The Backpack Coloring Page

About this page

Chapter 4 begins the way every good adventure does, with packing. A magnifying glass, a notebook, a pencil, a stopwatch, and a camera float above a smiling backpack, and each one is a real research tool in kid form, for looking closely, timing, recording, and writing things down. The page teaches that experiments do not just happen, they are prepared for, and choosing your tools is the first act of planning. Everything floating here can be found in a kitchen drawer, which is exactly the spirit of these 5 kitchen science experiments you can try at home once the bag is packed.

The research skill

Five tools float above this smiling backpack: a magnifying glass, a notebook, a pencil, a stopwatch, and a camera. The skill is matching each tool to the kind of information it collects. A stopwatch captures time, a magnifying glass captures small details, a camera saves what you saw, and the notebook and pencil hold it all together. Chapter 4 is about planning, and choosing tools is where a plan gets real. In school labs and in professional research alike, the equipment list comes before any testing starts.

Try it at home

Pack a real research bag for a ten-minute investigation. Start with a question, such as "How long does a toy car take to roll across the kitchen floor?" Then let your child choose which household items to pack: a kitchen timer, a notebook, a pencil, maybe a magnifying glass if you have one. For each item, ask what job it will do during the test. Anything without a job stays home. Run the test, then check which packed tools actually got used.

Talk about it while you color

• Which tool would you grab first, and what would you use it for?
• What else would you pack in your own science backpack?
• Why do you think the Squad wants a notebook and pencil for an experiment?