Cooking and Science is a very nice spiral-bound book. It is intended for 5 to 10-year-olds, but my 11 and 12-year-olds enjoy it too. The book uses simple recipes to teach science terms and experiments to teach observation and recording skills. The spiral binding makes it very easy to use when following the recipes and recording your data. The book has 17 chapters; each chapter has one recipe activity and takes between 15 and 30 minutes to complete.

I really like this book and would definitely consider buying it. In our homeschool science gets put on the back burner. This book helps bring up those scientific terms that might get forgotten or that don't really stick in children's minds because they don't relate them to everyday events.

A perfect example is the first chapter on condensation and dissolving. The child mixes up a glass of powdered lemonade, observing it before and after stirring. This shows how a solid dissolves in liquid. Then the child adds ice cubes and writes down their observation of what happens to the outside of the glass. The book states that this is called condensation, and it explains why it happens.

Each chapter gets a little more detailed and fun. This book is probably not for the science majors or those who really like formulas and delving into the mysteries of science. But I highly recommend this book for the science "dropouts" like me, who enjoy a fun activity now and then that can explain those scientific terms in an easy and fun way.

Product review by Kerri Schnetz, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, April 2008