Information technology made easy

Almost from birth, kids are exposed, and expert, in manipulating digital information Two year-olds can use a touch screen better than me. So, I had a 'blast from the past' with the information technology  I grew up with, eventually graduating to the kinds of interfaces they will feel at home with. First of all:

33rpm vinyl LP on a record player

I found this old player on its way to the junkyard - and it works! Totally mechanical which is great for understanding as well.  I told the classes that I had no TV until I was 8 - stunned silence. The only way to get news or stories or music was with a radio. They all associated a radio with music, not with stories or news, and of course unless you listen to NPR or the two news stations, that's all you hear today. The idea that it all starts with electricity was clear when we tried to get the radio to work - some of the kids knew there had to be power and guessed batteries or plugs correctly. How the radio worked was less easy to understand so I settled for letting them imagine all the programs playing in the air but that we cannot hear them, like some animals can hear or smell things that we cannot. Powering up the radio enabled the signals to get 'decoded' for our ears. We played and danced to some music on different types of station - jazz, techno, classic rock and classical. Then I described how to listen to music you selected in a time when Pandora was just a character in a myth. Good old vinyl!

Only one child in the whole school recognized an LP, but a number of them must have seen a record player in operation because they knew where to put the record on the player, and that it rotated. The 'arm' with its needle underneath was more of a mystery, but when the music emerged they were at once surprised and delighted - more so than if I had put a CD on. The record was "Walk Like An Animal" and they immediately began to obey the directions as we went through inchworms, dogs, chickens and so on. I followed with Jackie Torrance reading some fairy tales and they were spellbound by 'Little Red Riding Hood', insisting on hearing the whole story. It was unusual for them to listen without some kind of video input and the 4 year-olds did brilliantly, the 3's less so but mostly they still listened.

45 rpm, The Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem

 

 

We also listened to a 45 rpm, smaller and needing a faster rotation to sound normal.
Moving on, most of the children mis-identified a CD as a DVD. I showed them the more intense 'rainbow effect' of the DVD since it has to hold far more information. We then listened to a Zoo animals CD and brainstormed about how the sound was stored here versus the vinyl record. The rainbow effect clued a few of them in about the role of light in 'reading' the CD sounds.

Playing a CD

They saw that both items were circular, flat and rotated on their players, that they were light and easy to move, but fragile and easily scratched. Next time we will move on to video information, although they were clamoring for more Jackie Torrance as well. Haul out those LPs, parents and grandparents, your little ones have a new appreciation of them!

Worm cake, anyone?

We were inspired by reading 'Max's Worm Cake' by Rosemary Wells, to make our own cake - no, not an edible one (old hat) but exactly like Max's in the book, using real dirt and worms and pebbles to decorate it.

worm cake and candles

 We talked about dirt last time when worms were on the menu (so to speak), but here we get a chance to handle it, observe some of its properties and - of course - squish and squinch it in our hands! The feeling of mud gave everyone a chance to come up with a word to describe the sensation - not just "EEUUUWW".  One child described worms as "squirdling through the mud". Wow!! What a terrific new word!

First we compared dirt and sand - it's makeup, where it's found, how it feels before and after adding water. It is easier to mold when wet, and we noticed that sand had larger particles so the mud felt 'smoother'.

comparing sand (L) and dirt (R)

handling sand

sand cake! with candle!

It was tricky to add the right amount of water to the mud - depends on how fine the particles were. Too much and you got sludge, too little and it looked dry - just like adding water to flour mix when making pastry. No-one seemed to mind putting their hands into the mix eventually, it was a lot more effective than a craft stick!

mixing water into the dirt

oops! too much water!

permission to get my hands muddy!

 I had colored starch packing 'noodles' for candles - interestingly the children observed that the noodles disintegrated ("melted") in the mud as the starch dissolved - not something you would see with a polystyrene 'noodle'.

Finally - the finished cake! A masterpiece only a worm could love!

want a slice?

As a completely different chemical process, we compared the mud with so-called 'clean mud' - made by mixing a grated Dove soap bar with torn-up pieces of a toilet paper roll,  and adding a cup of warm water to mix. The children were more interested in tearing up the paper and grating the soap than in the finished 'mud',  AND - they really didn't like the feel of it at all. More children were willing to plunge their hands in  real mud than in this stuff, maybe because the texture was kind of slimy.

making 'clean mud'

OK but we prefer the real thing, worms and all!

 

That's it for Rocks and Minerals, folks! Next stop - Information Technology!

What's in the dirt? Worms!

