“How Does it Work” themed science??

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

I was discussing next school year with DS this morning & asked if there was anything specific he’d like to learn about this year or any skills he’s like to acquire / develop.

I noticed a strong trend of “How Does XYZ Work?” topics. I’d like to brainstorm ways of organising topics to be at least somewhat cohesive, because I can see it devolving into chaos... but was thinking that would be a cool science focus for the year.  

Specific examples of his interests are: how a plant forms fruit, how plants “fight” for resources, seed dispersal methods, how burning fuel is able to power a vehicle, how we make rubber / steel / concrete, how we find and collect natural resources (metals, coal, etc), & how instruments make sound. 

I was thinking we could use episodes of How Does it Work / How It’s Made as a springboard for research, model-building, & experiments... Has anyone done anything like this? Any there good resources you can recommmend?

[Sarah0000]

I've always just found a website or two aimed towards kids about the question for him to explore then have him write or make something about it depending on the topic. If it's something difficult to make, like this week he asked about scuba diving, he's watching an online video then listing three reasons people scuba dive and drawing a picture of what he would like to discover while scuba diving. In the past he's asked about how instruments work and I was able to find online simple tutorials for making instruments with stuff around the house which he followed along. He usually wants a quick answer to those kinds of questions.