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Hello! I am a college student in an Early Childhood program. We are configuring science lesson plans for the pre-k classrooms we visit. The children are already strongly interested in the world of science and ask many questions. With my lesson plans, I want to open up more questions to them while also continuing to their interests rather than hindering them. Are there any suggestions of lessons you would suggest?

Hi Gabriella,

I am a college student as well and recently learned about Early education and science and how important it is to incorporate science in not only elementary classrooms but in early education classrooms as well. Recently we talked about play and how important it is for children to play and have experiences when learning. We did a lot of centers in class and learned different ways of incorporating science. As students are already presented with science, you can continue with what you are doing and introduce new vocabulary. There are also different centers of play that kids can learn, even at the age of 3 and 4! Water tables are a great learning center. Students can also learn about air and how to make things float using air at a center where they connect PVC pipes and an air blower so see how blown air works. 

I hope some of those ideas help you,

Jessica

Gabriella,

My name is Madie and I am currently a student at the Univeristy of Northern Iowa. I am taking a science method course right now where we just got done discussing how to integrate science for students in Early Education. I was able to go into an early childhood classroom where it displayed many different ways you can help your students learn science at a young age. One of the ways you can do this is to have your students play with a variety of sizes and shapes of blocks. During that time you could have your students explore what it takes to get the blocks to stack high, connecting blocks with other students models, and coming up with ways to use the blocks to move materials, like a marble, from the top of their model to the bottom. Another great idea is to have students practice using their shapes by having a light they can put their shapes on. Ideally it would be nice to have the shapes in different colors. This would allow the students to see that when you put 2 shapes of different color on top of each other they will blend to create a new color while also focusing on the shapes and how they are similiar and different. One of the articles I read for class explained how important it is for your students to have a say in the activities you are doing in the classroom. This will help the students to make decisions while also helping them to learn problem-solving skills so they aren't reliable on their teacher all the time.

Hope this helps!

Madie 

Hi Gabriella,

Science is very important in early childhood classrooms. I think the easiest way to make sure it is there is having different things to play with and explore in the classroom. Both Jessica and Madie commented great ideas of centers and blocks. Giving students a chance to just explore their surroundings and see what they notice. At a very young age it doesn't have to be as structured, students have natural curiosity and love to figure things out about the world around them. Having a lot of color, and different materials, as well as shapes, things that respresent different densities: like hard, mooshy, moldable, just falls apart. As well as prompting students to look at nature around them and ask why they think it happens. Like does a flower need sun or water and then doing experiments to explore what they think. The best way for them to learn is to test what they think and then make conclusions. 

Shelby