Pint-Sized
Science!
By Sandy Fleming
Welcome to "Pint-Sized Science!" Together, we will
explore experiments, activities and hands-on games to make science
fun. Science education is a vital part of young children's learning,
and you can make a difference by devoting some time each week
to exploration.
There are several reasons
to make science a priority in your program or home. Science
activities build a better understanding of the world around
us. Your experiments and activities will add to children's
general knowledge. Science also encourages many logical thinking
skills. Prediction, sequencing, cause and effect, and drawing
conclusions are all part of a sound science activity. These
activities also build those all-important language skills,
as excited and motivated children describe their observations
and put their theories into words.
Children are born scientists.
In the course of your work with children, haven't you heard
questions like, "Why is the sky blue?" and "What's
under the ground?" and "Where did the moon come from?"
Children are curious creatures
and have a strong desire to find out the answers to the questions
that occur to them. In addition, in our fast-paced world, children
will need the best understanding of science that we can give
them. Without our help, children will not be ready to take
their place in our technology-based world. Caregivers and parents
have the opportunity to help children build a positive, capable
self-image. Building a habit of life-long learning must begin
as early in life as possible. We can lay a vital groundwork
for later success in many areas of science competence. Your
enthusiasm and excitement can encourage a child to become a
life-long investigator who feels the answers he or she needs
are
available and just around the corner.
What does science for
children look like? Many people have the mistaken impression
that science is overwhelmingly complicated,
that
it takes a lot of special training and equipment to teach, and
that it
is too hard for children to learn. The basis for most of these
misconceptions is the mistaken view that science is a collection
of
facts and information. Instead, think of science as more of a
process. Science is something to be done instead of "learned" or "accomplished."
Science has four basic steps, and children "do" them
all the time,
even without our help! Science is observing, predicting, testing
and
putting bits of information together to explain what the other
steps
showed. Even babies follow those four steps every day as they
learn
to make sense of their world. Small children observe an event
that
catches their interest, they consider and predict what might
happen,
then test out their theory (sometimes over and over and over
and...)
and finally create their own explanation that fits with their
experience and knowledge.
So, science is NOT about
giving out answers, or even trying to learn
facts in any special order. Science IS developing and growing
an
evermore
complete understanding of the world and how it works. Your job,
as parent or caregiver, is more of a guide than a teacher. If
you
provide interesting events, the children will take it from there.
You
can encourage them to observe, to predict, to devise ways to
test
their predictions, and help them fit their observations into
an
expanding understanding of the workings of our world.
The National Center for
Improving Science Education has created a list
of nine scientific concepts that it feels children need to
understand. These include:
*Organization:
Ideas can be organized and classified. Young children classify
by sorting by color, size or shape. Different
classification systems can be used for the same group of objects.
*Cause
and Effect: Nature is predictable, and things do not happen
without causes. Much of science for young children is the search
for
causes and the observation of effects.
Systems: Parts go together to make a whole.
Scale: It is important to learn to measure, count and quantify.
Models: Older children
can learn by creating pictures and models of
their observations.
*Change: Everything in
nature changes. Some changes occur fast enough to watch while
others must be noticed over a period of
time.
Structure and Function:
There is a relationship between the way
objects look (feel, smell, sound and taste) and the things they
do.
Variation: Everything
in the world has a set of properties and characteristics that
can be learned.
*Diversity: Young children
can learn very early that every situation contains a whole
variety of interesting organisms.
Diversity is a necessary part of our world.
The items marked with
an asterisk are considered to be the concepts that are
most important to include in programs for young children. You
will
find, however, that many of the other concepts are appropriate
as
well. You may automatically include measurement concepts in your
sorting activity, for example.
For more information and
more detailed learning goals, you can refer
to the
National Science Education Standards. These can be found online.
And here's some science
fun to get things rolling! This activity/demonstration could
be called "Soap Power." You
will need an
index card, scissors, a container of water (like a dishpan or
sink),
and liquid dish soap. Start by cutting a boat shape from the
index
card. You know, pointy on one end and square on the other end.
The
sides should be rounded, like a boat's real shape. Make it about
two
and a half inches long and one and a half inches wide. Cut a
notch
out of the straight back end.
Now, place the boat gently
into the water. Squirt some soap into the
notch at the end of the boat. Discuss what happens. When you've
heard
the
children's ideas and discussed them, you can explain the show
this way:
Water molecules stick together tightly and create a "skin" on
top of
the
water (called surface tension). The soap breaks that skin and
pushes
the
boat forward.
---------------
Sandy Fleming is an educator, author
and workshop facilitator. She resides in southern Michigan with
her husband and three daughters. Sandy leads workshops for daycare
providers and parents in the region, tutors students, volunteers
for Girl Scouts and her church, and teaches online classes for
adults and children. She loves to make new friends, so please
drop her an e-mail at kids@busyparentsonline.com
