I wonder how teachers include the “E” in this acronym when designing or selecting class activities. And yet, the play that children do can be the foundation for future interest in engineering. This issue has several articles that describe how to capitalize on children’s curiosity and problem-solving abilities with engaging and purposeful activities, from race cars (Gravity Racers) to sand castles (Building with Sand) to learning about rocks (Science Rocks—in SciLinks, use the keyword “rock” for your grade level for more information on types of rocks, identifying rocks, and the rock cycle) and other Imaginative Inventions (which has suggestions for an egg-drop design activity in addition to suggested trade books on the topic).

Elementary Design Challenges focuses on airplanes and flight and has a list of suggestions for other projects. The author uses the resources of NASA’s Engineering Design Challenges website. SciLinks has additional suggestions for websites that have explanations for engineering and design principles in projects such as bridge structures and roller coasters, and for learning from paper airplanes. (Some students may be skeptical when we tell them it’s ok to fly them in class!)

The article Potato Problem Solving illustrates how students used the 5E process to study the thermal insulation properties of materials. Engineering for All is an engaging narrative that describes a windmill design activity that took place in an inclusive classroom. The activity is based on a design process: ask, imagine, plan, create, improve (SciLinks websites have more information on wind energy). As you’re reading the article, be sure to check out articles in the March edition of The Science Teacher, Science for All. Although the articles have a focus on secondary students, the theme is similar and you’ll get some additional insights and ideas for inclusive classrooms.

Children are never too young to explore design solutions. The photographs of the children’s problem-solving strategies with inclined planes in Science and Literacy Centers are priceless! I liked the questions in the “Teacher talk to support inquiry” graphic. And the classes in the article Insect Keepers went beyond the usual activities of an insect unit to incorporate the design process. The author includes checklists to assess student learning, too.

I was traveling through central Texas earlier this month and in the highway rest stops, the buildings were designed with storm shelters for tornadoes.  The students in Hurricane Proof This were looking at the design of buildings to withstand severe conditions  (these students may also be interested in the article Skyscrapers or other design sites such as the Leaning Tower of Pasta).

Check out the list of Connections for this issue. Even if the article does not quite fit with your lesson agenda, this resource has ideas for handouts, background information sheets, data sheets, rubrics, etc.

I hope that our secondary colleagues will take a look at the amazing things that younger students are learning about and doing. (These activities could certainly be kicked up a notch or two for the upper grades!).

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 through the tubes and talked about what we saw— could we see through them? Then I put out small flashlights. Exploration took off!

The twos tried each tube, comparing how much they could see through the material and how much light from the flashlight came through.

The children learned to turn the flashlights on and off, and found out they could hide the flashlights inside two tubes. We talked about being safe by never shining a flashlight into our own or anyone else’s eyes. As children proposed explorations we tried out their ideas. The tiny bathroom really can fit two teachers and four children! The children moved the lights closer and farther away from the wall, noticing how the size of the light beam grew bigger and smaller. One child asked, “Are these toys or are they science?” I said, “They are both, toys and science” which seemed to be an acceptable answer.

Peggy

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, an unusual amount for our  region and a first for their young lives.

I would have the children measure the snow depth around the playground using a stick and record the depth by drawing the length on paper, scoop snow and build up ramps for sliding mini-sleds (bowls) down, fill a measuring cup full of snow to take inside to see how much water is in one cup of snow, and dig down in the sand pit to see how the snow affected the sand. Would children work long enough to mound snow high enough (on the otherwise flat playground) for themselves to slide down?

Looking to northern regions I found suggestions for snow activities.

• From Wings of Discovery in Ontario Canada, a program developed by Let’s Talk Science to help children develop important skills while having fun exploring the world through science:
  • Take a walk in the snow with your child. Look for footprints made by animals and people.  Use a field guide to identify them if you wish.
  • Bring a dishpan full of snow inside for your child to explore. Talk about how the warm temperature inside causes the snow to melt.
  • Fill spray bottles with coloured water to colour outdoor snow sculptures.
  • When outside, point out the melting snow or ice and ask your child to tell you why it is melting.
• From Sheri Amsel’s Exploring Nature Educational Resource in New York:
  • Where Do Animals Go in Winter? Find information and beautiful scientific illustrations to answer your children’s questions.
• In the December 2009 Science and Children, the Natural Resources column, “Winter Secrets” by Valynda Mayes shares a list of in-print resources.

Speaking of in-print resources, reading aloud a fiction and a nonfiction book on the same day (or even same circle time if student attention allows) can help children relate new information to their own experiences. Try these books.

Nonfiction

• Snow and the Earth and Snow and People, both by Nikki Bundey (2000 and 2001, Lerner) which relate how snow is formed and how people live in regions with snow. The photographs support, and expand on, the text.

Fiction

• It’s Snowing by Olivier Dunrea (2002, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), tells of a mother who shares the joy of a snow fall with a very young child.
• The Big Snow by Berta Hader and Elmer Hader (2005, Alladin). Do you remember this 1949 Caldecott Medal tale of animals coming to the food put out by an older couple? Still in print because it’s so enjoyable.
• First Snow by Emily Arnold McCully (2003, HarperCollins) A mouse family goes sledding in this formerly, now nearly, wordless book with lots of detail in the illustrations to talk about.
• Snow by Manya Stojic (2002, Knopf). Forest animals remark on the coming snow and the various ways they will adapt their behavior to survive it.
• And of course, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1962, Viking), in which Peter explores a snowfall and tries to bring a small piece of it home.

