From TSI E-Newsletter #5. 

Picture this scenario. You are a new teacher and your supervisor tells you that you must make sure that you are "teaching science" to your preschoolers. In a panic, you dig through your closet to find a few seashells that you collected at the beach on your vacation last summer and you pick up a few pinecones from the playground. You clear a table for these items and add a magnifying glass and a balance scale and voila--an instant science center! At the beginning of the year a few children visit the area for a few minutes but aren't really engaged and you wonder why. Now is a good time to reflect on your role in helping children learn science concepts and dispositions and what science should look like in a Creative Curriculum classroom.

What is Science?

How Young Children Learn About Science

The National Science Education Standards emphasize use of inquiry skills as a way of learning about science. In early childhood programs, children learn inquiry skills as they:

• ask questions
• explore and investigate
• use tools and their senses to gather information
• make reasonable explanations
• represent what they've learned through drawings, constructions, writing, graphing, stories, or dramatizations

The Content of Science

Look at the world around you and you will find your greatest resources for the content of science. Asking children to name the planets in order from the sun or to explain the rainforest is out of the realm of their everyday experiences and may not be very meaningful to preschoolers. Carefully observe children as they play and think about the science that is involved. Whether they are rolling toy cars down ramps made from blocks or watching circles form as they drop rocks into a puddle, they can be learning about science. Most of the content of science in early childhood can be categorized into three areas:

• Life science: plants, animals, our bodies, health
• Earth science: shadows, weather, rocks, the environment, bodies of water
• Physical science: how things work, magnets, light, reflections, motion

The Teacher's Role in Supporting Science Learning

The teacher plays a critical role in the development of inquiry skills as well as scientific knowledge. Your role is to help children be scientists. When you set the stage for science discoveries and interact with children during their play in a way that extends their scientific thinking, you help them to do science. Begin by setting up an environment that encourages scientific exploration and discoveries. This can be something as simple as having a classroom pet for the children to observe systematically over time or planting and growing seeds after talking about what seeds need to grow. When interesting objects from nature or textures are around the room, children will naturally ask questions. Allowing children to take apart an old clock will lead children to examine the gears and think about cause and effect.

As you can see, arranging the environment for science is not enough. It is your interactions with children and your guidance during their investigations that will strengthen scientific understandings. Think aloud and make "I wonder" a part of your daily vocabulary, e.g., "I wonder where the puddle went?" Don't be too quick with answers to children's questions. Give them a chance to make predictions, test them out where possible, and generalize. Be willing to admit when you don't know the answer and adopt a "let's find out together" attitude.

Science in The Creative Curriculum Classroom

Children can do science throughout the day in a Creative Curriculum classroom. You may have a special area of science tools and materials available for exploration such as magnets, magnifying glasses, prisms, balance scales, and items from nature. In addition, however, each interest area of The Creative Curriculum offers opportunities for scientific inquiry and investigations. Listed below are just a few ways in which children may be encouraged to learn scientific knowledge, skills, and dispositions in the interest areas:

Blocks: When children play with blocks, they can be learning about balance, equilibrium, gravity, and simple machines such as levers, wheels, and pulleys. Your questions and comments can encourage children to make predictions and think about cause and effect as they add blocks to a tall tower.

House Corner or Dramatic Play: Children can learn how tools work when they play with kitchen utensils such as an eggbeater, can opener, or kitchen timer. They learn about living things as they take care of the plants decorating the area and talk about what plants need to grow. And they learn about their bodies as they talk about foods that make them healthy or as they pretend to be a doctor giving a check-up.

Table Toys: Children can explore scientific concepts as they use magnetic letters and numbers or match texture cards. Their work with small building toys such as Legos, Tinkertoys, or other manipulatives can lead to scientific conversations and experiments related to balance and gravity. When they talk about their discoveries they are learning to act like scientists.

Art: Children love to mix paint. When they can explain how they made certain colors, they are learning about principles of color. They also learn about properties of materials as they watch paint that is too watery trickle down the paper and talk about what they saw or discuss why the clay has hardened.

Sand and Water: Children learn about the physical properties of sand and water as they pour, mix, sift, and dig. Your open-ended questions and comments extend their learning to include making predictions and exploring cause and effect as they add water to dry sand to create a castle or a river. They learn about sinking and floating when they create a boat that floats out of recyclable materials and talk about why some of the boats float and others don't.

Music and Movement: As children experiment with different instruments, they can learn about the science of sound. Encourage them to figure out what makes high sounds, low sounds, loud sounds, and soft sounds.

Computers: Computers can never take the place of hands-on exploration in science. But when children work together using open-ended software, they use many scientific inquiry skills. They notice cause and effect as they create a line or shape while dragging a mouse. They make predictions about what will happen next when they click on an image.

Cooking: Everything in cooking is related to science! When making jello, children learn first-hand about solids, liquids, and gases even though you may not use those terms. When they make popcorn, they can use all of their senses -- sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell. They can predict what will happen when yeast is used to make bread. In cooking, like in science experiments, children learn that if one ingredient is changed, it can effect the whole outcome.

Outdoors: The outdoors is a perfect textbook for science! From examining bugs on a sidewalk to observing how a tree changes through the seasons, the outdoors provide a wealth of science learning opportunities. Children can learn about plants and animals, shadows, weather, and more right outside your classroom door.

Group Times and Daily Routines: As children bundle up to go on the playground to keep warm or as they wash their hands before eating, they learn science concepts when you talk about the reasons for doing these things. Discussing science topics heard in the news that are meaningful to children is very appropriate during circle time. Talking about a hurricane, tornado, or bad storm helps children express their feelings while learning about weather at the same time.

Using Studies to Learn About Science

In The Creative Curriculum, long-term studies can be used to explore science topics in-depth. The topics usually emerge from the interests of children or from something meaningful and relevant in their surrounding community. As a teacher, you make decisions about topics that are worthy of valuable class time and energy. Studies provide children an opportunity to observe, investigate, explore, and ask questions over time. Children can represent what they have learned about the study through drawing, construction, drama, graphing, or storytelling.

Conclusion

As you can see, science is integrated into every aspect of The Creative Curriculum. The teacher's role in setting the stage for science and in interacting with the children will foster scientific thinking skills and help them do what scientists do--find answers for themselves.

Related Internet Resources

Dialogue on Early Childhood Science, Math, and Technology (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

This book is the product of a meeting of the nation's most accomplished educators, scholars, and researchers, who gathered at the request of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to discuss how, when, and even if we should teach science, mathematics, and technology to pre-kindergarten children. Read this book online.

Helping Your Child Learn Science (US Department of Education)

Suggests ways parents can interest their children from about 3 to 10 years old in science. It includes basic information about science and a sampling of activities for children to do.

Science Explorer: Exploratorium-At-Home Books

From the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco includes "hands-on, minds-on" science experiences designed to be used by parents and children together.

A Backyard Wildlife Habitat Homepage (National Wildlife Federation)

Describes how to turn your schoolyard into a unique, hands-on, outdoor learning opportunity by making it a habitat-based learning site. The schoolyard becomes an important part of a functional ecosystem that not only provides essential wildlife habitat, but provides inspiration for learning for students, teachers, and the community.

Starting Early: Environmental Education During the Early Childhood Years

An ERIC Digest, states that environmental education based on life experiences should begin during the very earliest years of life. Such experiences play a critical role in shaping life-long attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior toward natural environments.

Gryphon House Early Childhood Teacher & Parent Resources

Includes excerpts from many of its science books such as Mudpies to Magnets.