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What Can 4-yr-olds Understand About Science?
dr.karl.b asks: "My 3 and a half year old son is in Kindergarten. Here in Germany that includes 3 to 6 year olds. He is supposed to explain what his parents' occupations are. I am a scientist, and despite all the advice I have received saying he can't understand what I do, I am determined to try. I study self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation. We have several cool labs in my institute, like robot-arm motion simulators and full-immersion virtual reality set-ups. We can easily compete with amusement parks for wow-factor, but I have 2 questions: How can I explain my work to my son? How can I invite his class (3-6 yr olds) to our institute to have them learn AND have fun, rather than ONLY have fun?"
What Can 4-yr-olds Understand About Science?
They can understand that 6000 years ago a superbeing created the universe and all things within. That dinosaurs lived on Noah's ark and that... oh wait, you're in Germany. Forget all that, you can teach your son actual facts!
Trolling is a art,
I can barely understand what it is you do.
Given what most adults and High School graduates currently seem to understand about Science, nothing.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
They won't understand vestibular processing, but they will probably understand "that dizzy feeling they get when they spin around". You can then explain why that happens when it does, then talk about manipulating balance for virtual reality (maybe using video games or movies as an example) and the work that your lab does. You just need to find some way to relate it to them while maintaining its "coolness".
Don't mix
Explain how your science can be used to destroy enemy transformer robots. Or how it can feed the poor downtrodden African masses. Don't kids care about that stuff?
Or just let the brats have their fun.
According to the studies I've seen 4-year-olds don't tend to have a very good grasp of abstract concepts, and in general understand a lot less than we tend to think -- we adults take a lot of knowledge and conceptual understanding for granted. That doesn't mean you can't make things educational, it just means you have to be careful with exactly what your goals are. I'm guessing that for 4-year-olds even getting them to realise that there is a problem (that we can be cued to think we're moving when we're not) would be a good start. You can probably do that by tricking them into thinking they are moving and then showing them that they weren't. That's relatively abstract -- that their perception of the world isn't always accurate -- but it is the sort of thing that they are starting to get a grasp of at that age anyway. They might not fully grasp it, but there is also the fact even if they don't get it at the time, such experiences have a habit of sticking around and helping inform later realisations, so make it memorable and it will be good. The sort of dawning realisation that could occur, that the world is stranger and more than it appears, and the idea that people (such as yourself) explore such things, well that's a good way to start a fascination with science and trying to understand the world.
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Focusing on the hypothetical roots of the scientific process may help. Kids know all about imagination, you could help them understand the basics of how their daydreams could change the world using your research as an example of how a dream gets refined into reality.
It would help if you prepared some funny examples of hair-brained failures that eventually led to workable concepts... something like the (now) comical early attempts at flying vehicles that helped refine the field and lead to the first viable aircraft... but preferably related to your field in some way.
You can also use this topic to work in some self-confidence themes... pointing out how some of the biggest dreamers were shunned or whatever but ended up making valuable contributions to the world through perseverence and creative integrity (refusing to sell out to be accepted). If you do this, it would also be nice to point out how lame it is to make fun of others for being different. Kids need to hear more of this type message, or so I deduce from my social interactions.
Not super scientific, but the thought processes are where it all begins. Whatever you do, don't try to do too much. You want to keep the experience light enough that everyone can have fun, while providing just enough 'hook' to start kids with active curiosities down the path the scientific thought. I've been involved in enough educational situations to know that thoughtful yet simple agendas with broad appeal are the most succesful, as they leave the the fewest children left-out.
Good Luck.
Regards.
Coryoth is correct, you don't have a hope in hell of teaching them anything. I've worked with 4-year-olds, and they tend to say things like "You wear a fashion, so you're a jello and I'm going to eat you!" and it makes perfect sense to them. Some can't pull their own pants up. You can have them spin around and get dizzy and say you study that, and that's about all they'll understand. Probably not even that.
ResidntGeek
But, she's just learning basic addition and subtraction now, so I'm not even bothering with conceptual models of chemistry, physics, etc. I also don't think she gets how far it is to her grandmother's house, much less what a light-year is.
These are a few guidelines I find useful:
Because of the building-blocks nature of science, I'm not sure how much you can teach to an entire group of kids who may be at square-1, but you can start with square 1. Maybe make them aware of their physical presence. Have them notice that they feel something when you flip them over. Play a movie for them with lots of motion while they're standing up and have them notice that they sway side-to-side.
