Homeschool Science Activities: Hands-on Light Energy Unit for Elementary

Engage your kids in fun, easy light energy activities. This hands-on science unit was specially designed for homeschool – or for any parent and elementary child to do at home. It includes five labs, a reading passage, review, assessment, and thorough directions.

Open the preview to take a closer look at the resources. They work well for parent-child investigations, independent exploration by one or more children, or as rotations for a homeschool group.

First, kids explore five properties of light energy. For each hands-on lab, they engage in two or three simple (but powerful) activities and draw conclusions.

• How does light travel? Kids use mirrors and a flashlight to discover that it travels in a straight line and bounces off hard, shiny materials.
• Which materials are transparent, translucent, opaque? They shine a flashlight toward a wall. They place a variety of materials in the path of the flashlight to determine which allow all, some, or none of the light through.
• Which materials reflect light? Students shine a flashlight on a variety of materials to determine which reflect and which absorb.
• What is refraction? Kids observe how water bends light through three situations: a pencil in a cup of water, a penny in an opaque cup, and a drop of water above typed letters.
• What is color? They split light into the visible spectrum using a prism or CD and bubbles.

Kids clarify science concepts with a reading passage and videos.

• They deepen their knowledge with a short article.
• Then they watch videos to reinforce concepts.

The elementary homeschool unit culminates with review and assessment. Flash cards and a study guide help them study. Then they take a simple test. It consists of true-false questions on concepts and matching vocabulary with definitions.

Files include all the pages you’ll need to teach light energy at home:

• Overview
• Complete directions for five labs
• Student sheets
• Light reading passage with questions
• Supporting video links
• Flash cards
• Study guide
• Assessment (pretest and posttest) with answer keys
• Station signs (if you’d like to set up activities in centers)

Materials are easy to find at home:

• Mirrors
• Flashlight
• Paper
• Pencils
• Clear cup
• Opaque cup
• Transparent, translucent, and opaque materials
• Materials that reflect and do not reflect
• Penny
• Wax paper
• Prism and/or CD
• Bubbles
• Crayons

Have fun with science!

Brenda Kovich

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