I love good science books for children. But the problem I have is many aren't realistic, they might have a good story or accurate information but they add characters or comic style pictures. I recently found this series which is written for young children, the images are hand-drawn and look just like my old biology notes. If you are interested in science you might like them as much as I do.

The language used is delightful, scientific and real names are used, just like nucleus, mitochondria, dendrites, protozoa, axons. I think it's wonderful to expose children to a wide range of language, we shouldn't shy away from reading scientific literature to our children and using scientific names. But these are still written for children, the descriptions are simplified and are able to be read by children. The books are quite short at around 20-30 pages.

Pictured above: How Many Microorganisms, The Neuron, The Animal Cell. 

All the books in this series were written by a pharmacist after she became a parent. While we could read them to our young ones to expose them to these terms, I think they are also excellent books for elementary aged children who are starting to learn about biology and physiology.

Otis (7 years) is still really into making his own science experiments. While he has his own notebook I also love the My Science Lab Notebook by the same author. As with the previous books the language used is real, it is such a Montessori concept, we are not dumbing it down for children, they are making real experiments with real results, why not use the real language and record the findings in a real way.

While this may be a lot of fun for them now, it's actually setting the child up for a positive and successful experience with science into the future.

If my child knows the parts of an animal cell or how a neuron works at seven, imagine what he could be learning in five or ten years time. If he is recording his experiments like this now, his future in science is on a good path. 

Let me know if you have any other really good science books to share. We also really like Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes.