Saturday 31 October 2009

Kids and science experiments

Two stories for kid science lovers:

At lunch today, it was fun to watch as my wife and 10 month old daughter conducted a science experiment. Amelia would hold her milk cup out over the edge of the high chair, where she usually drops it on the floor. her mom would somewhat playfully say "no, no no, don't do that!" or something similar. Amelia got this great big grin on her face and pulled the cup back over the tray, at which time mom would say "good girl!" in a nice excited happy way. Then the cycle would repeat, with Amelia very clearly, deliberately holding the cup out over the floor, watching her mom and hearing her mom react, then clearly deliberately pulling the cup back over the high chair tray. Whether or not there was language comprehension on Amelia's part (I think she is getting some of it), she *was* very clearly experimenting to see what would happen, and by her smile, enjoying the accuracy of her predictions.

At the end of bath, after I dry Nicolas (5 yr old) off, he wants to curl up in a little ball and be covered with the towel, for a game of "what's in that egg?" (towel == eggshell) after a little cracking and wiggling, *something* comes out of the egg, and I have no idea what it is. I started presenting it with options "hmmm, if it is a plant it might light some sunshine, but if it is a lion, it might like a meaty steak", pretending to hold these options out in each hand and letting the whatever it is choose the hand that has something appropriate. Occasionally, I may feign stupidity (or genuinely not have figured it out yet), and ask something like "hmmm, what could I do to tell the difference?" to give Nicolas a chance to design an experiment of his own to be presented with. This has lots of educational opportunities... what do different animals (or machines) eat? "if it is a car, it might like some gasoline (my left hand), but if it is a big truck, it would prefer diesel (my right hand)". What do different animals (or machines) do? "would it rather pounce on a mouse (left hand) or dig a great big hole (right hand)?" "would it rather drive on a nice smooth street, or drive on a really bumpy rocky road?"

I'm convinced that kids are naturally scientists (stimulus response experimentalists, at the minimum), they just don't have any scientific theory to guide them.

Such fun!

rootie

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