Nov16

Magnifiers

Did I tell you how happy I was to see the returning three-year old students use magnifiers appropriately? Because this half-day preschool for 2-5-year-olds had moved to a new space over the summer, the “usual place” for everything had to be determined. It is one thing to design a preschool in a set of rooms and another to put it into action. That’s what the children did and showed us that our design needed adjustment. So I did not get magnifiers into use until late October when I brought a container of Tenebrio beetles and larvae (mealworms although they are not worms, just baby insects like caterpillars). I was all set to have the children practice using the magnifiers before getting out the beetles but these former two-year-olds showed that they remembered how to use magnifiers by immediately holding the instrument close to their fingers to view, saying, “It’s bigger!”. The beetles looked bigger too, and the children counted the tiny legs.

Here is how children often approach magnifiers (and beetles) on first encounter:

First encounter with magnifier and beetle baby--unsure how to approach

Here are experienced beetle wranglers using magnifiers expertly:

with practice, children use magnifiers confidently and competently

The Science Shorts columns in the National Science Teachers Association’s elementary school journal describe classic classroom activities that emphasize science-process skills. Larger Than Life: Introducing Magnifiers by Tracy L. Coskie and Kimberly J. Davis (Science and Children, Summer 2009) is a valuable discussion and activity about magnifier use.

Now the magnifiers are easily available for self-serve in the two-year-old class room, at the light table, and in the centers room. It is so gratifying to see that the lessons of last year are retained and used by the children to learn more about their world.

Peggy
Published: Nov-16-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Nov11

With water play students gain experience they can record in writing and drawing

Playing in water opens many avenues for science explorations—flow, wetness or phases of matter, volume, and buoyancy. Unexpected results make children think and explore further. For example, children know that fish are supposed to float, so playing with a toy fish that sinks will get children thinking about why. We can let children know that questions are to be shared by listening to theirs, asking open-ended questions, and then having the students record their answers, or dictate to us to record. Science activities are good platforms for using literacy skills because children often want to tell the story of what they did. Read the November 2009 Early Years column in Science and Children about creating a book about a classroom investigation. View sample book pages at www.nsta.org/SC0911.

 

Children observe objects in waterGiven an assortment of interesting objects and a tub of water, children will make discoveries while playing. Demonstrate the definitions for those unfamiliar with the words “float” and “sink” with two objects, perhaps a cork and a coin. With experience and enough interestingly shaped objects, students learn that whether an object floats or sinks is related to both the material it is made from, and its shape. To begin with, a sink-or-float exploration can focus on the property of materials. Materials which challenge assumptions include, sponges, pumice, fruit, small lidded containers (some completely, some partly, filled with water), soap, and dense plastic models of animals that swim (children often think these will float like their real-life counterparts). A variety of balls, jar and bottle lids, keys and coins, plasticine clay, and sea shells are attractive to children, and they may also want to choose items to test from the classroom.

 

After a period of minutes or days of exploration, students can do some predicting using this knowledge. Using exaggerated body gestures to represent our predictions is fun. “Do you think it will float?” Put your hands high above your head and gently wave them like they are floating above you. “Do you think it will sink?” Slide your hands down from your shoulders to your lap like they are sinking. With a bit of direction by the teacher towards documenting their thinking in drawings or writing, the children will have a record of their predictions to compare with what they find out when they put the object in water.

 

Students can explore buoyancy with a Discovery Bottle—for details read Sandy Watson’s article, Discovery Bottles, in the July 2008 issue of Science and Children. She explains how “Discovery bottles are inexpensive, quick to assemble, and an excellent way to provide students with practice in developing science-process skills, such as observing, measuring, predicting, and so on.”

 

The next time you can present some new objects and ask the children to separate the objects into groups, those that they think will float and those that they think will sink. The children may choose to create a third group of those objects they aren’t sure about, or objects that sometimes sink and sometimes float. Be sure to let children know that it is okay to have differing predictions. To keep the two concepts clear in their minds, use two clear cups on the table, one with a sinking object in it and one with a floating object in it, to represent the two groups, and the children can place objects around the cups. Tell the children that scientists ask questions and try to answer them and they can too.

 

I like to keep some towels handy to help with clean up, and to rinse all objects with a bleach solution and allow them to air dry before storing. Send home the children’s papers documenting their work  and it might inspire families to continue the exploration at home in the bathtub or at the sink.

Peggy

Scientists have fun testing for buoyancy.