Perhaps the greatest realization is that those first basic concepts are just as important as understanding the curvature of space in a warped fifth-dimension string theory, because you can't get anywhere without any of the underlying layers. And the sooner you start, while the brain is making connections like mad, the better off they're going to be later in life.
Oh, and make it fun. Science is a kick.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"I have enrolled my child in school as early as possible, robbing him of his blissfull childhood, so that me and my wife can go on with our day jobs. I wonder if it was right to take away something he can never have back? As it stands, he won't remember his play years at all and his earliest memories will be of school. Oh dear... I guess he will want to drop out as soon as possible then, and certainly not get an advanced degree. We were actually thinking that he would get ahead, by starting work earlier and thus be able to afford retirement earlier, but now I realize that I got it all wrong... Kids should get to play because most seniours don't bother."
I remember reading an article about demographic problems in germany. People have a very small amount of kids, and due to this problem they have unreasonably high expectations about their kids. It is frequent to hire a private teacher to work with the kid, to find many extra exercises for them like swimming, studying foreign languages (even at the age of 3!), etc.
The problem arising from that is a very high psychological stress the kid must cope with. High expectations from their parents cause headaches and other health problems, especially when a kid fails at some task. Give a kid free time.
In fact at that age all kid's time must be a free time. Your job is to find a method to put fun into a learning. Small kids decide what they want to do with their free time only directed by their enthusiasm at some activity. When you find yourself trying to convince him to do something you have already failed. You can only show your own enthusiasm, and show how fun it is. It's in fact easy to convince a kid when you are enthusiastic yourself (which is not frequent with teachers who are bored with their job). But when you see that the kid loses an interest you must immediatly stop.
And expect nothing! If you will expect that the kid will be successfull at anything you will only increase the stress level.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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...a 3-6 year old child is still learning how to read and write (and everything else) at a very basic level.
I wouldn't expect them to learn much from a field trip. The best you can hope for is that some of them will say "wow, this stuff is cool" and might pursue it later in life.
IMO, hype up all the cool 'fun' stuff now, because that will stick in their minds. Then, in a few years, try to have another field trip when they'll be able to understand more about what they're seeing.
If you really want to figure out an educational plan, take the teacher(s) on a tour first & ask them to help you relate it to the kids.
P.S. The comprehension abilities between a 3 yr old and a 6 yr old are wildly different.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The short answer is that what a 4-year old is capable of understanding depends on what the 3-year old was taught. Yes, it's very disturbing that the average high school student in the US cannot understand much science, but that's not for a lack of intelligence but a lack of teaching (by parents and schools). As mentioned in another note, start with concrete examples that are familiar to the child or children and lead up to the more complex issues, still maintaining examples they're familiar with.
According to developmental psychologists (starting with Piaget [1]) they don't get a whole load of essential stuff like conservation of volume, trains of events logical connection etc. There's no way that they get statistics, etc. All you could hope would be that they'd have fun exploring the world in a way which facilitates the development of those genetically programmed abilities, so possibly something like a Montessori (AMI, not Froebel or any of that non-tested, hippy touchy-feely stuff) environment would be a good start [2].
I suppose to some extent it depends on what you see science as, but to me it's to do with observation (including recording of observations), and hypothesis forming. According to the above that's going on at a very alarming rate in young brains and absolutely massive conceptual leaps are made. If you can keep that sense of fun and excitement going then likely you get an adult scientist.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
[2] http://www.montessori-ami.org/
Realize that terms like "vestibulo-ocular reflex" exist only to permit one person in the field to concisely convey mutually understood concepts to another person in the same field. Using specialized terms will save you perhaps a dozen words at the expense of being understood.
For a small child, they'll be able to understand that they know when they are moving, and in what direction, and they might even be able to tell you how they [think] they know that. If you have models of the canals in the inner ear, (I'm imagining tubes filled with coloured dye) you can provide an excellent demonstration that they should easily understand.
(BTW, I agree with Janek Kozicki's comment on high expections. While I was able to understand fairly advanced concepts at a young age, it wasn't because I was under pressure. My environment simply encouraged it; one family friend was a physics professor, another let me help out at the local natural history museum, etc.)
