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

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

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

Jul28

When does science become significant?

Math and Science in Preschool: Policies and Practice, a National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) Preschool Policy Brief, says that teachers usually do not plan and support science and math learning in pre-K. How does that happen when young children are so curious about the world and so interested in who has more, is taller, or older?

Viewing sunflowers up closeSome preschool teachers bring their own curiosity into play, in school and out, such as early childhood teacher Sue Hewitt who went out of her way to see a novel (for her—and me!) sight—a big field of sunflowers. Because science activities are full of possibilities for math and language development, they can be the basis for across-the-curriculum learning. Sue talked about how investigating a milkweed seed pod with her class of two-year-olds included sharing a history of children collecting the pods during World War II to use in making life vests for service personnel, and, upon opening the pod, the discovery of how the successfully the seed is dispersed—in the classroom! I’m sure that gave the children a lot to talk about!

 

 

Big field of sunflowers

Does anyone have a story to share about a science activity that became the vehicle for language development or math operations?

Or about a moment when you realized that teaching science in your classroom is essential?

Peggy

 

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

May02

What shape is your bubble wand? Children and making choices

The children were happy that I had enough of each color pipe cleaner (known as “fuzzy sticks” nowadays) that everyone could choose their favorite color. We wanted to make bubbles and needed to make bubble wands.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Children like to have choices (as do I). Choosing marker color, place in line, type of seed to plant, or which center in which to begin their day, can be so important for young children that they are willing to overcome shyness or difficulty with language to voice their choice. Being encouraged to choose and plan helps children develop thinking, and talking about what they might do in the future—important for science because part of being able to make predictions is to think about what has not yet happened.

After the class watched as I made bubbles of air in water, I asked the children to predict what shape bubble I could make with a square shaped bubble wand dipped in soap solution. My purpose was to raise a question in their minds, “What shape can bubbles be?” and ask the children to predict based on prior knowledge before going outside to blow bubbles. They had four shapes they could point to, to show their prediction, and we reviewed their names, square, cube, circle, sphere. The children pointed to the ball shape even as they said, “Circle.” They knew what they meant but were not yet familiar enough with the word “sphere” to use it. I use the word “round” much more often than “sphere”. If only sphere were a little easier to pronounce!

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Recording a prediction or observation with tally marks is a kind of choice, but young children may not understand that they are choosing a representation of what they think or a reality that they have observed. On Friday in a large group follow-up to an activity where all the children moved water from container to container using various tools (see 3/22/09 post: Using tools to move water), one student was advocating for others to choose his choice of “favorite” tool. When we see children trying to influence their friends’ choice in recording a personal prediction or observation, we know that the child does not understand the purpose of tallying the predictions and observations.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
Anyone have ideas for helping children understand that recording observations is not voting?

Here are two resources on early childhood and making choices:

The HighScope Educational Research Foundation, “an independent nonprofit research, development, training, and public outreach organization with headquarters in Ypsilanti, Michigan.” Research shows that planning and reviewing are the two components of the program day most positively and significantly associated with children’s scores on measures of developmental progress.

The Alliance for Childhood “promotes policies and practices that support children’s healthy development, love of learning, and joy in living.”

See the Alliance’s graphic about the continuum of children’s choice play in Kindergartens at: http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/sites/allianceforchildhood.org/files/file/Kindergarten_8-page_summary.pdf

What kind of choices in your class support science learning? Tell the rest of us about what your students choose by adding a comment. Click 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.

Looking forward to learning from you, Peggy

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

 

Published: May-02-09 | 1 Comment | 1 Link to this post

Apr28

Connecting to the weather

Can you tell that it will rain soon by the way the air smells? Do you like the smell of snow? I like the way the air smells just as a badly needed rain begins—it makes me think of the earth exhaling as the water soaks in (but this could be a misconception on my part).

(Click on the photo to see the details of the raindrops and the fallen redbud tree flowers.)

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Rainfall is a significant event in children’s lives, in some places a daily one, while in others a rare pleasure. Rainy days usually mean that children play indoors so they may not know how much it rained or how long. What can we do to connect children to the patterns in nature determined by precipitation?

