Budding Scientist

Budding Scientist helps parents, grandparents, kids, educators and anyone else who’s interested learn how to get young people excited about the non-liberal-arts. Studies show that children begin forming negative opinions about science and scientists as early as Kindergarten. Ask a five-year-old to draw a scientist, and you will likely end up with a picture of a man in a lab wearing a white coat doing boring stuff. What can we do to counteract this stereotype? Here, Scientific American editors, scientists, and other contributors share ideas for involving kids in science early and often. We will also bring you up to date on the latest news about science education, encourage you to share your own ideas and projects, and answer your questions.

This blog will also serve as a hub for Scientific American’s many other education-related ventures, including our Citizen Science initiative, where volunteers can sign up to help researchers with numerous projects, including observing wildlife, and “catching” earthquakes; Bring Science Home, our series featuring projects for grown-ups and kids ages 6 to 12 to do together; 1,000 scientists in 1,000 days, which helps match teachers and scientists for classroom visits or curriculum help; our partnership with Google on the Google Science Fair, and our work with the White House’s Educate to Innovate campaign.