Carl Fenman's dad won the nobel prize while Carl was still a little boy. He told me once that when he was little, when his friends said that their father's had "gone to work" he thought they meant their fathers did what his dad would do: make a cup of tea, sit down in the kitchen, and think.
On the other hand, in some ways you have it easy: I have tried to explain to my kid that his dad is a Geschaeftsfuehrer...he cannot understand. Finally I gave up and told him I dig up the road and he seemed to find that more satisfying.
Of course - they are better off learning concrete science than they are of abstract concepts, since abstract concepts almost always requires good understanding of the written word and mathematics.
Any 4-year old should be able to grasp the use of a hammer and a crowbar, even if that may cause some interesting (or annoying) results.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Extrapolate from there.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I was fortunate enough to grow up with a father who worked in a very cool lab. My first memories, before anything else, are of being in the lab with my father, who was working on his Ph.D. thesis in Physics, and other grad students, post docs, professors, and machinists. I was exposed to lasers, metalworking machinery, liquid nitrogen (and, unfortunately, liquid nitrogen burns), specialized scientific instruments like the lab's interferometer (yes, they let me crawl around inside), and most importantly, computers. I was given ample time to play with the lab's PDP-11. I made large ASCII-art banners that I printed out on one of the DECWriters (BTW, a kid setting a machine like a daisy wheel printer in motion is sheer joy).
I knew from an early age that I would not be happy doing anything else but using my brain for a living. Despite a momentary lapse in sanity and earning a Bachelor's in Philosophy, I am now working full time as a network engineer while I spend my nights working toward a Computer Science degree. People don't know where I get the energy to spend my evenings after a long day at work doing mathematics and programming, but I say this-- if you had had the opportunity to look through a periscope that your own father had built, or help your father set up a helium-neon laser in front of the rest of the Cub Scout troop, or any of the other countless cool things I was able to do because of science-- you'd have no end of enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge either.
Just take your kids to work. Build rockets. Build anything with them, really. Anything but science or engineering simply will not be an option for their fervid minds.
A grownup would never tell you to your face that he doesn't understand why you got that wonderful office just to sit around and chat with other managers and that this is actually supposedly work. :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A scientist is someone who tries to learn things that nobody else knows yet. He tries things to see if they do what he thinks they'll do, and if they don't, he figures out why.
As for your job in particular, it sounds like you figure out how people can tell whether they're upside down, and whether you can trick them into thinking they are. Tell the kids you tried putting upside-down photos in front of people and that didn't fool them, so you're trying to figure out what would do it. See what they say about that. (Hint: every suggestion they give, no matter how ineffective you know it'll be... will be brilliant. Because as far as they know, no one's ever tried it, and they came up with it out of nothing but their own imagination.)
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Let's try expanding on this by explaining
1) that a scientist is a person who tries to figure things out. They are into figuring out problems.
2) There are different kids of scientists.
3) These Scientists are interested in different kinds of things
4) Your interest is in how and why people feel things, such as hot cold dizzy, etc. You can use the ten dollar words, just explain them really clearly.
5) Show and Explain a cool but simple magic trick showing on how you trick people. Explain the trick so that they can do it.
6) Then you can get into movie tricks and special effects.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
1: Explosions
2: Loud explosions
3: Loud explosions that make bright flashes
4: Loud explosions that make bright flashes and make their sister scream
5: Hot Wheels
6: Very loud explosions
It's all about motivation. Sell your kids on the possibility of making stuff happen, and when they grow up they'll do whatever it takes to understand how to make stuff happen. The trouble with most science teaching is that it's just too abstract. 4 year-olds are not good at abstract, and, actually, much the same is true of the rest of us.
Virtually serving coffee
Lemme tell you first of all that I had to look up a good deal of the stuff you said just to have a foggy idea what you might be doing. I dare say that a 4 year old's eyes would glaze over if you started something like this and he would at best interrupt you with a "what does this button do?".
Forget anything abstract. Forget presentations, sheets of paper, drawings, schematics, and especially forget any kind of writing or numbers. Kids of that age are very tactile, give them something to touch and to "play" with. Show them big machines that make lots of noise and that produce something they can touch. Kids of that age are fascinated by action and reaction chains, if at all possible, let them hit the starter button to get something into work, and hand them what was produced by their actions.