This is such a simple and fascinating lesson - and all you need is a bucket of dirt from the garden and some magnifying glasses! It's an extension of our Rocks and Minerals theme as well.

plate o' dirt. spot the worm!

Each child got a plate of dirt (I made sure there was a worm hidden in there first) and we talked about what 'dirt' was. A few children told me is was 'rocks' because there were some small rocks in their sample. Others had leaves and sticks and roots so I could explain how all these things got scrunched up and turned into soil. I also told them there were dead bugs in there which was good for the soil and plants.

Then they got to poke around some more and - hey presto - they found worms. This was accompanied by shrieks of delight and "Eeeuuuuw!" Now the best part - touching them! At first a lot of the children were horrified at the thought but there were always some kids who loved this, and they would inspire the others. I only got 2 or 3 children out of 200 who refused to hold them in their hands.

tickly!

look! two worms!

 They were pleasantly surprised to find that the worms felt tickly, not slimy, AND that they moved relatively slowly. Lively bugs are much more difficult to get used to. The children could use the magnifying glasses to study their worms but the major interest from their perspective was having them in their hands.
Placing some worms on a clean plate enabled us to study how they moved better. I got the children to 'wriggle like a worm' on the floor.

wriggle like a worm

worms reacting to water - not happy!

Now we added a drop or two of water to the worms - this got the whole crew of them to make a break for it! It was fun to watch because they have no vision apart from light/dark so they just kept on truckin' until they were out of the area - and many of them ended up crawling off the plate like spokes in a wheel. They dangle off the edge, feeling around for a surface, some retract but some go too far and fall off which the children found hysterically funny. Flashlights made the worms move away as well but cheerios were more interesting. The children got to guess at the reasons worms don't like water or light, and how they eat.

Finally, we made a big pile of dirt and dumped all the worms on top - within minutes they had disappeared as they ate their way inside the pile to escape the light and to stay moist so they can breathe (through their skin). The class had considered a lot of things about worm physiology and behavior during the processes, and it made total sense to them because they had seen and touched and watched the worms in action!

'Wonderful Worms' by Linda Glaser is a terrific book about these critters, and I had a bunch of others available for the children to browse though.

reading about worms

More books about garden critturs help reinforce the fact that our gardens hide a wealth of life we never  see.

Treasure Hunt

Treasure! Now that's rocks with bling!

studying our gems and gold

What IS treasure? I used the 'I Spy Treasure Hunt' book by  Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick to introduce the idea of treasure. They love the game of finding the objects in the pictures - I used the Antiques Shop page and introduced the idea of maps (and, inevitably, pirates!), and clues, by using the old map and comparing it with the photograph of the same place many years later.  You have to be careful with the whole pirates thing because of course they were really violent thieves, not just Robin Hood in a boat. Still, we pretended we would be searching for hidden treasure to return to the owners!

Gold and jewels are of course rocks with value and belong in a treasure chest! I have one from my son's experience at 4 or 5, going on a sail with his best friend and landing at a beach where his friend's Mom and Dad had hidden a chest complete with map and - a Black Spot! They had read Treasure Island (the Real one!!) by R.L Stevenson so it was such a thrill! The black spot made it's rounds among his friends for years and years (I still expect it to turn up).
  I loaded the chest with toy gold coins and jewels and hid it in the classroom. Were they thrilled when it was found!!

Oohs and Aaahs when the chest is opened!

Making a 'Treasure Island' in the classroom was another route to finding treasure. Using a rug as the basic island, the children placed trees, volcanoes and rocks all around and then had to find individual treasure items hidden there - under the volcano, or under a rock, before hunting for the whole chest.

lifting a rock to find a gold coin!

As you can see, we added animals as well to make the island more authentic. Watch out for that wild boar!  And the Barbary Apes and poisonous snakes making our quest ever more dangerous!!!

The jewels and coins were much admired and compared and, of course, coveted but luckily there was plenty to go around.

Rocks for all ages

My classroom globe wears many hats, but this week it showed the children it's true identity - a chunk of rock!

my collections table

They all love volcanoes, and many know about lava, but comparing the earth to an undercooked muffin seemed to work best since for the past week or two, the classes seemed to be vying for the best pumpkin muffin recipe to make and eat. Our planet is like a muffin where the top (CRUST) is set and cooled but the inside is still hot and runny, like magma that erupts from a volcano.