 

Published: Nov-11-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Oct28

Pumpkin Science

What’s happening in the early childhood world of Pumpkin Science? Have you planted and harvested pumpkins? Have you weighed, floated, cut-open, counted seeds, printed, or rolled pumpkins?

holding a pumpkin 

Share your pumpkin science lesson here! Add a comment by clicking on the word “comment” below.
Hint: write and save your comment in a separate document to cut and paste in, because the anti-spammer “capcha” box may time out before you are ready to submit your comment. You may have to do it twice. To see that your comment has been added, scroll down.

I have pumpkins, now I need some ideas!

Peggy

Published: Oct-28-09 | 3 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Oct25

Are children getting enough direct experience with natural materials?

There has been an interesting discussion going on among the middle and high school science teachers on the NSTA General Science email list about the lack of direct experience in their students' background. Some have suggested that early childhood and elementary schools are not laying the groundwork for the later learning.

grasshopperOne teacher said, “I was talking to an honors ninth grade class and most of the students said they had not seen a live grasshopper. This explains why several schools have started their biology classes with the ecosystems because they want students to be able to see and experience life sciences before moving to conceptual ideas in biochemistry and genetics.”

The National Science Education Content Standards (A and C) for K-4 call for all students to develop:

►Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry

►Understanding about scientific inquiry

and

►The characteristics of organisms

►Life cycles of organisms

►Organisms and environments

 

I know grasshoppers from a childhood field—with two visible bulbous eyes, pincher-like mouthparts, barbs on the hind legs, and wings that you don’t notice until one goes zooming past you. And they spit tobacco! At least that is what we called the "partially digested food material along with some semi-toxic compounds from the insect's crop region."  It stained our palms when we held a grasshopper too tightly. Have your students had that experience?

I’ll share this comment with the early childhood teachers I work with to let them know how vital the experiences they make happen, or take advantage of, are to their students’ future learning. It may inspire us to take walking fieldtrips to a nearby field or brush at the edge of a parking lot to look for wildlife, or encourage them to keep a container of Tenebrio beetles (mealworms) in the classroom. Children are fascinated with beetles and other small animals.

Here are two great sites about grasshoppers and other insects:

Grasshoppers: Their biology, Identification, and Management. USDA-ARS-Northern Plains Agricultural Research Lab in Sidney, Montana

http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/grasshopper/ID_Tools/index.htm  

Using Live Insects in the Elementary Classrooms: For Early Lessons in Life. The University of Arizona’s Center for Insect Science Education Outreach

http://insected.arizona.edu/lessons.htm

A few crickets are still chirping and crawling under leaves in my neighborhood but I rarely see grasshoppers. Time to create a small habitat so students can bring a cricket inside for a week!

Peggy

Published: Oct-25-09 | 3 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Oct13

Early Sprouts for two

When I shared my copy of the book, Early Sprouts: Cultivating Healthy Food Choices in Young Children, with a nutritionist friend she got very excited about the possibilities, but then her job changed and she no longer works directly with children. Did that stop her? Read on...

 

Young gardener watches water drainI am doing Early Sprouts with my neighbor Sydney (4 years old) every Saturday afternoon. We did the initial taste tests and we've done five or six of the sessions, with the activity and then the cooking back to back. It takes about an hour. We've made couscous castles with green peppers, Chinese green beans, butternut squash pancakes (too wet but yummy), yogurt dip, and pasta with sauce made from cherry  tomatoes. I love it. I took photos of the plants in the garden in different stages and made cards out of them and at the beginning of each class, she sorts them into piles by vegetable and then puts the cards for each vegetable in order from sprout to plant to flower to small fruit to large unripe fruit to ripe fruit, or whatever applies to the vegetable. I also took photos of the compost pile. 

Wish I could send you some of our raspberries. 

 

Young gardener touches bean plant

 

 

 

What she's begun with one child she can use to inform her teaching with more, in future years. The materials can be used every year too—each following year will need less set-up time.

 

Read more about the Early Sprouts program at

http://www.earlysprouts.org/

 

Thanks for the inspiration Bonnie!

Peggy

Published: Oct-13-09 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Oct01

Favorite smells--stories and activities

I love the way two-year-olds inexpertly sniff, to sense an odor. They crinkle up their nose and snort, or gasp, and blink their eyes, not quite putting it all together to inhale through their nose. Yet they have an expert sense of smell—nothing comforts them like their favorite “lovey”, a much worn toy or blanket that has achieved a certain smell.

