Mar30

Science activities in early childhood prepare for a lifetime of learning

Like learning to count or to read, learning how to do science is a process. Children of all ages benefit from exposure to “science” situations where they are encouraged to fully experience our world, describe what they see, count and record data, ask questions about the experience, repeat the experience, and think and talk about the why of it. If we want children to become life-long questioners and perform well on standardized tests when they are in high school, we need to include science in their early childhood curriculum where direct experience with different materials and an encouraging environment develop their beginning ideas about the natural world and their exploration confidence.

Science activities can be designed to encourage children to make predictions about what they think might happen. Questions such as “What do seeds need to sprout?” “What will happen to this object in water?” and “What is attracted to a magnet?” are common topics in preschool. After seeing what does happen, children can share their thoughts, informally or formally, and record them by drawing, writing, recording on a chart, and dictating. Once is usually not enough for engaging experiences, and repeating the process is part of scientific inquiry. Later that day, the next week or even months later, children will recall what they did and talk about why they think they saw the results that they did.

Today I saw a K-1 class mixing pinches of turmeric, paprika, and dirt into small dabs of egg yolk, oil, and water. (Safety note: Remind the children to keep hands and brushes out of their mouths and be sure to wash hands afterward.) They talked as they worked, noticing differences in all six materials and how the dry powders mixed into the liquids. The objective was to determine which mixture would be most suitable as paint.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

(Click on the photos to enlarge.)

This structured investigation inspired a lot of discussion and wondering. I wonder at what levels the children will use this background to support future learning about differences between oil and water, the composition of foods, and how to preserve works of art.

Peggy

Published: Mar-30-09 | 1 Comment | 0 Links to this post

Mar29

Mixing colors combines art and science in one activity

Colored acetate sheets make new colors as they overlap. Give children just the primary colors--a dark pink, a blue, and a yellow-- and they can create orange, green, purple, and deep grays and browns without any instruction. Like scientists they can share their results with others and repeat the process to see if the results are the same.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
(The acetate is often sold at this time of year in craft and party stores as wrapping paper.)

 

Young children will spend more time than one would expect mixing colored water in a clear container using droppers (pipettes). Highly diluted liquid watercolors create jewel-like colors. The children focus their attention and carefully move small amounts of colored water from one compartment in a clear egg carton to another, creating new colors.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
They get just as excited about the grey as they do the greens and purples. They did it and they are so proud! For those schools where snow falls, applying small amounts of colored water to snowballs is another way to mix colors.
From NSTA The Early Years Blog
Colors can be recorded by dropping onto a paper towel, although they will be much lighter when dry.
From NSTA The Early Years Blog
Color mixing results can be part of an on-going science notebook kept all year.
From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

Young scientist-artists enjoy learning that artists used to mix their own pigments and that some recipes do not last well with time (read about Leonardo da Vinci's paint medium choices for “The Last Supper”). Ask the children to share their “recipe” and explain how you can get that color too.

Peggy

Published: Mar-29-09 | 1 Comment | 44 Links to this post

Mar24

Strike Up the Band

Looking for ideas to ring in Spring? Check out the S&C article, Breaking the Sound Barrier by Tom Brown and Kim Boehringer for ideas on exploring sound and making simple instruments with everyday materials (e.g., rubber band guitars and string phones). You'll be primed to add to the band--and fun--when you read the next Early Years column, "Hear That?" coming soon in the April/May issue.
 
 
 
Published: Mar-24-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Mar22

Using tools to move water: observing children's creative problem solving

I’m looking for ideas on how children can move water in different ways outdoors when the weather warms up. Ideally we’d have a shallow, slow-moving stream of pristine water nearby….

 

Indoor water exploration, in small amounts in containers, develops problem-solving skills in children. They think it is wonderful to move water from one container to another. They eagerly took up this challenge and stayed focused on the task for 45 minutes. The objective was to explore the idea of “work” as expending energy to move water, to raise the question of what force(s) move water, and to give the children a few problems to solve. Each child had two containers and the task was to move water from one to the other. I demonstrated using a spoon to move the water and then moved around the table adding a drop of food coloring to the water in each container to make it easier to see. (The food color slowly diffuses into water unless the children mix it—another cool thing to observe and wonder about.)