If you're in research, give them a chance to participate in an experiment. It needn't be something groundshaking, actually it needn't even produce anything you'd consider informative. It only has to be entertaining so you get their attention, and it has to show them that your work is fun.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Spell 'Year'.
Now that I'm all grown up, I see parents cramming their children with Winnie the Pooh, pokemon, and such, and I notice those kids understand those cartoon characters in the same way I understood the animals from my encyclopedias. When talking to those kids about those "childish" things, they talk in the same way I spoke about animals. There's a stereotype that kids must like "childish" stuff and cartoons so much, that parents end up cramming them with that kinda junk. Give a kid freedom, and he will most the time choose "the box instead of the toy". The problem is not "will they understand", but rather, what will they choose to understand, and what kind of stuff will parents choose to censor, push or encourage.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
From what I understand is you are a scientist that works on how stuff moves. movement of things.
While I think it is admirable that you want to teach as well as entertain, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself if you only manage to entertain.
Science is often deemed to be boring by non-scientists; you have an opportunity not only to show kids around your lab (which other kids' parents can do that!?), but to show that science is a fun job. If you send a class of kids home saying "When I grow up I want to be a scientist!" rather than "Science is boring" or "I want to be a train driver", you will have achieved a great deal.
Also remember: children learn best when they are having fun. It might be too much to expect to teach them real science, but they will learn more than you might imagine simply by seeing things they (and their parents) never have before, and will remember if these things were fun.
If you want to teach anything about science, try and give them an understanding of the scientific method: I notice something interesting; I form a hypothesis; I collect data to test the hypothesis; I interpret that data; I accept or refine my hypothesis. Of course, you'd have to place all of this within a child's existing frame of reference.
Good luck!
The most accessible introduction to science is Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
"Science" [to the extent that it hasn't already devolved into Yet Another Pagan Religion], is just another tiny sub-specialty within the broader discipline of Applied Mathematics.
And let's face it, unless the kid is one of these Korean super-geniuses, with an IQ of 300, who taught himself multi-variable calculus in his spare when he wasn't suckling on his mama's teat, then he [or she] just isn't going to know enough mathematics to tackle anything of any true "scientific" interest until his mid- to- late teens [and that's assuming home schooling; add another five years or more if he's in the publik skewlz].
At the age of four, I'd be concentrating on simple math games [lots and lots of counting], and maybe some pre-geometry, like playing with blocks, and legos, and Transformers, and, of course, drawing [you can never have enough blank drawing paper], but, much, much, much more important than that, at such a ripe young age, would be language skills.
Lots and lots and lots of ABC's, and basic spelling, and phonics out the wazoo, and handwriting, and sing-song games.
Actually, singing is very interesting in that it combines both Left Brain-ish stuff [song lyrics] with Right Brain-ish stuff [musical melodies & harmonies].
In other words: This is a little child we're talking about. Have fun. Make learning fun.
Life's too short to be miserable all the damned time.
"I study self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation."
Hi kids! I'm a scientist, and I get to help figure out why people don't just fall over. Everybody stand up. Now, stand on one foot! Good -- Your muscles help keep you up, but why don't you fall? That's part of what I work on. OK, sit down, and I need a volunteer...
I study self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation.
Ok volunteer -- have you ever caught a ball? Well, step back a little bit, and try this (tosses brightly colored sponge). You caught it! Toss it back, go a little further, and I'll try again. (Tosses sponge again) Great! Now -- just how did you know to do that? One time you were close, then you were far away! What happened to make it work? That is part of what I study too!
Who wants to pretend they're a tree? Stand up and hold out your arm! Wave arm with flappy winged bird doll. (Talk about flying birds coming in for a landing and not hitting the branch, or smacking into the tree.) Airplane pilots have to land their planes too, and not hit the ground too hard. I help figure out better ways to make that happen.
Visual stimulation and silly setups lead into simple explanations that kids can understand because they were entertained and their curiosity aroused. If they're giggling, they're able to learn becaue they're paying attention!
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
My father was a chemist. He'd show all kinds of cool tricks: for example, he would let ground pepper float on water, then dip a matchstick treated with soap in it-- the pepper would run to the sides of the glass. This taught us something about surface tension. Likewise would the trick of sliding coins into a full glass of water until the water would rise above the level of the glass.
