Several years ago I found we weren’t doing the science experiments I had planned very often. This was mainly because we’d have to figure out what we needed to use and then go on a scavenger hunt every science day to find everything. Often we were missing one or two things so we’d just skip the experiment.

Then I got the idea to make up bags containing the small things we needed (and particularly the things we didn’t always have in the house) and a little list of what to collect the day of doing the experiment. Those bags worked great. For the rest of that school year we did every experiment planned. It really made science so much less stressful for me.

Last year I added what we needed for experiments to the shopping list every Friday. It was kind of complicated and a bit of a pain to remember to do that. So this year, remembering how great that one year with the science bags was, I decided to do bags again.

Since school starts a week from tomorrow, I spent some time yesterday assembling the first three week’s worth of experiments.

Each bag has a sheet detailing the experiments to be done that day and a card taped to the bottom of the sheet with a list of the items that will need to be gathered that morning. Many of these things are either too big to fit in the bag or are items we regularly use.

Some of the bags have another card with a list of things I still have to find or buy to add to the bag.

Each bag contains all the small or unusual items needed ready and waiting to be used in that day’s experiments.

I’m just doing 3 weeks at a time this time around (as opposed to the entire rest of the year I did last time). Hopefully we’ll have just as smooth a science year as we did the last time I made science bags.