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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!
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I can barely understand what it is you do.
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".
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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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.
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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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...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.
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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.)
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 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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"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!
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You didn't even read the question. He asked how to explain his job to his kid. Not how to raise a child.
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That must be why kids never sit down to watch TV until you explain exactly how TVs work, and why they treat santa claus, the easter bunny and monsters under the bed with such skepticism.
The other day I did the pull-off-my-thumb magic trick to a cute four year old girl, she coldly said "what the hell kind of idiot do you take me for? I've got a trick for ya:" And then she flipped me off and walked away! These toddlers have such an incisive sense of skeptical intuition.
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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.