When we had red cabbage for dinner, he always asked my mom to save some of the boiling water- then would show how vinegar would turn it red, while dishwashing powder would turn it blue. At the time I may not have understood that the cabbage water was a acidity indicator, but it was cool to watch. Like was the time that he dropped a chunk of sodium in water.
You may not be able to pass all concepts and knowledge about science to your son yet. But you'll be able to trigger his interest with little science-based tricks such as the above. Find a book that lists a bunch, it can be great fun.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Do yourself a favor and spend a little time learning about early childhood development. From birth to 6 years there are stages that most children pass through. A two year old will spend a lot of time just filling a pail and dumping it. Someone a little older may make a cake and pretend to eat it. A little older still, and the child will act out a story with another child.
A three year old child is working on different stuff than a 5 year old. They will have different experiences and need different interaction. If you want to bring kids into the lab, you might start by going to their school and seeing what they do in terms of block play and dramatic play. Then find some children's books about scientists (!). Pictures are good.
Going to the lab will work better if the kids have a context for experiencing it. They know what a doctor is, they've gone to the doctor, they've play-acted the doctor. How do you give them that concrete experience of science or technology? I remember doing kitchen-chemistry experiments with my dad when I was perhaps a little older than the children you are dealing with.
Show him Terminator 2, and during the scene where Miles Dyson blows up the Cyberdyne building killing himself to stop his robotic creations from taking over the world, tell your kid that you and Miles Dyson have the same job.
I'm just not very good with kids I guess.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
4 Yr old?
Involve Elmo in some way, you'll get their attention immediately.
(Kevin Clash is going to take over the world one day, you just wait and see)
Some 4yos can understand and apply math. I have a nephew who is about 7 and doing algebra on his own. Who knows, he may be doing calculus and dumbing it down for the adults.
I would bet that most 4yos understand the scientific method, even if they couldn't explain it. My daughter is 2 years 7 months and I can see the wheels turning in her mind. She has delaying her bed time down to a science. She has learned thru trial and error that being fussy at night results in her being put in bed. So she is extra cute and eager to play new games and show how smart she is. She has also learned thru trial and error that any loud noise from her room will bring one of her parents. The most important thing she has learned is that when Daddy puts her in bed, that's it, she's done for the night and any loud noises will not be rewarded by more time running about.
My wife, unfortunately, is insane, because, as we all know insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's what I get for having a trophy wife.
3.5 year olds should ONLY have fun, what the fuck are you trying to stress them. It's their childhood they should enjoy it.
Also tell him you are a scientist and what you mess around with for now, don't force the whole world in his head in one day geez
PS: I have no children and am a virgin at 25, goodbye.
Your father's job is proving what other people think is wrong.
It is a hard job and very few people can do it. Fortunately, those can do it probably could do few other jobs.
Sinerely
Slashdot Reader
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1) If there's a local 'hands on' science museum - with demos, buttons to push etc., kids love that. A four year old may not understand everything, but will still learn a lot. :-)
2) Hiking - you can talk about biology, geological processes, etc.
3) Visit the local zoo - discuss different animal species.
4) A trip to the local airport, or (better yet) - an air and space museum.
5) Legos and other 'construction' toys.
6) Toy plastic dinosaurs and (if available) a visit to a natural history museum.
7) Read bed time stories about science and exploration.
8) Computer games and simulatation.
9) Visit a planetarium or an observatory that has an open house.
10) Enroll the kid in martial arts, so later when other kids call them a nerd, they can kick their ass.
[Insert pithy quote here]
1. Get cyber brain implant.
2. Upgrade your kids brain.
3. Let the kid be a kid if 1 and 2 are not options in your civilization.l
4. Go back in time and implant scientific data into his brain.
5. Install genetic memories into his dna and make him again.
6. Pretend your son is 18 years old and has a brain that is "mature".
7. lol....4 years old.
8. ha ha ha ha ha
That can be applied to most teachers of science as well. If it wasn't for the teachers' manuals, they would be lost.
Software and Games for Wii's Opera Browser
I think it should be easy to get kids to understand that a scientist's job is to find out about how the world works. Beyond that, the best advice you have received here is to 1) Show them in concrete terms what it is you investigate; 2) Avoid jargon, don't try to teach vocabulary, and express ideas in elementary terms; 3) Make it fun so as to engage them.