I had the classes pick out, without looking, an object from a 'mystery box', and tell us what they guessed it was from the TEXTURE ('feel'). I had pompoms, rubber balls, lego bricks, feathers and other stuff among a variety of rocks, and the idea that they could identify each object without looking was, for some of them, quite a revelation. This encouraged them to search for vocabulary that best described what the objects felt like - soft, squishy, smooth, tickly, bumpy, scratchy, cold. I then got the 4's and some of the 3's, to just look at the items and use words to describe them, as if to a friend wearing a blindfold, or someone at night. You could almost see their brains trying to find the right words, a terrific way to exercise those neurons!

We then sorted the rocks into families. The concept of 'same' and 'different', is present in the 4s but only some of the 3s, and since these rocks were different shapes and sizes and colors it was quite a challenge. Still, if you put a rock down and asked them to search for one that looked 'like' that one, most of them found they could do it. Asked how they could study the rocks better, some children suggested magnifying glasses - fantastic idea!!

Classification began with sorting according to size:

size families

Color:

color families

and texture:

texture families

Of course the real way to do this is density, but I wasn't going there although I could have weighed some of them. Maybe I will next time.

The final part of the lesson was a rock hunt in the classroom. I had hidden, under plates, a rock for each child to find, they LOVE any kind of hunt. You can get them to find more than one if you have time of course. They then had to see if one of their friends had a similar rock, or to pick a similar one out of the collection box (each rock I hid had a family member also hidden, or in the box)

I have a bunch of rock books on display for the children to look at, here they are:

The titles are: Geology Rocks, by Cindy Blobaum and Michael Kline
Rocks. Hard, Smooth, Soft and Amazing (Amazing Science), by Rosinsky et al
If you find a Rock, by Peggy Christian
Let's go Rock Collecting, by Roma Gans.

See you next week for a treasure hunt! Now THAT'S rocks we can all relate to!!

Sharing our planet with living and non-living neighbors

Reminding the children about sharing resources with other people leads to discussing sharing those same resources with the myriad other life forms on earth, most of which pre-date and outnumber us! I also wanted to introduce rocks and minerals, so why not distinguish between living things (plants and animals), and non-living things (rocks, minerals, water etc).
I put a bunch of different toy plants (play food, plastic flowers), toy animals and bugs, shells, rocks and minerals into a brown bag and each child blind-selected 2 items. We identified each item and categorized it as plant or animal (living) or non-living (never alive rather than dead, extinct etc). I got a wealth of tales about grandparents dying when we approached the 'once alive' area, some of which were really touching and interesting I must say, and initially sidetracked me for a large part of the lesson! Anyway I deflected further family history and got down to dividing the items on 3 large trays - Animal, Plant and Non-Living. Basically, living things grow and reproduce and non-living things do not. It's not an easy concept for 3s and 4s and I slipped in a tricky one - a unicorn (doesn't exist) and a shell (you try to guess that one!!).

Hmm. apples are, um, oh - plants!!

animal, vegetable or mineral?

 Where do we humans put ourselves?

Somehow this picture refuses to stand up but you get the idea - yes, we are all animals!

Balancing ecosystems is delicate and removing one item can bring them tumbling if we don't look at their interrelationships - let's illustrate this with a balancing game they can take turns at. Who can remove one item without tipping the pile?

ecosystem balancing game

getting that rock out was hard!

 Man-made disasters like an oil spill or rainforest logging (Fern Gully, the last rainforest) were mentioned and we brainstormed ways we could help prevent more of the same in the future. Books like 'Oil Spill!' by Melvin Berger are also food for thought and offer possible ways we can help.

population education, or, 'sharing is caring'

Not a bad lesson plan except my population of kids are pretty aware already of the etiquette of sharing resources - highlighted early on in the class! (Good parenting tho' folks!)  So what did I do? Well, first a rapid Q&A about my classroom globe. Encouraged discussion about planets in general, exactly where we live on the model (New York) and then, where CAN'T we live, or anyone for that matter. Checked ocean, poles (OK I know about Inuits but in the interests of time I didn't mention them), mountains, a lot of the desert areas, impenetrable jungle etc. A big planet can have too many people for the available resources - air, water, food, and to maintain a 'personal space'. How to demo this?

Using a small rug as an 'island', the kids pretended to move onto it and live, one at a time, until things got way too crowded and uncomfortable:

OK so let's see about the resource allocation now! A plate of cookies (2 per child but they weren't told this) were the total food grown on our 'island' for the year. When passed around, I wanted the first few children to take a handful, but to their credit they glanced around the table and made a mental tally of what they OUGHT to take to be fair. Impressive, but I had to drop large hints to get them to take more! Of course, the plate was empty for the last kid or so and they understood the value of equal sharing and that even the kids who got cookies didn't all get the same either. Re-passing the cookies I asked, "How many should you take to be sure it's fair" and some kids said 'one' which I also thought was pretty good reasoning. Now we all had the same BUT, as I pointed out, fewer kids in the class would mean more for everyone. 2 cookies each was fair but maybe not enough to satisfy.

