Teaching Physics With Toys: Hands-on Investigations for Grades 3-9, Easyguide

I want to love this book. I bought it to enrich an 8th grade physical science class. I thought it would be so much easier to use toys, especially K'nex, instead of pricy materials from a science education company. A kit to demonstrate the effects of friction on an incline plane is much more expensive than making something out of K'nex etc. Like a lot of parents, I am up to my neck in K'nex and this seemed like a great way to use them now that my kids are older.Well, as of the day of this review, the company that prints this book, Terrific Science Press, has no current web presence. That is a problem because all of the instructions for the specific K'nex projects were online. I didn't realize this when I bought the book. There are some small pictures as part of, say, the demonstration on gears that look fantastic, but I have no idea what specific K'nex I need to gather to make the project. The unit on levers instructs me to make a see-saw and a wheelbarrow from K'nex. It tells me the assembly diagram are on the website. Well, there is no website any more. Same with the unit on pulleys. There are lots of suggestions of things I can make with toys, but the book tells me to go the website for the specific instructions. That makes a percentage of this book useless.I am going back to TOPS Science units.

I have been enjoying this book greatly and look forward to making sure it stays available to my homeschool group. I think it could easily be used at home by parents who want to increase their knowledge right along side their children. If you're at a loss on how to keep your kids busy during the summer, this is a great way to spend quality time with the family maybe include the neighborhood kids, without spending big bucks. There are also resources on line to help. I love that it gives the expected time and because of past experience doing these kinds of things it seems pretty close. The only thing that might influence the time might be the ability and needs of the students which is always a factor in any class. I am looking forward to checking out the other series in this collection of science fun!

The lessons are good, but their supply and resource lists are outdated and no longer available. It would be faster and easier to make the supply lists available in the book because the publishers clearly aren't interested in updating the list. As far as the downloadable worksheets, this is the letter I just wrote to the company:I am really disappointed because I can't access the download materials as promised to me. I purchased Teaching Physics with Toys new via Amazon in April 2015. Again, it was not a used copy. I followed the process to enter the ISBN to access the download files. I followed the verification email link to enter 3 questions to access the file, and I can't seem to get them right, whether I try the words as case-sensitive or not. I've now spent half an hour trying to get these files without success. I absolutely have the book in front of me, and I'm using it to answer the questions. Please provide me with the download files as indicated or a refund for the book's purchase price.

The book has very good ideas for experiments and good background information for teachers. I did not received a CD-ROM with my order. I was able to download the student pages from the terrific science website but I cannot find the K'NEX Parts Inventory or assembly info which is a real drawback. Be sure to try the experiments yourself before you do them with the class... not all of them have worked very well.

Described as being accompanied by a CD-rom of the lessons, this edition was not. I wrote to amazon.com to ask about it, but did not receive a reply. Aside from that, it looks good for the intended purpose. I'll base an elective course for 7th and 8th graders on this set of lessons. They are low challenge for this age group, but the lessons can easily be extended.

Great for any science teacher! The author has done all the work for you. The enclosed cd rom has all the student work pages for you to reproduce.

La fisica è un argomento "ostico", soprattutto se si devono spiegare principi complessi con il solo ausilio di schemi e formule. Questo libro offre spunti interessanti(sicuramente da sviluppare ed adattare al modello "italiano") per introdurre alcuni concetti di fisica negli ultimi anni delle primarie e nei primi delle secondarie. Consigliato per quegli insegnanti che hanno voglia di mettersi alla prova con una didattica alternativa.