 

Lilac bloomsWhat did your grandmother’s house smell like—boxwood bushes along the sidewalk and old feather pillows on the window seat like mine? I loved the smell of those bushes but my father thought they smelled like cat urine! My great aunt used to light her late husband’s cigars because the smell brought his presence closer. Smelling muddy ooze left by a flooding creek brought the memories of my childhood closer, reminding me of watching the pattern of water-flow past overfull creek banks. The scent of lilac flowers reminds me of my childhood home too.

 

Scientists study the way smells affect people and our perceptions of smells. In the October Early Years column in Science and Children, I write about a smelling activity using lemons, cinnamon, onions, and coffee beans. In my ten+ years of using this activity, I have never had a student who was allergic to any of those foods. There is always a first time so I check every class.

 

Here are a few more ideas for engaging students’ sense of smell as they explore the world. Please teach the Safe Smelling method of wafting (waving) an odor towards your nose with your hand instead of sniffing directly from a container.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

Cinnamon Shapes, a smell recipe.

½ cup of cinnamon

½ cup of applesauce

2 Tablespoons of white school glue

 

Ground cinnamon lifts into the air very easily so monitor students closely as they slowly add the powder to the other two ingredients. Have the children touch each ingredient and talk about how it feels. Is it dry? Wet? Mix all three ingredients together and roll out onto wax or parchment paper to about 5 mm thick. Have children use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Roll out the scraps again and cut more shapes. Poke a hole near the edge of each shape so when they are dry, you can put a loop of ribbon through the hole to hang the shape. Youngest children can just make a pancake shape from a ball of dough. Even after completely dry (air dry for several days) the cinnamon smell is strong. This recipe makes about six small shapes.

 

Smelling, then planting herbs

Fennel plants are beautiful and delicious.What if you had to live in a small space for a long time with no windows to let in fresh air? Astronauts living in space breathe the same air over and over. A machine cleans the air and tries to keep the right balance of gases. NASA has many ideas for science activities, including one about using our sense of smell to identify herbs and spices at http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/enose_do1.shtml We can not be sure what's in a container so it’s best to always smell substances the "scientific way". Hold the open container about six inches away from your face, and with your free hand fan the air over the container toward you. The smell from the substance in the container will be mixed in the air and you will get a gentle sample of the substance—not enough to sting your nose or make your eyes water.

 

Some herbs are winter hardy in many regions and can be planted in the fall: oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, and garlic bulbs. The children can rub the plants’ leaves to release the smell, and plant them outside to make a “smelling” garden. After the last frost date in spring (also see the USDA plant hardiness map), plant tender herbs such as basil, fennel, and dill. Much more can be learned from The Herb Society of America’s Essential Guide to Growing and Cooking with Herbs, edited by Katherine K. Schlosser (Louisiana State University Press 2007). See the society’s website at: http://www.herbsociety.org/

 

Read these books aloud to open up discussion and introduce vocabulary to your class:

&Dog Breath: Horrible Trouble With Hally Tosis by Dav Pilkey (Blue Sky Press 1994). Young children may not understand the title’s play on words but they will get the humor of a dog with smelly breath saving the day. Ask your class, “When is our sense of smell useful?” 

&The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss, Marc Simont (Illustrator) (HarperCollins 1949). Children can guess what the animals are smelling but they will be surprised!

 

&Smelling Things (Rookie Read-About Science) by Allan Fowler (Childrens Press 1991). An easy reader introduction to the sense of smell. Fowler’s books pair simple, pertinent details about the topic with informative photographs.

 

&Two Eyes a Nose and a Mouth by Roberta Intrater (Cartwheel Books 1995). In a book full of photographs and rhyming text celebrating the variety in human faces, one page with repeated photos of just one face catches our attention, asks us to “imagine how dull the world would be, if everyone looked like you or me” and reminds us “…the variety is just fine.” Young children will enjoy pointing to the part of our body that we sense smells with, or see/hear/taste with.

 

&What Can I Smell? by Sue Barraclough (Raintree 2005). Opening with the question, “What is your favorite breakfast smell?”, this book invites discussion of familiar smells.

Your class might want to write and illustrate a book about odors they have smelled—their favorites and the ones they do not appreciate.  Share your experiences with sense of smell activities....make a comment!

Peggy

Published: Oct-01-09 | 1 Comment | 0 Links to this post

Sep27

Thinking BIG, Learning BIG: Summer reading becomes September‘s lesson plans

July is a distant memory of 6am wake up calls for my high-schooler who took PE over the summer, balanced with my getting more than five minutes of peace and quiet—time to read about early childhood and science, to think my own thoughts and get hungry for conversation. Summer school is a wonderful thing and I thank all the teachers who work it.

