Welcome to RainbowResource.com — Learning Tools for Homes and Schools Serving Home Educators Since 1989

In the same spirit as Get a Grip, Lentil Science takes hands-on lentil play, and applies it to science, math, social studies, language and art. After perusing the books and kits, I have to agree that this is almost like less messy, more educational sandbox play, and is sure to give kids a solid understanding of comparison, volume, numbers/amount, planning and layout, sorting, graphing, problem-solving and more. Actually, it’s almost like a hands-on, open-ended critical thinking program! The components of the kit are similar to that used in Get a Grip but allow for more experimentation and, include: a seamless job box, assorted plastic vials cut to particular sizes, baby food jars of different sizes, sifting screens, a bottle connector, magnets, bottle caps, BBs, craft sticks, and a scoop. The book contains all teacher information, instructions, and reproducible student materials/task cards. The book is designed for Lentil Science to be used as a sort of "center activity," where the lentil workstation would be set up somewhere in the classroom, and students would take turns playing with it. Because of this, the student portion of the activity book is formatted as "activity cards", and are found at the bottom of the pages, with corresponding teacher information at the top. The student task cards contain little text, instead utilizing illustrations to show the equipment and procedure. The teacher information includes an objective, introduction to the lesson, and questions intended to guide the activity. The primary book contains seven chapters labeled "pour," "search," "compare," "design," "measure," "divide," and "calibrate." The first chapter primarily encourages children to play with the lentils, to observe them, and to draw containers when they’re full, half full, etc. Other chapters focus on sorting activities where students must separate another small object from the lentils; volume and amount activities similar to those in Get a Grip; artistic activities where students use lentils as a medium to create shapes and 3-D landscapes; measuring activities and determining equal volumes; division activities where a volume of lentils should be equally divided into other volumes, and calibration activities where students use division of lentils to calibrate other containers to a specific volume.

Intermediate lentil activities are more advanced, with seven chapters focusing on comparison, searching, measuring, designing, dividing, calibrating, and estimating. The students jump right into volume puzzles similar to Get a Grip activities, and from that point, complete lentil activities similar those in Primary Lentil Science, but more involved, more complicated in procedure and incorporating content from other subjects. Instead of simply creating a lentil landscape, they’ll lay out a city in a grid pattern, and add street names, landscape "props," and more. The Intermediate kit is nearly the same also, including only an additional test tube and a counting grid. If you plan on using both the Primary and Intermediate books, you may want to consider the Combo kit, which includes both books and a combined kit.

Customer Review

 
Jennifer M. from Topeka, KS wrote the following on 03/16/2010:
The Lentil Science kits are wonderful, almost everything you need is included. Even some of the prep work like cutting the pill bottles to specific sizes and making the counting grid from hardware cloth and a ceramic tile and other tasks have already been done. Pretty much all that is left to do is label everything appropriately and collect the remaining containers like soda bottles and margarine tubs. The kit was definitely worth the money to not have to hunt down all these items and modify them when necessary myself. Each bag of supplies within the kit is labeled with which book (Primary or Intermediate) and which chapter in the book the supply is used. Very helpful. The only thing I would like to see added to the kit is film canisters. 35mm film canisters are getting harder to come by. I've been asking around local film shops without much luck. I'm going to have to order the empty canisters online. But overall, I'm very happy with the kit.