Vernier Science Education - August 2024 p4
 

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Early Childhood

New teacher here!

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So excited to have access to this amazing resource. I am currently studying early childhood education. I don't see a lot of science being taught in my placements how do you incorporate science into your classroom? 

Anne Lowry Anne Lowry 8783 Points

Hi Catherine

 

Adding science into your placement would be great!  I'd start with topics that are of interest in the class, or what topics your cooperative teacher is discussing.  Then look on the learning center for ways you can get your students to ask questions.  Once they start asking questions, you can easily find / adapt / design activities based on their questions (or better yet, have them work through to design their own activities) that help them find naswers to those questions.

For example, many ECE classes are still working thematically, and pumpkins are usually covered in October.   As a start, you could read Pumpkin Circle, a solid non fiction text, as a starting base for asking how pumpkins grow.  Then one possibility would be to discuss what everyone gre in their own gardens (great speaking and graphing activity) and start wondering if their garden plants needed the same as the pumpkin.  From there you can go many different directions!  Sarah Maynard wrote about pumpkins with Peggy Ashbrook recently in The Science in the Early Years: https://www.nsta.org/blog/pumpkins-inspire-investigations

You can also find lots of other good ideas from Peggy's column https://www.nsta.org/blog/all?keywords=Early+Childhood

There are many other ways to integrate science into just about every topic.  Like anything else, the more you do it, the more comfortable you will become

Good luck

Anne

 

Aida Nichols Aida Nichols 1250 Points

Welcome! Yes, I agree this is resource is wonderful! I love Science and this week we are learning about clouds for letter C. We are culminating the week with  Cloud in a jar experiment! We will be observing leaves soon and how they change in the fall. We will experiment with magnets, sink or float, density and so much more!

Have a wonderful week!

Aida

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