So I’m hoping for more snow in January, enough to explore but not enough to close school. And if the children do not come dressed for the weather, I’ll bring the snow inside. How about you? Are you living where the children always come to school with boots, mittens, and hats, or where the only snow people are those made from marshmallows?

Peggy

Making a dough for classroom play is also a time to teach vocabulary and math skills, and social skills such as cleaning up after oneself. Write the recipe on a page or easel paper to refer to even if your students are not yet reading. Illustrate with drawings or take photographs to use as illustrations the next time you make the play dough. Playdough is a soft, moldable flour dough that holds its shape.

What science skills will children learn while making playdough? How can making a material for play support developing math skills and language and literacy development? Here’s a beginning list; please add to it by posting a comment.

Playdough is easy to make with children because there is some “wiggle room” in the amounts—a little more water will make a softer dough, a little less oil will make it a bit sticky. Recipes for playdoughs (a valuable classroom tool) are widely available online and in activity books. Here it is again!

Playdough

Ingredients and materials:

• Safety goggles
• 1 cup white flour
• ½ cup table salt
• 2 teaspoons cream of tarter (found in the spice section)
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• Measuring cup
• Teaspoon measure
• Bowl
• Wide, shallow pan

1. Put on safety goggles.
2. Have the children feel each ingredient while discussing it: is it wet? Is it dry? Is it a liquid? Is it a solid?
3. Have the children help read the recipe to see what comes next and to measure out all the ingredients.
4. Measure out and put all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
   
5. Mix them together by stirring.
6. Measure out and add the water. Stir to mix.
7. Measure out and add the oil. Stir to mix.
8. Pour into a wide, shallow pan. (Avoid pans with non-stick coatings—salt may damage it.)
9. Stir continuously while cooking over medium-high heat until a dough forms, about 5 minutes. Stir and turn over the dough until doesn’t look wet anymore.
   
10. Remove from heat, and cool. Knead a few minutes until smooth.
11. Add color, scent, or glitter if desired.
    
12. Store in a closed container or send some home in plastic bags.

Mixing to make a change is fun, especially when you get to play with the resulting mixture. Your class might want to take their recipe to another class and teach them how to make playdough!

Peggy

Young children love using a periscope. Maybe because when you look through one, the view is not what your brain expects, somewhat like using someone else’s glasses. (My sisters and I used to take turns running down a hallway wearing my mother’s glasses. This was probably early in the morning and she’d do anything for a few more minutes of rest. Because she has an astigmatism, when we looked through her lenses we saw the floor sloping away from us, a thrilling sight because it did not agree with the input from our feet—and our memory—which told us the floor was level. It was fun! What can I say, we didn’t have a TV…)

Surprisingly durable periscopes can be made using two cardboard half-gallon or quart-size milk or juice cartons, two small rectangular Plexiglas mirrors (size depends on the carton size), and clear packing tape. A wonderful thing about making your own is that you can fix it easily if someone steps on it or if the tape comes undone. You may as well make two or three while you are at it, to reduce competition for using them in the classroom.

Here’s how:

1. Open the tops of the cartons completely, clean and dry them.
2. Cut a square hole on one side of each carton, about ½” from the bottom –all the way across the side of the carton and an equal height up, to form a square.
3. Position the cartons together so the open tops are touching and the cut holes are on opposite sides. The body of the periscope, formed by the two cartons, needs to be fairly straight to give a clear view so you may need to cut off the folded top portion from the length.
4. Overlap the tops and tape them together, inside and outside.
5. Now put each mirror in through a cut hole and tape the front edge of the mirror to the carton just inside the opening of each hole.
6. Tape the opposite edge of the mirror against the far wall of the carton so the mirror rests at an angle.
7. When both mirrors are in place you should be able to look into one and see what is reflected in the other. You may have to adjust the angle of the mirrors or straighten the cartons to get the best view.

The view will not be perfect unless you are very accurate with your cutting and the mirror angle, but children don’t seem to mind.

Children may need an introduction to the joys of creeping around a classroom looking through a periscope. Tell them that a periscope is a tool to see around corners. After a period of play, have the children pass it around the circle and ask them, “What do you see when you look into the periscope? How many mirrors are used inside?” The children can reach in through the holes and touch their hands together to learn about the construction. Older children can diagram out the construction (or even assist in the making) to show where the image (light) enters the periscope and where it exits.

Books to support learning about light and reflection include:

• I See Me by Pegi Deitz Shea, illustrated by Lucia Washburn (boardbook). 2000. HarperFestival.
• Shadows and Reflections by Tana Hoban. 1990. Greenwillow Books.
• Seven Sillies by Joyce Dunbar, illustrated by Chris Downing. 1993. Western Publishing Co.
• Reflections by Ann Jonas. 1987. Greenwillow Books
• Make a Bigger Puddle, Make a Smaller Worm, The Magic Mirror Book (Scholastic 1979) and the Mirror Puzzle Book (Tarquin 1986)—all by Marion Walter.

Read The Early Years column about predicting the path of light in the December 2009 Science and Children. Bring some light into your classroom with flashlights, mirrors, and periscopes. Children will be interested in documenting their exploration and thinking with drawings and dictated words in a Mirrors and Light “notebook” (several sheets stapled together). Email me a photo file of your children’s work and I’ll include them in a later post. (No faces or names please—they will know it’s theirs.) The address is: science is simple at yahoo dot com, no spaces.

Peggy

Children observe objects in water.

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.

Given 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.

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.

One 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?

Children are fascinated with beetles and other small animals.

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.

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

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

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.)

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.

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.

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?

Some 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!

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

From the Early Years photo cache (click on the pics for more).

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.

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!

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.

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.

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