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Tag Archives: early childhood
Seasonal scavenger hunt
Give your students practice making observations by doing a seasonal scavenger hunt that will require closer looks at the familiar landscape to see what has changed. (Thanks to the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research for the idea.)
Does the tree (with branches low enough to see) have tightly furled flower [...]
Peering into students’ “private universe”
In the award-winning documentary A Private Universe, education researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics sought to answer this question: Why don’t even the brightest students truly grasp basic science concepts? Teachers and teacher educators alike continue to search for ways to overcome students’ science misconceptions and to determine how they develop in the first [...]
Posted in Conferences Also tagged activity ideas, assessment, astronomy, chemistry, classroom strategies, data, Philadelphia, physics, professional development, resources, scientist, sessions, standards, video Leave a comment
Preschool STEM
Science, technology, engineering and math are linked together in what is called “STEM” curriculum. If we break down this (possibly unfamiliar) term into it’s parts, we see that much of it is already happening in early childhood programs. Science can be planting seeds, mixing materials together to make a change, rolling objects down a ramp, sorting [...]
The Great Backyard Bird Count: Community science in your backyard or schoolyard
Bird counts involve children in citizen science projects where a greater community contributes to the data used by scientists to understand bird behavior and more. The Great Backyard Bird Count is happening now and counting can take place through Monday, February 15th, so there is still time for your students to participate.
Exploring form and function with hats: books about firefighters
In the February 2010 Early Years column (Science and Children) I wrote about exploring form and function using hats, and testing them for how water flows off of them. Children might think, “Of course a firefighter’s hat works well to keep dripping water off their face and head! It’s made to do that!” And what [...]
Two-year-olds explore transparent, translucent, and opaque materials
Science activities with two-year-olds may not last very long but sometimes the children surprise me. One group of four children spent about 15 minutes exploring a set of cardboard tubes with ends covered with either clear plastic wrap, wax paper, or a double layer of black plastic (black construction paper would also work). We looked [...]
More science in the early years—a reoccurring theme from high school teachers and researchers
So it’s not just me, or you…An elementary school science specialist wrote to National Science Teacher Association colleagues asking middle and high school teachers which science skills and knowledge are typically seen lacking in students as they transition from the elementary level to the middle school level and then to high school level classes. The [...]
If you were a dinosaur …
Some children love pandas, some love dogs, but many more love dinosaurs. At times it seems young children feel dinosaurs are “more real”—more interesting, more important, more present in their minds—than modern animals. “More real” might be an exaggeration, but details about dinosaurs are verbalized more often than those about most modern animals. They can [...]
Posted in Early Years Also tagged activity ideas, animals, dinosaurs, insects, online resources 3 comments
Snow explorations
The snow was lovely for me, arriving on a Friday night after my children were home and enough neighbors were in town to make the shoveling more of a community gathering than a huge chore.
I did wish that school was in session so I could learn what my students would do with 20 inches of snow, [...]
Exemplary science program monograph series