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

Some interesting problem solving was seen during this activity. Children who have the tall quart carryout containers complained that the spoon could not hold much water, that the task was taking too long. The containers are too narrow to hold the spoon completely level so only a few drops stay in the spoon. Many children decided to solve the problem by picking up the containers and pouring the water into the second container. Most did this without asking permission or looking at the teacher, but several of the children who frequently need to be redirected from disruptive behavior looked up at the teachers as they did this, a look I interpret as meaning they thought they might be doing something wrong. Another child at the table felt the need to alert me to their neighbor’s pouring behavior, expecting me to correct it! I assured all that it was okay to pour the water, and even a good problem solving idea. At first the children approached the task seriously and sedately. As they switched seats to try different container sets conversation developed with the teachers’ prompts of “How is this container set different from the first set you used?”

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
While the children are engaged in the work of moving water I make comments about how scientists do work and sometimes have to change their equipment to make the work easier. During the hour I offer to trade tools with the children, showing first some laundry and baby formula scoops, and later, eye droppers and pipettes, baby nasal aspirators, syringe/irrigators, and pumps from liquid soap containers (supported with a surrounding clear plastic tube). The conversation expands along with the variety of tools.

 

As the children work, the teachers ask how they get the water to move, what tool is working “best,” and what is “pulling” the water down into the container from the spoon. The children demonstrate how they lift the water, or push and pull, or squeeze and release, the tools. Teachers introduce the word “force” and ask, “Which tool requires the most force to use? Which tool do you have to use the most muscles to move?”

 

The large laundry scoop is often seen as the best tool by all the children at first, but those at the tall container stations discard it in favor of droppers as the water level gets near the bottom. Children with poor motor skills do not favor the pumps which need two hands to secure and operate.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
From NSTA The Early Years Blog
From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

The activity ended with a group recording session, marking tallies on a chart to show which tool they liked the best. A second chart was marked to show which tool the children thought moved the “most” water. Some children choose the tool that moved the largest amount of water at one time, others picked the tool that seemed to move water the fastest, and of course some just chose the empty section on the chart or the same section their friend picked.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Repeating the activity with an emphasis on measuring would help the children realize that "the most" can be quantified.

 

What are your ideas for water exploration—indoors and out?

Peggy

Published: Mar-22-09 | 1 Comment | 0 Links to this post

Mar17

How can we make time to teach science in preK-2 classrooms?

Observing the life cycle of an insect can include measuring growth and weight, counting calendar days and reading fiction, non-fiction, and writing poetry and descriptions—all ways to integrate science with other subjects in elementary school. Many skills and much information, such as, learning about the continents and names of land forms, how to read or make a map, learning what are natural resources, understanding weather vocabulary, how to describe parts of a whole, using pictures to check for meaning, using graphic organizers, re-telling a story or event using the beginning-middle-ending format, recognizing that letters are symbols for sounds, comparing story traditions of own and other cultures, asking and answering questions, using graphs, charts, and signs to acquire information, and using prior knowledge to predict meaning and make sense of texts are all skills that can be taught during science activities as well as during the reading, math, and social studies time periods.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
From NSTA The Early Years Blog
Whew! Children learn so much in the early childhood school years and it all seems to connect.

What kinds of lesson plans do you teach which integrate science with social studies, math, and language arts?

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Published: Mar-17-09 | 2 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Mar09

Classification

Snack sorting! It’s an interesting way to involve students in classifying and, while sitting together to eat, there is time to talk about why certain groupings were chosen. Children might sort by shape, create an ABAB pattern, and count the number of each snack shape.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
Classification is the theme for the March 2008 issue of Science and Children. 
From NSTA The Early Years Blog
I was especially interested in the performance standard scale for the process of classification developed by a group of first-grade teachers in the Coast Metro school districts of British Columbia, Canada (see “Classifying Classification”, pgs. 25-29). The scale details the skills and behavior that may be seen in first graders as they classify and answer these questions:

How are these the same? How are they different? Is there another way you can sort theses into groups? Where would you place this new item in your system? Explain.

