Some unconventional ways to teach science

Because my children are still young, we can use some very creative ways to teach simple Science lessons. We plant vegetables, and flowers, to teach about the plant life cycle, and why and how things grow. We start them from seeds to add more effect to the lesson. I collect gemstones, and using a simple microscope, my children inspect them under the microscope, and read about them in my gemstone books. We bought a very simple kids microscope, from Walmart, for 15 dollars. We use it to examine the gemstones, plus tons of other things like sand, rocks, leaves, bugs, food, and anything else we can think of. In our yard, there are numerous creatures to examine and learn about. For Habitat studies, we take various animals from our yard, and look them up to learn their habitat, what they eat, and how they survive. This includes, various insects, lizards, birds, and even a snake. We talk about stars, and the moon, constellations, and the planets, by inspecting the sky at night, and then looking up what we see. So you see there are many, many ways you can teach your kids, without books and curriculums, just from your own home and yard. DJ got for his birthday a very cool science kit. I wanted to share it here, because I think it would be awesome as a science project for homeschoolers. It was purchased on ebay for 8 dollars. It is a T-Rex excavation kit. It comes with the bones buried, in a clay like substance, and the child digs up the bones with a tiny shovel. When all the bones, have been removed, he/she can put the dinosaur together, and have a cool model dinosaur. I know I will be looking for others, to enhance our hands on learning.