received Ann McCallum Books' spectacular Eat Your Science Homework cookbook to use and review in our homeschool. What a delightful experience that has been!

A kids' cookbook to teach science?

Yes, that's exactly what Eat Your Science Homework is!  But it's much more.  The full title of this book is Eat Your Science Homework: Recipes for Inquiring Minds.  Ann McCallum has written a book that will allow parents to teach children kitchen skills, recipe preparation, and scientific principles....with loads of fun.  With this cookbook, parents and kids will experiment with recipes and learn about science-y topics like:

• The Scientific Method
• The Periodic Table of the Elements
• States of Matter
• Density
• Fingerprints
• Invisible ink
• Geology
• Space and black holes
• and more!

With Leeza Hernandez' entertaining and colorful illustrations of animals cooking and Ann McCallum's clear and simple lessons and fun recipes (not to mention the delicious food they produce), Eat Your Science Homework will give families hours of great times in the kitchen, as they learn scientific principles in ways that they'll remember for a long time.

Each recipe is designed to teach a specific science lesson.  So, while they're making the Atomic Popcorn Balls, for example, they'll be learning about atoms and molecules and the way atoms combine to make them.  Or, while they create a delicious lasagna for dinner, they'll be seeing a clear visual example of sedimentary rock, and how it forms.

And, if you'd like a little extra help in teaching the concepts included in Eat Your Science Homework, Ann McCallum has provided it for you!  You may download an Educator's Guide from the Eat Your Science Homework web page that will help you with this.  (Just click on the Downloadables tab on that page.)  This wonderful guide has everything from Science Bingo, to more experiments, to worksheet pages, to vocabulary sheets for the homeschooling parent (or schoolteacher!) to use.

Stirring up a Recipe

Here's how we
used it:

Rather than proceed chapter by chapter in Eat Your Science Homework, we decided to select a few recipes to start with that sounded intriguing to us.  So, we began with Atomic Popcorn Balls, Invisible Ink Snack Pockets, and Black Hole Swallow-Ups.  (I have to admit that I picked the invisible ink one, while my 13-year-old son selected the other two.)


As we dove into each recipe, we followed the same pattern of steps.  First, we'd read the "preface" of each recipe/topic, which introduced us to the topic we'd be learning about.  Next, we'd read the recipes, which told us what tools and ingredients we'd need, as well as the steps we'd follow as we cooked.  Then, of course, we'd prepare the recipe!  When we finished, we'd read a couple more pages of Eat Your Science Homework, which would tell us a bit more about the process and the scientific concept.  (This might happen before OR after we ate what we'd made!)

Atomic Popcorn Balls!

This is what we thought!

Our family has been Ann McCallum fans for awhile.  And Eat Your Science Homework definitely encouraged us in that fandom!  This book clearly teaches science, but adds the fantastic component of cooking to what kids are learning from the book.  The cooking provides one type of experiments, while the Educator's Guide gives parents some extra ones to reinforce the lessons.  It's a great combination---and our family loved every minute of the cooking and reading from this book!

Finally...

You'd probably love to know where you can find this book, wouldn't you?  Easy peasy.  Just visit  Ann McCallum's website, Eat Your Science Homework , where you can purchase this awesome resource for $16.95.

(This review was written by Melanie Reynolds, from FinchNWren, for the Schoolhouse Review Crew.)