ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

Children are born scientists! From infancy, they pose theories, test their hypotheses and then repeat them. Their curiosity and open attitude to the world provides them with daily discoveries. Its the adult's job to encourage, challenge, provoke and learn along with them. Yes, to all that's been said!

We do NOT have to separate out fun, learning, and play. They can all be incorporated. Children have got to experience learning through their bodies. They are sensorial in the womb! They hear, they such their thumbs, they feel. As soon as they exit, everything is seen, heard, tasted. they move constantly. They grasp. Why, then, do we automatically think children no longer need their senses to learn? The brain research is vast. Is anyone listening? Alyce Grey's comments above are exactly right. When did we stop having children explore and discover with our senses and through play just because it was reading or math? Movement and sensory input is novel to the child and anything novel catches their attention, imagination and memory! Exercise boosts brain power (Medina, 2009). BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) is a neurotrophin that builds and maintains the cell circuitry. And guess what it is called? Miracle-Gro for the brain. It is fertilizer for the brain! And what promotes it? Exercise. Movement! Physical exploration.

The era of separation of mind/body is over. Data from neuroscience is enormous. Educators and publishers have GOT to catch up.

Here's a thought: try Zoo-phonics. It is physical, sensorial, mneumonic and PLAYFUL. www.zoo-phonics.com. You can download lessons for the various agesgrades.

We should be listening to our children's needs first. Watch them play. THAT'S how we need to teach them.

As a professional in the field of ECE for 35+ years, I find the negative reaction by those in ECE to the recommendations re: inclusion of Science somewhat disturbing. While teaching 4 year olds (which I did for about 15 years), science was one of the cornerstones of my curriculum which was a DAP, play-based curriculum. I discovered very early on that 4's were extremely interested in the natural world .. always bringing me bugs, flowers, lizards, etc. to look at. Good science is done so easily if one focuses on the process skills of science ... observation, communication, prediction (what will happen if ...), and classification. Much of science can be taught informally simply by sharing in the child's observations and communications about what they have brought for us to look at .. or those things we discover that are interesting for them to observe, explore and talk about. Additionally in encounters involving bugs or animals, I would encourage the child to observe how the bug or animal moved and then ask them to try to move in the same way that the creature moved, thereby incorporating gross motor development and creative thought into the child's science experience.

As a professor in ECE who teaches Science in the Preschool Curriculum, I find that preschool teachers are doing science without even realizing they are doing it. Such typical preschool activities as "sink and float", cooking experiences, planting and growing seeds, and mixing colors are science activities. What preschool teachers need do to, is just become more intentional about how they present these activities. Example: Sink and float ... have the children predict what they think the object will do. Have them place the object in the water and describe what they see happen. After taking the object out of the water, have them place it in the "sink" pile of objects or the "float" pile of objects. When doing this activity in this manner, the teacher has engaged the child in 3 process skills of science.

Science is so much a part of our lives and so much a natural part of the young child's life, I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had been told by my director when I was teaching 4 year olds, you can't teach science to young children!

It is false to juxtapose 'play' and 'learning'. I have 'taught' or spent my days with preschoolers more days than not in the 60 years I have been an older sister, mother and teacher.

I have noticed that children will discover much about science in their every day play. For instance last week we had another raw and wet New England day. We go to the park with our charges and a group of 4 and 5 year olds discovered a frigid puddle in a piece of play equipment. They immediately started to collect things to place in the puddle. I watched them and found that what they were talking about was what would float and what would sink. They played this game for about 15 minutes before moving on to something else. They experimented with a concept. I suggested predicting what would happen, using scientific language. That was my only intervention to this play.

I have noticed for years that children will do this kind of play spontaneously year round, indoors and outdoors. They are continually experimenting, learning language to describe what they see, collaborating with others on further experimentation, making hypotheses about what will happen if they do something or other. It takes a certain level of sophistication to see what they are doing in scientific terms. But it does come out of their play continuously.

We need fewer books, guidelines and missives from above in this field. We need more sophisticated teachers. These teachers need to be able to see what kids are doing and understand the powerful learning that is happening. They need to be able to guide said learning in small nudges, offers of help, allowing failure, offering equipment and in general supporting the movement the children are making.

The ideas that people who write about what teachers should do are often quite good. They are based in fact on what kids do if teachers allow them the time, stimulating environment and access to play. Play is nothing more than kids wandering their way through their own days, pursuing learning with an avid and sensual pleasure.

We need to keep aware of what they are doing in order to satisfy ourselves that the learning is going on. The more we know about what they are learning the more we know what to offer in small bits and snippets of time to help them move forward. Also the more we know when to step back. For instance, my introduction of the word 'predict' was an ignored intrusion to their play. But later at lunch I brought the word up again, and we played nicely with it at that point. We need to know when to back off and when to bring something back up.

This is highly sophisticated work. Not easily stimulated by a book, or one more suggestion of what a teacher should be doing each day. We need to offer the kids more freedom to play. Even in a frigid puddle in the middle of a cold New England winter.