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.