And the brethren went away edified.
It is not the details of what you do that is important for them to know, but the (idealized, admittedly) process that you use.
..." is an example of authoritative citation, after all. Explain to them that there is a usable system for doing it "on purpose".
Children accumulate fantastic amounts of data (behavior/socialization even more than "education"). Science offers them another way to test the data for integration into their lives. Teach them the processes of hypothesis and experiment, learning from (positively and negatively) existing publication, and open, rigorous discussion, and the value of free thought that expands the boundaries of inquiry.
Big words for a 4 year old, but they are already doing some of it informally, even unconsciously. "My father says
Your occupation is to use those principles to explore some subset of the universal information space and acquire it for humans.
Curious about everything around them, and how everything works.
Until they hit 5 or 6, at which time pop culture, peer pressure, and the public school system start working together to stomp the spark of interest wight out of most of them....
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You should only try to satisfy his natural curiosity, to the extent that he is actually interested. I don't think you should force advanced knowledge on a child of his age. Even if he manages to learn he will only have developed "rote" learning and (quite propably) a strong dislike for science, due to the pressure involved. Let him be what he wants to be and gently encourage him.
Children always ask questions. The job of a scientist is to answer questions to satisfy our curiosity. However, scientists like to answer questions in a specific way: By doing (experimenting). Philosophers also answer questions, but they do so by thinking, not by doing. Religious prophets answer questions as well, but only by using their imagination. You can explain your job AND the scientific method in this way. Ask your child what makes a piece of iron different from a cup of tea. Bring in some LEGO bricks and explain that everything we touch is made of tiny LEGOs. The way these tiny LEGOs are sticked together, and the colour of them, determines whether a set of LEGOs is iron or tea, just like your child can build a house or a car using the same LEGOs.
He studies
>>> "... self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation".
So basically he tries to work out "am I moving, am I dizzy, can I see".
I figure he's a professional drunk.
>>> "We can easily compete with amusement parks"
The queue for the water cooler must be horrendous.
At least as much as a 60 year old.
What?
don't let them near the Big Red Button .
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Science is learning. It's that simple. Tell him that you spend your time learning about one specific subject; that you are trying to learn things that nobody else knows. That once YOU learn them, you help share that newfound knowledge with the world.
That's what science is.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
4 year olds know concrete things. Use that to pique their interest.
Talk to the teachers at the school. Find out what is best for you to show the students this year AND what is best to show them in return trips in the years to come.
Be prepared to answer a lot of questions on a 4-year-old level and have 5-year-old-level answers in the back of your mind in case some of the 4-year-olds are precocious.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Some children are very precocious. Others take longer to gain their mental abilities... or never gain them. Yet others can understand more than they can effectively communicate, or can give the impression that they can understand more than they really do. Verstehen Sie? :-)
To
Last week I was walking my 3 youngest children (ages 8, 6 and 4) to school, when the eldest of them ( my daughter) said "Dad, Elisha's Dad is a policeman!"
The 6 year old then said "But our Dad's a scientist". The youngest then said "So you mix things together to make explosions then Dad?"
I said "Some Scientists do that, but I don't. But all scientists ask questions, measure or count things, and then write about it".
"Oh" he said. "so what do you do then?"
"It's like this - see how the road is a bit slippery?" - it had just rained that morning. "I start by having an idea that might explain why the road is slippery. Maybe there's lots of tiny little slimy fish on a wet road, and that makes it slippery". He had been amazed by how slippery fish are just the week before.
"That's silly Dad!" he retorted.
"Well, let's see if we can find a way to check if that's why the road is slippery. What do cats do when there's a fish lying on the ground?"
"They lick it" He said. suddenly looking very serious.
"Is our cat licking the fish on the road? What about the cats that live in both houses next to ours?"
He looked about. "No, I don't see any cats"
"So if we counted the number of cats licking little tiny fish so small we can't see them we'd get the number zero."
"Yes" he said.
"And we all agree that if there were tiny slimy fish lying on the road making it slippery there would be at least one of the 3 cats licking them?"
"Yes" he said.
"So is it likely there are tiny slimy fish on the road making it slippery?"
"No, there are no cats there".
