9am Wonder Science: Garden, Caterpillars, Crickets

A Monarch Caterpillar on a Milkweed Plant

Crickets!

Each week, the children continue to come back to the "Chemistry" area. Here they can mix, squeeze, pour, scoop, stir Oil, baking soda, dyed vinegar, and dish soap. My original intention was for the children to notice how mixing different amounts transforms the different elements.

The first week, I noticed many children dumping everything together and lots of pouring back and forth going on. Their focus seemed to be more on transferring the elements from one dish to another.

Once again, I have learned so much from the children. As I reflect back on the experience and view the pictures, I see the children are much more interested in the transferring rather than the transformation. While many of them enjoy the fizzy reaction, I see that I missed the importance of children having multiple experiences with squeezing, pouring, scooping, and stirring before they can use those skills to then focus on a certain reaction.

Luckily, the children do Not miss the importance of these skills! Each week, they have continued to fine tune these skills and what was "dumping" is now careful and precise pouring and even dripping one element into another.

The alphabet analogy is relevant here:

Before reading a sentence, children first must have the language/comprehension to understand the sentence, then the letters and spaces that make up the sentence, etc...

As the children get older, they will use the squeezing, pouring, scooping, stirring skills in their everyday life and the more they experience it now, the sooner they will be able to focus on using those skills for higher learning!