 

The teachers put classification skills on a continuum from Matching, to Sorting, to Categorizing, to Interpreting, “to help them describe how students move through different levels of classification tasks.”

I’m eager to apply this model to the next classification task I introduce in my teaching, and improve the sequence of classifying tasks we work on next year.

Peggy

Published: Mar-09-09 | 3 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Mar07

Seed sprouting, activity and observation

It’s fun for children to plant seeds in a special container, but it can be hard to remember to water them, leading to disappointment if the plants don’t survive. Planting grass seed in some bare spots on any lawn is just as satisfying, perhaps more so because with time it will be hard to say which grass plant is the “one” they planted, and therefore they can claim the success of all.

 

Seeds which are often successful in the classroom include:

  • Mung bean seeds. These small green beans grow into the bean sprouts in Asian foods. They sprout quickly in water or in soil.
  • Grass seeds.
  • Mixed bird seed. Many brands contain peanuts—are there any children in your class with an allergy to peanuts?

 

Note of Caution! Avoid using kidney beans or fava beans. Kidney beans, when raw or slightly cooked, have a high concentration of the naturally occurring toxin, phytohaemagglutinin. In people who have inherited a deficiency of a certain blood enzyme, eating fava beans can cause favism, a type of severe anemia. Children with this deficiency may be especially affected. See the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety site and the Cornell University, Department of Animal Science for additional details.

 

Here are some ideas about where children can sprout seeds,

  • Outside in a garden. 
  • Indoors inside a plastic bag. 
  • Indoors in a clear container of soil polymers (sometimes called “water crystals”), a polymer that absorbs water and has a clear, jelly-like consistency so root growth can be easily seen.  
  • Grass seeds are often grown as “hair” on a “head” made of a small cup of dirt with a face drawn on it. Other materials for the head include a nylon stocking foot with the seeds and dirt tied into a ball inside, and empty food containers with stickers forming the face.

 

After children have had some experience sprouting seeds, a simple experiment can be set up to see if varying the amount of water (which also controls the amount of air) affects sprout growth. Children may be able to design and set up the experiment, depending on their age and experience with seed sprouting and plant growth.

  1. Label three clear cups (see the photo below) to indicate the amount of water to be maintained in each cup. (Most three-year-olds recognize the blue color in the labels as water, and we discuss how the color is a symbol for water—the water we’re using is really clear.)
  2. Add the water and draw a line around the cup indicating the level to be maintained.
  3. Each scientist adds mung bean seeds to the cup that they feel is the best environment for successful sprouting. Some children put seeds into certain cups because their friend did, or because no one else did, not because they are thinking about what will happen. (It’s a fine line between talking about experimental design so much that the excitement disappears while waiting for action, and trying to make sure the children’s choices are motivated by some thinking about the needs of seeds.) Then additional seeds are added (by an uninterested party!) to make the number of seeds equal in each cup.
  4. Have the children draw the 3 cups and contents.
  5. Tell the children that the cups are the same, the number of seeds is the same, and the location of the cups is the same, and ask them what is different? Most of the children will be able to identify the different amounts of water but few (if any) will comment on the seeds’ access to air.
  6. The seeds will sprout within a week and by the second week it will be evident which cup provides the needed environment. Maintain the marked water levels by adding a little if necessary.

(Spoiler alert: stop reading here if you don’t want to know the results of this experiment before you try it yourself.)

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

No change will have occurred in the cup with no water, the cup with a lot of water will have sprouted and rotting beans, the cup with a little water will have bean sprouts with bright green leaves above the water and roots in the water. Discussion of personal experiences with “too much water” and drawing the results may make the children aware of how access to air is important for plant growth.

 

What development towards understanding concepts such as, what is alive, needs of seeds and plants, and what is air, have you seen in your class?

Peggy

Published: Mar-07-09 | 0 Comments | 1 Link to this post