Covid-19 activities for parents, teachers, and students to explain coronavirus science to kids – Vox.com

Schools out for summer. And maybe longer, as scientists race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. But why is it taking so long?

The first of four episodes of Today, Explained to Kids: Summer Camp, Voxs explainer podcast for kids, answers that question by taking kids back to the Island of Explained to talk to scientist Maria Elena Bottazzi, a microbiologist who co-leads vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, about the development of a vaccine. We also take a curious kid, Mikah, to meet the Experimoth and learn more about why designing an experiment isnt always as easy as it seems.

Listen to the episode with the young people in your life or just because and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and a fun (and kinda gross) experiment you can do with kids (or, again, by yourself) that builds on what we learned in the episode.

Grown-ups: The discussion guide riffs on what we learned in the episode and the experiment to help start a conversation about social issues. Just like science experiments, its all about open-minded observation, asking questions, making predictions, and challenging conclusions.

Thanks to early childhood education specialists Rachel Giannini and Saleem Hue Penny for developing our learning materials!

Listen to more Today, Explained to Kids episodes:

Support Voxs explanatory journalism Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Voxs work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

The rest is here:

Covid-19 activities for parents, teachers, and students to explain coronavirus science to kids - Vox.com