Taking brief note of the weather as part of a daily circle or calendar is more common in early childhood classrooms than recording those weather observations through drawings, photography, or writing. When temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover are recorded on a year-long chart, seasonal changes can be easily seen.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

Notable events, such as, “the storm that blew down the big tree” or snow days that closed school, can be highlighted and reflected upon. If you record weather phenomena, compare your class’ results with that of the National Weather Service, Climate Prediction Center.  Recording the weather can help children make sense of the natural phenomena that are not in our control but affect our lives profoundly. I knew a three-year-old who cried when she noticed any clouds moving overhead. I wonder if drawing the clouds daily in a notebook might have reassured her that they were a familiar occurrence, and not threatening. Teachers who live in areas with occasional severe weather—how do you talk about it with young children? Please add your comments by clicking on the word "Comment" below.

Peggy

Published: Apr-28-09 | 2 Comments | 18 Links to this post

Dec11

Air is matter

A classic activity to show that air is matter and takes up space is to tuck a piece of tissue into a small clear jar, up end the jar and lower it into a larger container of water. When the small jar is pulled out (still upside down), children are often surprised that the tissue is dry.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

The range in development in preschool students is typically broad, with some of my 4-year-old students surprised because they expected the tissue to be soaking wet, and others unable to duplicate the position of the jar because they didn’t notice that it was upside down when I demonstrated it. Children of all ages love to play with water and air.

Please note a correction to my word choice in the December Early Years column: air is matter, not a single substance—it is a mixture of substances—so I should have written that air is matter. Thanks to Myrna Klotzkin for catching this incorrect usage of a scientific term!

What kinds of activities, or experiments, do you do with your preK through second grade classes to explore the nature of air?

Peggy

Published: Dec-11-08 | 0 Comments | 73 Links to this post

Dec07

Playing with magnets and learning about the property of materials

Playing with magnets is a useful science activity in early childhood classrooms because it fosters conversation, exploration of materials, and learning to make predictions. Making a prediction means focusing on what you think will happen next based on your prior knowledge. We can help children develop this the skill of predicting (or guessing if there is no prior knowledge) what might happen any time we read to them, by asking them to predict what will happen next in the story. (See the discussion about the words “prediction” and “hypothesis”, in When a Hypothesis is NOT an Educated Guess  by Louise M. Baxter and Martha J. Kurtz in Science & Children, April 2001, pg 18-20.)

Preschool teacher Ms. Kim reads a book aloud to her class and they respond with their predictions.

She encourages participation by making it clear that she wants the children to make the predictions and that she will respect and accept all answers (and not provide any). Any book will do but Fortunately by Remy Charlip, is a great book for getting children started thinking about what will happen next, noticing patterns and asking questions. After reading Ms. Kim followed up by asking the children if things turned out the way they thought it would (spoiler alert—it has a happy ending).

Prior experience informs learning, so I try to expose children to many materials and the opportunity to manipulate them. While examining all the objects and testing their attraction to a magnet the children are talking, gaining language and social skills while doing science.

(Click on the photo to see a larger view.)

From NSTA The Early Years Blog

This week I’ve seen children building with the objects, creating a microphone with the ubiquitous preschool magnets with a handle,

and delighting in possessing key or coin—objects of power so I include enough for every child. Using magnets in many shapes and sizes helps children understand that the property of magnetism is in the material, not a size, shape, or color. In the small science groups it is easier to note what is said and what happens, and assess each child’s understanding.

After experiencing the force of magnetism using a variety of magnets and materials, children are ready to predict which objects will be attracted to a magnet.

From NSTA The Early Years Blog
Children can represent their understanding using a small set of new objects (at first without a magnet) and photocopies of those objects. The children represented their predictions by putting photocopied pictures of the objects either on the magnet picture (“magnet will attract the object”) or on the dish picture (“magnet will not attract the object”). Then they each tested an object using a magnet.

There is often disagreement among the children about whether or not an object will be attracted to the magnet. I use this as an opportunity to tell them that scientists don't always agree on what they think will happen.

Even though they had experience with a magnet and a variety of metal objects, many children were still surprised when a brass key was not attracted to the magnet. This is a common misconception among the teachers as well, that magnets will attract all metals. Through experience the students learn that a magnet will never attract certain materials, and always attract others—metals but not all metals. Understanding why that is will have to wait until they are older, but by repeating the activity children come to know that each object reacts to the magnet the same way each time, and that this is part of the nature of the material. Magnet Man, offers much more on this subject on his website.

After testing the actual objects with a magnet, the children changed their arrangement of the photocopies of the objects as needed to represent the results rather than their predictions.

Peggy

Published: Dec-07-08 | 0 Comments | 79 Links to this post