I did the same with a pitcher of water. They were getting the message!
Now for some urban planning:

The kids pretended to 'peel' the surface off the globe and we divided the 'skin' - a paper circle - into a pie showing the places people could live and those where they couldn't. We colored in some 'slices': blue = sea; brown = unliveable land; dots = liveable land and green = farmland. Pretty clear there's not much farmland. Each child got a lego block 'house' to put on the dotted slice and  soon things were getting crowded, houses were spilling over into the farmland and thus reducing the food supply as the population increased.
"What can we do to keep our living area, but free up some space around the houses for gardens, parks, playgrounds etc?" I asked the kids. I got a lot of suggestions but maybe one child in half of the classes, 3's and 4's included here (that's about 1 in 15) actually told me to "build up". "make a tower" "put one on top", and my favorite, "make a castle". Solving a puzzle like that really involves some abstract thought and I was really impressed to find, at such a young age, that some kids could do this. Wow!!!

Here they are building an apartment!

This works just as well with a small circle representing 'our town'. They can really imagine losing their garden and playground better that way.

Voila!

Whether or not the idea of a global population explosion was processed here, the classroom  and 'my town' scale seemed to give them pause, even though they won't get to experience privations of space and food in their everyday lives. I will try to get some pictures and videos of overcrowding in other places  and countries without making a bleak picture for them. That's for next time as we segue into rocks and minerals!

Revising the lesson plan

I had to Curb My Lesson Plan (but not my Enthusiasm!) to better fit time and energy constraints - shorter and simpler plus time for the kids to move around. A new classroom is wonderful but the kids needed some adjustment to the space.
So.. I started with a general Question:
Q: "Why are we here?"
A: "To do Science"
Q: "What is Science?
A: "Um..."
Well of course almost any answer will be right because science is all about how the world works. So a lot of the possible responses could be pretty silly and still be Science, and it's good to get the class laughing.
Next step was getting the kids to get up and engage in a 'scavenger hunt' - I would ask them to find stuff in the room - either images or the real thing or, introducing a new concept - identifying a MODEL of something, the earth for example (globe).

Above,  they are finding a polar bear picture.

Once they were more comfortable with the new space it was time to do some magic:

An innocent-looking cup of water (Q: 'why do you think this is water? A: Clear; See-through; liquid etc) reveals 'invisible' balls only after using our touch senses. EEkkkk! As each child checked out the cup, I pretended they were kidding me about feeling balls in the water because they were invisible to the eyes. Finally, the secret was out (literally) as each child in turn fished out a jelly marble that had been lurking in the water.

I encouraged them to find words to describe how the balls felt: 'soft', smooth', 'slimy', 'wet', 'squishy', were among the responses.
They bounce and roll just like rubber balls but the children discovered that the structure collapsed if you squeezed them - this caused some initial alarm ('I broke it!'), quickly dispelled by my encouraging them all to 'splat' their balls and find out how they were made.

squishing the marbles

splat!

 

The reason they are invisible in water is that they are mostly water - further explanations were beyond their comprehension but they understood that adding water to water doesn't leave a visible trace. WE know of course that the polymer comprising the jelly marble has a structure but the sheer amount of water absorbed dominates.
Mentioning  that a similar substance is in the lining of a diaper,  gets the right amount of 'EEEUUW!' and ensures this nugget gets communicated to their parents and friends after the class is over.

Try this at home:
Adding sugar crystals to a cup of water and stirring them so they 'disappear' acts as an extra comparative activity that is fun and something they can try at home with all kinds of things like salt, flour etc. The idea of Dissolving is introduced as is Solvents as they try these solids in different solutions - syrup, oil, vinegar etc.

All in all a successful first class for 3 and 4 year-olds - we'll get to the Population Connection fun and games next time - it involves sharing and eating which are, after all, crucial to pre-K skills!

classroom set-up

New classroom this year - converting a two's classroom to a science room wrought some serious thought to function and form as well as interior decorating (ha!) and organization. I have boxes and boxes of materials and books, stored in 2 other classroom closets and snuggling up with the spiders in my basement. I did some life laundry and downsized to one closet and just 2 boxes left for the spiders.

I made a reading circle area with separate displays for fiction and for non-fiction books illustrating science themes. I will change the selection periodically to complement the areas we are studying from my considerable personal library.