"So we decide that the fish idea isn't right. A scientist will then get another idea about why the road is slippery, and he thinks up a way to measure or count something to see if it's a good idea. We keep on going until we get an idea that we can't prove is wrong. That's what all scientists do, no matter what sort of science they study"
He now has a fair understanding of the scientific method, and he knows that we have to measure (or count) things.
Can I come and play with it, sounds super sexy geeky!
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
i work in a systems neuro lab. my prof went in last year to his son's kindergarten class to talk about his work. One thing that he did that apparently was effective was to set up a little feedforward perceptron-like network with the kids as the neurons. i think the input "tickled" particular kids in the first row - who were given rules about whom to tickle in the second row if they were tickled themselves. This propogated through a few rows until a final row where the output was determined. if everyone followed their rule, they got a particular result. Too bad i don't remember what the input and output were...
It sounds like you are addressing exactly the same skills and problems as a typical 4-year-old just from a very different perspective. The best thing that you can do for them is try to keep it ALL fun and when someone asks why something works that way, spend some time and give an answer that a 4-year-old will understand. That day you can expect to learn a lot more from the kids than they will from you.
Speaking with the experience of my daughter (now 3 months from 5yrs old) and her friends, the ability to do more than just pretend to understand abstract thoughts seems to have hit right around the time that they began to try out more advanced lies. For example: "Mommy (who already left) promised I could do something (that mommy would clearly not promise)" The concepts just need to be framed in terms they want to understand. For my daughter the threshold was around 4.5 yrs. Most recent example, light. I gave her a flashlight a while back, she had a good time playing with focusing the beam and moving it around. Later I moved onto the Sun being the source of light like the flashlight. Last week her teacher sent her home with the question: "why is the sky blue?". One trip to the Discovery store for a prism later and I showed her all the colors in sunlight. I then told her that air reflected one of them to her to get that blue color (she gets reflection...loves mirrors). She chimed in, 'So grass reflects green?'. Much warm fuzzies for her geek dad. Small negative aspect: On getting home she promptly compared to her flashlight's light through the prism resulting in an immediate request for a better flashlight that is like the sun. Followup I've asked her to give her teacher the question: "why does air reflect blue?" Wish I could be there to videotape her teachers look.
Treat your work visit as the point to lay the foundation for good questions by the children later on. If possible send them home with a small fun toy that demonstrates parts of the concepts you're trying to show them. That way they can mentally creep up the concepts when the play with the toys...and telling the doubters raising objections to your planned trip to google on 'Montessori' (and get out of your way).
it is far better to give them questions that they can think about and explore themselves than answers which they may or may not understand.
I think that an answer you don't understand IS a question in itself.
There's something I don't understand but I want to test the idea. After growing older I'm getting lazy and only testing the ideas that I know are probably worth it (ideas from science, not from religion etc).
There's nothing like being told about general relativity at an early age, and spending the next 15 years trying to decide if you're convinced or not. Remarkable as it seemed at first, I think I finally grasped it now and it actually feels more logical than any other option =).
Things kids don't understand is something they'll remember and "work on", given sufficient self-confidence. It's great to have many wonders you don't understand! That said, don't expect understanding in significantly less than 15 years..
Straight from the horse's mouth:
>> I have no idea what goes on in high schools today.
You should be ashamed.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Science-Mak ing/dp/1565653475/
http://ezinearticles.com/?7-Tips-for-Teaching-Chil dren-Science&id=196885/
here are a few resources for teaching science to kids
mutagenic
... that you must work to earn a living.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Daddy is a secret agent, so it is too dangerous for you to come to work with me. You can also use related stories to explain some of that 'Overtime' to the wife.
I metamoderate, therefore I am
"Popular Mechanics for Kids" (a series of TV shows that are also on DVDs) explains many concepts to kids in a fun and appropriate way for kids. They have an episode on "Air Transport", "Spaceships", "Robots", "Aircraft Carriers", and a lot more. You might get some good ideas on how to explain things at the kid's level about what you do from these videos. http://www.discoverykids.ca/shows/pmk/episodes.asp
That would work maybe in English speaking countries, but not in Germany. We love big words down here, and, in the good tradition of gnomis/A-Team engineering, when we only have a bucket of small words, we get out our toolbox and build a huge word out of it.
