Jan30

Science in the Cul de Sac

How does cartoonist Richard Thompson do such a splendid job of channeling the thoughts of preschoolers with their questions about the order of the world? In the world of Cul de Sac, Blisshaven Preschool reminds me of Every School where the goals of (us) teachers seem mysterious to children and often not aligned with their own. In “real life” we may operate side-by-side, each with different aims, like the parallel play often seen in two-year-olds. We have best intentions, but sometimes send children home with a gluey blob and an incomplete understanding.

 

The thoughts of the children of Blisshaven sound true to what I hear in the classroom:

Alice: “stactic elastricity.” She remarks that helium balloons would have taken her classmate halfway to the moon. And says of her summer, “I slouched in front of the TV for days and my eyes bugged our so far my optic nerve is now two feet long.”

They notice things, like the cobwebs in the corner of the preschool bathroom, and shrubs.

“I live on Cu de Sac Circle, in that house with the shrub.” Probably every house has a shrub but Alice knows her shrub—I imagine she’s picked the leaves off of it, scratched her hand on a branch, lost a toy in its depths, and saw a bird fly into it and never come out—so it seems remarkable and the other shrubs are insignificant because they aren’t central to her experience. She misinterprets her brother Petey's comment about a tipped-over electronic snowman to be a prediction of snow.

 

Her classmates are just as (in)accurate at assigning meaning to natural events in ways that have a kind of logic: Dill with his theory of jungle gyms going dormant in the winter. These children may have some misconceptions about natural phenomena but they accurately skewer adult behavior: "Adults can be so grabby." 

 

If your newspaper does not carry Cul de Sac, visit Gocomics.com for your daily lesson in the world of the suburban family through the perceptive eyes of young children.

Peggy

Published: Jan-30-09 | 0 Comments | 23 Links to this post

Jan27

Remembering a snow from 1/3 of a lifetime ago

Finding a covering of the season’s first snow on their car, my 3-year-old neighbor helpfully suggested, “Use that tool, that small brush,” to her father. Was she recalling last winter? It is possible that she had seen the snow brush/scraper in recent months in the back of the car. But how did she know it was for the snow?

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

What kinds of scientific inquiry activities do you do with snow in your class?
Peggy
Published: Jan-27-09 | 1 Comment | 394 Links to this post

Jan20

The Year of Science

In this Year of Science, this early childhood science teacher is excited to have a President who says, “When it comes to science, elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about.” Read the ''Meet the Press' transcript for the December 7, 2008, Obama interview with Tom Brokaw.

 

Our professional organizations have made recommendations for the year and to the new adminstration.

The NSTA Key Policy Recommendations for 2009 includes preK teachers in the call to increase the quality and quantity of science teachers. The National Association for the Education of Young Children’s (NAEYC) letter to President Barack Obama (then President-elect) urges him to make early childhood education a federal priority.

 

And in his inaugural address today, President Barack Obama called upon the nation, “For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.”

It’s a good year to celebrate science and re-dedicate ourselves to teaching excellence.
Published: Jan-20-09 | 2 Comments | 42 Links to this post

Jan19

Dinosaurs--a reason to draw and write

Dinosaurs! This high-interest subject is a focus for questions relating to how animals live in many different environmental niches. What evidence do we have for what we think we know about dinosaurs? How do we know how they were shaped and how they lived? What was that body shape best suited for? What did they eat? Are there any animals alive today that evolved from dinosaurs?
 
These questions can be related to animals the children may have experience with--how do we know a dog walked through the mud at the edge of the playground? What can a bird do that a squirrel can not? How does the shape of their bodies help them survive?
 
An easy way to help young children draw dinosaur shapes is to draw a line of liquid glue over a line drawing on poster board. When the line of glue dries it will be ever-so-slightly raised, high enough to feel through a piece of paper with fingers or with a crayon held edgewise to make a rubbing.

 

Details such as eyes, or feathers, can be added to this basic outline later with crayons, watercolor, or markers.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Young scientists ably copy long words—dinosaur names—getting practice with letter recognition and formation.  

With a successful experience making a familiar dinosaur shape, reluctant artists are more comfortable drawing on their own. 

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

The American Museum of Natural History has online pages related to a 2005-2006 dinosaur exhibit. Teachers can visit a site by Glen J. Kuban for an overview of dinosaur tracks with drawings of sauropod, theropod, and ornithopod tracks (scroll down).

Happy tracking,

Peggy

Published: Jan-19-09 | 0 Comments | 165 Links to this post

Jan18

Vote and participate in your NSTA

Voting may not be a scientific way of answering a question but it’s the way members of the National Science Teachers Association choose among the dedicated professionals who are interested in serving on the Board of Directors. The more we participate in an organization, the more it becomes our organization.

The online site for the 2009 NSTA Board and Council election is now open until 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time, February 2, 2009. You may vote online at https://www.intelliscaninc.com/nsta2009.htm using your Member ID Number and your Ballot Control Number.

Published: Jan-18-09 | 0 Comments | 142 Links to this post

Jan06

Birds in January

Does it seem to you that the pigeons and seagulls that roost and circle the grocery parking lot are more active in winter? I wonder if they are really more active or just more noticeable as there is less action on the street with fewer people walking by. Winter wonderings like these make me realize how dedicated to finding out scientists must be, to persist in difficult conditions.

Talking about persistent—read how Michael Beecher, who leads the research on song sparrows at the University of Washington, and his colleagues tracked song sparrows in the November 8, 2008 issue of Science News. Reporter Susan Milius writes, “Now Beecher and Templeton are analyzing results from their Seattle field project tracking young birds out listening to music. The experimental demands were “insane,” Beecher says. Starting in spring 2006, Templeton and his tracking team equipped young male birds with little radio tags. Thanks to the miracle of modern electronics, tags weighed only about 4 percent of the weight of a song sparrow. At that size, the batteries lasted only five or six weeks, necessitating trapping the youngster at the right time for a switch.

For a year, the crew went out every day to find young birds and record the songs of nearby adults. On a “perfect” day, data gathering took only five hours. The real world of evasive birds, cranky bystanders and suburban cats was far from perfect.”

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
In the January 2009 issue of Science and Children, the Early Years column activity tells how students examine feathers and group them by shape and size and color. Children can do the same kind of grouping with birds they see. All they need is a paper and pencil to record what they see so they can keep track of their data. Grouping and counting are part of a young scientist's everyday math tasks. Where can your class observe birds?

Peggy

Published: Jan-06-09 | 4 Comments | 385 Links to this post