I made a terrific find - an old turntable salvaged from someone's classroom 'junk' and got it to work. It's the black box on the cupboard on the left in the first picture! Perfect for my 'Information Storage' unit. Can YOU figure out those black vinyl discs on the bulletin board? Yep, 33 1/3rds and I have 78s and 45s at home as well. I got hold of a TV, VHS and DVD player as well, not to mention our collection of ancient computers at home. More on THAT when the time is right!

Finally - after years - a collections table! Just waiting for the first rocks and shells and leaves to hit it! Magnifiers, paper and colored pencils (SO much more subtle than crayons and marker even for 3's) to draw what you see. Even a bug box lest some live objects arrive with the kids ("well it LOOKED like a rock"). Check out 'Let's go rock collecting' by Roma Gans - a good read-aloud book.
My jelly marbles are growing as we speak and the first students arrive in science class Monday. Wrote an intro newsletter to the parents and had so much fun with it - I hope they like the humorous bits!
Check out these quotes from NAEYC publications - I love the chinese proverb one - it's what my science class is all about - DOING!

Pie chart and polymer goo preliminaries for munchkins

Came up with a couple of ways to start off the school year - gooey experiment and food-related. How good is THAT?

Thanks, Steve Spangler for his take on feeling comfortable in the classroom. This approach combines polymer science with 'New School Year' /leaving Mom and Dad nerves. Steve's stuff is endlessly variable and works well at all ages if you tweak t right. Who doesn't love that moment when you plunge your hands into the water to discover - EEUUUW! Jelly marbles!! it's all about being the best you can be in the right environment - drop the alka-seltzer (call it 'energy powder') into the oil and - no fizz ('energy'), but in the 'right' environment - water - zzzip go the bubbles! Now we've got the kid's attention where we want it!
OK. Now for an intro to pie charts:

• Give the class a big paper circle - the earth - (have a globe and a local map handy to have them relate to scale) - and divide it into 1/4s. 
• Color 3 of these blue for the oceans/waterways, divide the last 1/4 in half and put white on one of the 1/8s for uninhabitable land like mountains, ice etc. 
• Now you need to divide off 1/32nd for farms (green). The remainder gets to have lego houses, trees, playgrounds etc for inhabited land. 
• Now with the older kids they can see that tiny green bit has to provide food for all the people on the inhabited land. Not easy! Get them to build on the green part as well and they can see too many people compromise land for food.

Just a variation one of the great population activities from Population Connection. Maybe we have time to sing 'It's a Small World' to tie up the class.
So we have chemistry, math, geography, music and art in one simple lesson plan! Don't forget to 'grow' your jelly marbles BEFORE the class starts!

my philosophy - and who I am!

Hi! My name is Deirdre Batson and I am a pre-school science specialist who is passionate about getting kids to love science. My student's ages range from 2 to 5 so I try to select themes and techniques I can endlessly modify to suit all abilities and comprehension. I run 5 back-to-back half-hour lessons with up to 9 kids in each class. 2's, 3's and 4's follow each other in no particular sequence so I have to keep pretty much to the same classroom set-up as there is no time between one class leaving and the others waiting at the door!
Every year I try different modules and approaches although I have a pretty good 3-year program of weekly lesson plans already tried and tested - and rated by the kids as A-OK to judge by their enthusiastic responses and eagerness to share what they have learned with their regular teachers and their families. I also run a 45-minute  'enrichment' science class that runs after the regular nursery school day ends and concentrates more on ending up with a finished product like a slime (see image) , something mechanical or that ties in with a craft - paper airplanes for example, or food (which is all chemistry at work!).
I am going to be blogging each week about the lesson plans and classroom responses. Maybe something I try will be a dud, or maybe one of the kids will put a spin on one aspect and save it from sinking! Humor is a big part of the class, even with the 2's, and gets all of us through the day even if I am the only one who gets my own jokes! This year I am delving deeper into 'inquiry-based learning', inspired by the annual NSTA conference I attended in SF in March 2011. NSTA puts out some terrific journals for elementary, middle and high school classes and they have links to books, videos, webinars and materials you will want to check out, as well as their own NSTA blog! I bought Frugal Science' which has a waiting list of readers from my colleagues back home! Freebies are the thing - just like the neuroscience conferences I attended as a graduate and post-graduate scientist in my former life! Anyway the idea is to let the kids themselves lead the conversation and direction of the class whenever possible. This is not only better for their understanding but it means the teacher is not always 'on stage' which can be exhausting! First stop on the 2011-2012 science train is the Information Highway. Watch this space for my ideas about how to get that implemented, INCLUDING using internet resources IN the classroom to augment our experiences.