Thinking BIG, Learning BIG: a great resource for integrated science activiesJuly’s reading, Thinking BIG, Learning BIG: Connecting Science, Math, Literacy, and Language in Early Childhood by Marie Faust Evitt, with Tim Dobbins, and Bobbi Weesen-Baer (Gryphon House 2009—also the publisher of my book), has become September‘s lesson plans. This book of activities reinvigorated my thinking which was in limbo because a building move had one of “my” schools on tenderhooks about our opening date and the use of space. Aligned with national standards in reading, literacy, math, and science, Thinking BIG helps me see where the science activities I know and love can incorporate more language and math goals. With intriguing, classroom-tested activities which are insightful about children’s desire to explore and imagine, Evitt also meets teachers' needs for activities which are possible, teach concepts, and come with detailed directions for how to implement. Her approach expanded my thinking—although I usually think of sprouting seeds as an early spring activity, Evitt explains that children are curious about the seeds they discover in fall from flowers and inside apples and pumpkins. The playful spirit throughout the book is so enjoyable—predicting how far popcorn will fly, playing air hockey, and making a giant rainbow! The authors understand that children are attracted to all things BIG and they will remember the concepts they learn through those activities!

Marie and I became penpals before her book was published, and we collaborated on a workshop for an NSTA area conference. She’s a fun presenter—look for Marie Faust Evitt and Mr. Tim at the NAEYC national conference in Washington, D.C. this November.

Here’s what I found especially useful in Thinking BIG, Learning BIG: Movement ideas, Insights into children’s thinking, Teacher-to-teacher tips, games, book lists, skills assessments, and Discussion Starter questions.         

  • Instructions that involve movement with language—clapping when first saying vocabulary words (SCAD system of “Say, Clap, Act out, Do again”), crouching down to “become” a seed and then sprouting a root (leg), and using American Sing Language to say the new word.
  • Insights about children’s thinking are on every page. For example, when children graph, they want to remember which object they put on the graph so teachers should make the graphs big, or should I say, BIG. For example, if graphing favorite flavor of apple (green, yellow, or red), give each child an apple shape big enough for them to write their name on before they add it to the graph. The graph is poster size, made from more than one sheet of paper. In the seeds chapter, a “How Our Seeds Germinate and Grow” number line chart with days 1-12 (more age appropriate than a calendar) is used for both predicting if anything will happen with the soaked bean seeds, and recording what is actually observed each day.
  • Teacher-to-Teacher Tips are full of details, specific information to implement the activities. In the Seeds chapter, Evitt recommends using pre-cut bean shapes for children who become frustrated if they have difficulty drawing their predictions and observations, and describes steps to teach children to draw the bean shape.
  • The games and stories (used in every chapter) creatively convey concepts. Children predict which square on a grid will catch the most popcorn kernels as they fly out of the popper, and act out The Little Red Hen while learning about seeds we eat, and play a “Traveling Seeds” game to learn how seeds travel.
  • An extensive book list for every chapter (sometimes 2+ pages!) with descriptions takes the guesswork out of which book to read.
  • The useful Skills Assessments are in the form of questions directing the teacher to reflect on the children’s abilities and understanding: What kind of pencil grip does the child use? Can the child use the vocabulary? Does the child see the connection between the wheat seeds and flour? Can the child count correctly the number of dots on the card?
  • Use the Discussion Starters (in the form of questions) to “spark children’s thinking during and after the activity”. Sometimes I write such questions on an index cue card so I remember to ask specific questions, such as “How many more days is it until we think we will see leaves?”

This book is going to help me make the transition to the new physical space and to incorporating more specific math and language focus during science activities. Hope you get a chance to view it online or at a conference.

Peggy

 

Published: Sep-27-09 | 1 Comment | 0 Links to this post

Sep22

Books about fall leaves, inspired by the autumn equinox

 

Red maple leaves in fall.Yellow maple leaves in fall.

 

 

 

Do deciduous tree leaves in your area change color before they fall? On the occasion of the autumn equinox, here are a few books about trees and fall leaf colors that I have enjoyed reading to my students when we discussed the season’s change from summer to fall:

 

 

 

 

 

 

& Fresh Fall Leaves by Betsy Franco, Shari Halpern (Illustrator) (Scholastic 1994). A pair of children plays in fallen leaves in this simple early reader. Children love to share their own stories of playing in fallen leaves.

& I Am a Leaf by Jean Marzollo, Judith Moffatt (Illustrator) (Scholastic 1998). An early reader introducing the function of tree leaves.