;)
We don't say "car", for example, we say, "Personenkraftwagen" (basically, "powered wagon for persons") or abbreviate it to PKW. But even if you abbreviate it, "Pe-Ka-Ve", is already 3 syllables. Buggerit. You can't explain cars in one syllable words down here, so I guess we all don't really understand cars. Bit of a shame, with all the car manufacturing we do, really
Actually, it gets funnier. Verbs are _usually_ two parts, since one part often gets to mark the end of the sentence. (That's the _first_ part of the verb that goes to the end of the sentence, btw.) That's not just a random detour, btw. I'm saying that because even when you're essentially just using the base meaning of the base verb, there's often a variant with an extra particle anyway, just to have something to put at the end of the sentence. So there goes the idea of using one syllable verbs.
The germanic tribes must have been really poor people, I figure. They couldn't afford a lot of verbs, so they left us a few base verbs and a small bucket of extra parts they can be combined with, to get just about everything else.
For example "bringen" (to bring) can be combined in fun ways to get stuff not even vaguely related to the root, like "umbringen" (to kill.) Or "ziehen" (to pull) can end up a plethora of other verbs, including "umziehen" (to move, as in, for example, to another residence), "anziehen" (to dress), "ausziehen" (to undress), etc. The verb "fangen" (to catch) can end up such stuff as the unrelated "anfangen" (to begin.)
Since in half the sentences that particle goes to the end of the sentence, you get the suspense of not knowing whether I brought my neighbour with me, or I killed him, until that last (actually, first) bit of the verb lands. It's poor man's Hitchcock, really. One mean trick you can play on your German friends is to _not_ say that last part, and watch their eyes glaze for a few seconds as they struggle to not forget the rest of the sentence while waiting for that last crucial bit. But I digress.
So, sadly, you're out of luck explaining anything in one syllable words to a German kid.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The french association "La main à la pâte" promotes the education of science in school (3-10 years old).
It was founded by Georges Charpak, Nobel prize in physics 1992.
The web site contains a lot of articles that are used as a base for presentations in schools. The presentations emphasis on experimentation.
http://www.lamap.fr/ (sorry the web site is in french)
I'm 28 and I don't get what it is that you do. Why don't you see if you can explain it to one of your neighbors first. There's all different levels of understanding, I mean if I were your neighbor and you said anything close to 'physicist' I would start the 'uh huh, ok' nodding ritual until you were done. Tell your son you measure things all day - I'm sure he'll see you for the exciting frat party you truly are.
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Frat party?
Ace
Then perhaps you will be able to see past the end of your nose.
Think having a bunch of illiterate hoodlums running around doesn't have a negative impact on a childless member of society? Think some more, you might eventually get the correct answer.
Altruism is not required. For entirely selfish reasons I want good schools, attentive responsible parents, and my tax dollars well spent rather than wasted.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
...that you watch to see if people think they're moving when all the scenery whizzes by on the video screen. Then you write down and record what you've seen. That should scratch that one off. (Regardless of how genius a sceintist is, he's not much use outside of his field if he can't put things in layman's terms. Probably a good reason why most kids lose interest in the stuff when they can't make heads or tails of it. The tricky part is to make it concise and understandable without dumbing it down too much, as this is another way to make a kid rapidly lose interest.)
The other aspect of science that kids should be able to grasp is asking a lot of questions and figuring out how stuff works. The tedious recording of data is more or less checking off what works and what doesn't for future reference. That's more or less what the process is about put into the most simple terms, and it should come naturally to kids. (Until they get tired of being told to stop asking dumb questions. Some don't, and those are probably your future scientists.)
Just tell him you are a dustman. He will admire you.
As a techie whose planning on retiring as a teacher, I just finished my teaching of science class in a masters program and I have to say that many people in the comments are missing the boat. There is so much opportunity for learning science concepts and more importantly 'doing' science at a young age. But rather than just take my word for it, check out the K-2 Science Standards at both the National Level and in your state: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/6a.html There's many inquiry-based, standard-based programs that you can tap into as a teacher or parent. One, such as fossweb, has a kindergarten module called Animals Two By Two. Most people are like WTF, why 2 by 2. But for kindergarteners, having two of the same animal side by side helps them in developing skills such as compare and contrast, asking questions, observation, and a little bit of analysis as well. That's just one example and there are many, just look for stuff that's standard's compliant and hands-on rather than the old science facts memorization lessons that left so many people so dumb.