Science learning can occur whenever children have the opportunity to pursue an answer to a question. If you wait until it’s your turn in the science lab, the questions that can be asked may be limited to the materials available there and the length of the 30-50 minute session. Add science and engineering learning to your daily routine or schedule and put the related jobs, such as watering plants or observing animals, on your job chart.
Here are a few kindergarten and preschool daily schedules. Click here to see them in detail.
Send me a photograph of your schedule or comment below to share how science best happens in your program.
Peggy (email is all one word, no spaces: science is simple at yahoo dot com)
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5 Comments
Thanks for posting the different schedules and methods of choosing activities. It’s interesting to have a peek in a variety of classrooms.
In my class of 4- and 5-year-olds, we often explore science topics over the course of multiple weeks, as the main focus of our days. Science learning happens throughout the day, indoors and outside, not at a science table or lab. For example, when we were exploring earthworms a while ago we graphed who had touched a worm and who had not. We dug for worms in our garden beds and compost pile. We made a giant worm out of lunch bags stuffed with newspaper. Children observed worms in our worm bin and on a damp rain gutter. They created an underground mural and we read books about earthworms at story time. We pretended we were earthworms and did the Worm Hokey Pokey.
Children loved being immersed in explorations. It made it easy for them to ask questions and follow up over time.
Science is embedded into our day every day! A unit of study that is centered around a science standard can be integrated into all other subject areas throughout the day. For example, in our current unit on plants students are writing expository text and poems about plants, reading about plants, learning where on a map plants grow, charting and graphing plant growth, timing seed sprouting, painting plants, acting out the parts of the plant and their functions, etc. However even if a unit of study is focused on a social studies or language arts standard, science can still cross the curriculum.
In my classroom I do have a science station that children go to once per week by following a station chart. The children’s names are moved down the chart so that everyone will go to every station once each week. In addition my students bring items from home or from outside that can be added to the science observation table. We read books and have mini lessons as questions are developed by the children.
Children look forward to solving problems and discovering new ideas! Science helps children make connections across the curriculum and to life! Science is part of who we are… I cannot imagine my classroom or life without it!
Thank you for the peek into your classroom Julie, and the ideas for integrating, or embedding, science with the rest of the curriculum. It sounds very productive. You have given us some ideas to use in our own classrooms.
As a “Science Observation” table, your station has a clear purpose and science learning is not limited to that station.
Peggy
Ms. Julie, I teach pre-k and i really love your ideas.
Children need good teachers like you to help them pursue their learning. I like your classroom. In my classroom I have droppers from the drug stores,different colors of liquid paints in small containers, sponges, wash clothes, cups,and graph papers. Children love to go in the science area to conduct their experiments on their own. When they are done they record their findings on the graph paper and they sign their their name besides it. I change activites once a week.
Jane, thank you for your list of materials that your children use to explore colors and water. I have used the Terrific Press curriculum, Squishy, Squashy Sponges: Early Childhood Unit Teacher Guide with young children in a science station. They used their senses, and tools to measure–a balence to compare wet and dry sponges, and links to measure lengths. Next time I will have them record their findings on graph paper. I think the grid will help them draw the sponges they use with attention to scale, and reduce the frustration of some at not being able to make the shape they see.