The Wonder Studio: A Stroll in the Park: 9am and 10:30 Wonder Science

Friday, October 5, 2012

A Stroll in the Park: 9am and 10:30 Wonder Science

I was at a Grown-up function last weekend and it probably won't surprise you that the topic of education came up in my conversation with a fellow parent. This parent (who is a musician) explained to me that he was teaching Music lessons to his son because as he said it, "Let's face it, I can't teach him physics."

Don't worry...I didn't go into a long, boring diatribe discussing ways that he really COULD teach his son physics. I'm not that boring at parties...hopefully ;)...But I certainly felt saddened that the Sciences have become so far removed from our everyday lives that we don't realize that Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Ecology ARE areas of interest for ALL children. Give them the chance and they will Teach YOU!

Physics for young children is broken down into the components of : HOW CAN I MAKE IT MOVE?

Chemistry for the young scientist is broken down into:
HOW CAN I MAKE IT CHANGE?

Biology and Ecology are broken down into:
HOW DO I FIT? and HOW DOES IT FIT?

These are the questions I ask myself when I am planning experiences for the children...

And the next questions I address are:

Can the Child produce the effects by his or her OWN actions or with minimal assistance from an adult?

Are the materials open-ended enough to allow the child to make variations?

Will the reactions of the materials be observable to the child?

When you come to class, you will see every child doing experiments.

In this picture above, you see him holding a ball. He told me, "Too big." This ball (purposefully placed for this exact reason) WAS too big to fit through the chair as the little balls did.

Children delight in these paradoxes! Too often we try and make things fit and work for them. Over time, as we make experiences so simplified they begin to lose interest.

I realized this with my son...He loves to push his older sister's stroller all around the house. Our house probably looks a lot like your house with a toddler. There are toys ALL OVER the floor all the time!

Well, I kept removing all these obstacles from his stroller pushing path. I wanted the path cleared so he would find it more manageable to enjoy his strolling.

The problem was...as he told me in his Toddler way...I was removing all the fun parts. He wanted the obstacles there. He relished in observing the way different toys (and sometimes the cat) felt under his stroller. It made it much more interesting for him to find ways to continue on his path with these barriers.

Often, he would cry and whine when he couldn't get through. But, I learned he didn't want me to "fix" the path for him. He wanted to do it and he wanted it to be challenging. All I needed to do was give him words of encouragement and a hug when it just didn't work out.

Children will cry out in frustration (and so do I !) but we must be careful not to rush in and "fix" the situation. This is not the way to foster children's natural disposition to be resilient and gritty.

As they run into these obstacles, it's up to us to Appear "unruffled" and offer words of encouragement and understanding.

The more challenges we allow our young children to face...the more competent they become in developing techniques for handling these obstacles.

Let's face it...Life is not an obstacle-free Stroll in the park. It's filled with a constant mess of obstacles and barriers. And that, my friend, can make life more interesting...If we are encouraged, by the ones we love, to think in this unique way.