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Hello everyone! Does anybody know of any fun and engaging science activities for Pre-K students?
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Hi Daisy!
I am currently a pre-service teacher, but I actually work in a daycare when I'm not at school. I end up spending time in our Preschool room fairly frequently, it's one of my favorite ages to work with! One science activity that my students really enjoy making and playing with is oobleck! It is super easy to make, and you could have the kids help with putting the ingredients in and mixing it!
Hope this helps a little!
Lexi Monahan
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Hi!
I currently work at a drop-off center with pre-schoolers and kids around the age of 3-5. A fun and engaging science activity we had them recently do was make bread! We had them make the dough in class, and they were able to take home and bake it. This eases children into learning about chemical reactions and the science behind baking and using yeast! I hope this helps.
Best,
Ximena
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For Pre-K students the rain in a jar science experiment is fun and engaging plus it helps with their fine motor skills. You will need a jar, a small cups, food coloring, pipettes, shaving cream and water. Mix some water with food coloring in small cups, then fill the jar with water about 3/4 full. When the kids are ready to do the experiment add a bunch of shaving cream in the jar that was filled with water. The kids will be able to pick the colored water and use the pipettes to squirt the colored solution on top of the shaving cream cloud. The water will make its way through the shaving cream and into the water.
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PreK are capable of doing in depth science investigations using the science and engineering practices, and often love doing long term projects and investigations on a topic. Observe the students and listen. What are their interests? What do they draw, play talk about? What books do they choose? What questions do they ask? You can take all of that information and find their interests and then look in the learning center for how to build upon their interests while doing the science and engineering practices
https://ngss.nsta.org/PracticesFull.aspx
https://learningcenter.nsta.org/search/
Good luck
from another PreK teacher
Anne
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Hello! I love the take on observing the students to determine what science they desire to explore;collaborative classrooms are much more effieceint to keep children engaged in the subjects at hand. Given COVID-19 learning accomodations, I have been wondering about how much of the hands-on science curriculum is being skipped over if it is left up to parents to provide and/or moderate activities. Especially in preschool, discovery and exploration are key to their later development. What are preschool teachers doing in lieu of the current pandemic regarding the maintaining of hands on science?
Thank you!
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I agree...my 4 year old niece and nephew love doing science...even if it's just helping me with recipes in the kitchen.
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Here are some fun ones I have done through the years with my little ones! We use words like prediction, experiment, scientist etc.
Exploding volcano pumpkins
Rainbow Density Jar
Sink Or float
Magnetic or not magnetic
Have fun!
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I need to try this...thanks for sharing.
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Those are all good activities. Do you incorporate them into what your class / group is investigating or do you do them as stand alones?
Anne
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I incorporate them into class activities, especially with the letter o fthe week!
Aida
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Letter of the week...great idea!
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Hello Daisy!
For Pre-K science I think it's really important that the children do hands-on activities that can start to give them background information on things they will learn in the future. Some examples I can think of is making oobleck with two cups of corn syrup and 1 Cup of water you can make a gooey substance that gets hard in your hands when you don't mold it but then turns to liquid when you do mold it. Another one I can think of is using magnets as building blocks to get an understanding of how magnets stick together. This would require having the magnets be labeled using colors of which side are positive and which side are negative so the kids can start to associate the colors with the correlating sides!
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At a very young age we can influence students to gear towards science. This is a time period for science to be made accessible and freeform.
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Hello!
I just started working with pre-schoolers in an academy school and one major thing I realzed that the children find fun and engaging is signing while they are transitioning to their next activity.
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Hello! I am excited for you to be working with Pre-K students! One very exciting science activity you can do with your students is creating a ¨Sorting Animals' diagram in which they can use various toy animals and divide them in separate categories such as carnivores and herbivores. This will be fun for them to do since they will actually see and touch the plastic toy figure and learn that each animal is different, as well as understand that some animals eat only meat while others eat plants. Hope you and your students have fun!
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