& Red Leaf Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1991). Colors! Maple tree lifecycle information! And an appendix with background knowledge for adults to read and share.

& A Tree Is Growing by Arthur Dorros, S. D. Schindler (Illustrator) (Scholastic 1997). Read in sections so young children are not overwhelmed with new information—perhaps a few pages each month as you follow the changes in a tree in your schoolyard. Many details of tree growth and life cycle are explained in sidebars, including photosynthesis.

 

And here is a new one, published this fall, which I look forward to sharing with my classes:

& Count Down to Fall by Fran Hawk, Sherry Neidigh (Illustrator) (Sylvan Dell Publishing 2009).

Tree leaf shape matching, counting from 10 to 1 (you will have to invent your own page for zero), and information about plant parts and animals that eat (parts of) trees—there’s a lot of natural science in this beautifully illustrated book. On the pages for numbers 3 and 2, the counting switches from the number of leaves to the number of points on the leaves, and to the number of leaves in the group that fall together—a fun change in pattern for fours and older who are listening closely but possibly confusing for others. The Sylvan Dell website has teaching activities to go with the book, including a list of the animals pictured in the book: bear, beaver, beetle, bird, butterfly, cat, chipmunks, deer, dog, elk, frog, grasshopper, lizard, moose, owl, possum, rabbit, raccoon, squirrel, and turtle. Perhaps the children can count how many animals they see in the illustrations as we read.

 

Tell us about a book on fall leaves that you use in your program by clicking on the word “Comments” below. The anti-spammer “capcha” box may not register your comment the first time you click “Submit Comment”—please type in the new capcha code that appears and submit again.

 

Happy Fall!

Peggy

Published: Sep-22-09 | 2 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Sep17

Discovery bottles

All summer I was getting ready for the upcoming school year by collecting clear plastic jars and bottles with screw-on lids. Now they are on the shelf at school as “Discovery Bottles”, compact and beautiful, and (best of all) contained. (Click on the photo to view more photos of Discovery Bottles and other early childhood science activities.) 

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
These containers hold objects that engage children’s interest and provide the materials needed to explore a topic such as magnetism, bubbles, or buoyancy. With a sealed lid small items stay inside, safe for young children and kept together to illustrate a concept such as liquids can float on top of other liquids (have different densities), some objects float and others sink, and different shapes move (fall) through liquids in different ways as they sink.

Child tilting a discovery bottle filled with colored water and mineral oil.

Here’s what I put in one:

Water tinted blue with food coloring, clean sand, small shells, sea glass, a key, and a few coins, and mineral oil. I wanted something to float at the boundary between the water and oil but when I tried a cork it also floated above the oil even though I had weighted it with several nails. So I put a few nails into a squishy plastic whale and it floated right at the top of the water. Then I poured in mineral oil up to the very top, put hot glue into the lid and screwed it down tightly. Tape around the lid is not really needed but it’s a good symbol for children that the jar is not to be opened.

 

 

Other ideas? The exploration of soil or sand in water could be adapted for very young children by putting each soil and sand sample into a separate bottle of water and sealing the lid. Shake and watch the particles float or sink, forming layers.

Older children can do an experiment as they construct a Discovery Bottle—see the article Discovery Bottles by Sandra Watson in the July 2008 Science and Children.

Peggy

ps: The early childhood community would like to hear from you! Add a comment by clicking on the word “comment” below. Hint: write and save your comment in a separate document to cut and paste in, because the anti-spammer “capcha” box may time out before you are ready to submit your comment. You may have to do it twice.

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

Sep01

Book lovers and science

Just in case you have not yet read the column, “Teaching Through Tradebooks”, in Science and Children,  the National Science Teachers Association’s elementary school journal, I’ll share why I like it with you. The column writes up two activities, one for K-3 and one for 4-6. The book choices are always excellent, the kind of books that you hold onto for 20 years because they are scientifically accurate and resonate so well with children. The content of featured books is appropriate for elementary school grade levels and aligns with the National Science Education Standards. The books are a pleasure to read with illustrations that add to our understanding of the text.

 

This month the titles are I See a Kookaburra! Discovering Animal Habitats Around the World by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2005) and The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer and Steve Johnson (Random House Children’s Books, 1994).

 

“Picture” books make great teaching tools for older elementary students too! Reading aloud develops students’ vocabulary and is a jumping off point for large group discussion.

 

Reading aloud to children

Do you have a favorite book that ties into your science lessons? Bet you can't choose just one!

Peggy

Published: Sep-01-09 | 3 Comments | 0 Links to this post

 Next >>