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? 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 [...]
I’m planning a fall gardening activity now, before school starts, and the first step is to mark my calendar to buy spring flowering bulbs before the end of September. Seasonal changes vary across the many climates in the United States. If you get temperatures below 40°F for extended periods of time, you can plant these [...]
I was excited to see a Monarch butterfly land on the Butterfly Bush in the yard (I hesitate to call it a garden). Does that mean that the Milkweed plant may yet become a home to Monarch caterpillars? I haven’t seen any eggs but there is still time. Maybe another insect has already staked a [...]
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 [...]
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. Classification is the theme for the March 2009 issue of Science and [...]
“Why is corn used as a decoration in the fall in the United States?” asked a student’s grandmother. She is originally from Estonia where she said seasonal decorative include straw weavings, hung as symbols to bring a good harvest in the next year. I don’t know when it became popular to hang ears of multicolored [...]
For an activity to explore buoyancy—what materials and which objects sink or float in water—I gave each child in a small group an object to hold. Then I explained that we were going to think about the objects and say where we think they will come to rest in a big tub of water—at the [...]
Mathematics and science seem like natural partners when designing interdisciplinary lessons or units. This issue of Science Scope has some suggestions for making these lessons authentic and purposeful, integrating science with geometry, scaling, graphing, and other mathematical concepts. Along with this issue, you can review the October issue of Science and Children for more articles [...]
This is the theme of the October Science and Children. Whether you’re an elementary or secondary teacher, be sure to check out this issue online (just click on the photo) for some discussions on the relationship between science and mathematics and some activities that can certainly be adapted for science students, regardless of their ages. [...]
