A Lesson in Bonding and Growth
As parents, we strive to provide the best opportunities for our children's growth and development. While formal education begins later, the foundation for learning is laid in the early years. Curiosity is a natural trait in young children, and nurturing this curiosity by incorporating science into everyday life can foster a lifelong love for learning. From sunrise to bedtime, science is all around us, waiting to be explored and discovered together with your preschooler. Let's embark on a journey of embracing science in the little moments that make up our days. Nature's Wonders: Nature is a vast playground of scientific marvels, perfect for young explorers. Take a walk in the park, and encourage your child to notice the colours of flowers, shapes of leaves, and different animal sounds. Observe birds soaring high in the sky, and wonder together how they can fly. Engage in simple experiments like dropping leaves from various heights to understand gravity or catching raindrops. These playful interactions with nature will ignite their curiosity, fostering a sense of wonder and appreciation for the world around them. Kitchen Science Fun Your kitchen is a treasure trove of science experiments waiting to happen. Cooking with your little ones can be both fun and educational. Let them mix ingredients to learn about mixing and blending. Introduce basic concepts like hot and cold while cooking or baking, explaining how heat transforms food. Conduct simple kitchen experiments like observing what happens when you mix oil and water to teach about density and immiscibility. Not only will they enjoy the tasty outcomes, but they will also love learning and questioning along the way. Sensory Exploration The world is full of sensory experiences, each offering a unique lesson in science. Set up sensory play stations with water, sand, mud, or even a bin of rice. Let your child explore these materials using their hands and senses. Discuss the differences in texture, colour, and even temperature. Engage them in activities like blowing bubbles and observing how they float or experimenting with floating and sinking objects in water. Sensory play is not only a fun and messy activity but also an opportunity for them to understand scientific concepts in an interactive and memorable way. Science is not a subject confined to school textbooks; it is an integral part of our daily lives. Embracing science with your preschooler can be exciting and effortless. From observing the wonders of nature to conducting simple kitchen experiments and engaging in sensory play, you can provide endless opportunities for your child's scientific exploration. As they grow, these early experiences will lay a strong foundation for their future learning and encourage a lifelong curiosity about the world around them. Let's empower our little ones to become curious thinkers and lifelong learners through the wonders of science! 🚀🔍🌟
Yes! And here's why...
After International Women and Girls in Science day recently I've been thinking about this a lot
Now I’m not talking about some mechanical version of our much-loved honey producing insects, no. These are little programmable robots designed to look a bit like a cute bumble bee! I thought Dinky was Science? What’s robots got to do with it? Good question! Dinky aspires to cover the range of STEM topics which very much includes science, but you notice a healthy dose of maths and engineering in there too (the M and E). The T stands for technology, which in our weekly topics can be a bit harder to include… Cue the entrance of cute bee bots! Yes, these little characters are specifically designed for little hands and minds to use. They open up a world of screen-free, hands-on coding fun for our littlies! We know that screens are a part of our lives, I’m writing this using a screen, you are reading this using a screen. But screens allow us to access so much that it can be quite distracting – I don’t just mean for our kids. (Yes I fall down numerous rabbit holes when on a screen as I’m sure you’ve experienced too!) As well as the distraction we know that prolonged screen time for young children is not great for their eye sight, social interactions and general wellbeing. I’m rambling on a bit (!) I’m trying to say it’s great that these Bee Bots offer us screen free coding as a fun first taster. I bought these little cuties before lockdown and before I ever go to try them at Dinky, I found them invaluable during lockdown. We used them for all sorts of learning alongside coding and the best bit – the kids just thought they were playing having a great time! The Bee Bots first involvement in a Dinky session was this week for World Science Day and they were so popular with both kids and adults! This has really spurred me on to revive my ambition to start a pre-schoolers coding course. Would you be interested? I have a 6-week course mapped out where we build the kids coding skills week on week. This would be aimed at 3+ years for the kids to get the most out of it. Tell me if you’re interested and when you’d want the course to run so I can get it in my 2023 plan asap!
Love it or hate it, hear me out!
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” Confucius
What if my child is not great at listening? Or can’t sit still? I’m worried they’ll disrupt everyone.
If you think back to when your child was a baby, you'll remember they started putting things in their mouth early on and perhaps they still do. This is one of easiest signs of curiosity to spot in a baby. Mouthing objects is a way of finding out about it. Is it soft or hard? Rough or smooth? Hot or cold? In other words, being curious is helping the baby to build an understanding of the world around them. And it's important to notice that "mistakes" are a vital part of building this understanding. A baby might mouth something that they don't like the taste or sensation of. They'll likely do it a number of times before learning not to. What about pre-schoolers though? Well, pre-schoolers have developed more ways to be curious than babies such as through speech, but perhaps more importantly through their play. You'll have noticed an element of trial and error in their play as they figure out what works and what doesn't. Another important factor is that pre-schoolers are not yet under the influence of "society norms". As we grow up, we start to care what others think of us and this can actually hinder our free thinking. Pre-schoolers are brilliant free thinkers because they don't tend to worry about whether it makes them look silly. They say what they see, as it were. This is why at Dinky we believe it's really important to give positive reinforcement for all questions asked, to praise them for using their curiosity and asking the question that's on their mind. You may also be aware that pre-schoolers live very much in the moment. This is actually helpful because they are not held back by a concern of making a mess. Perhaps a more freeing factor for pre-schoolers is that they have no preconceived ideas to conflict with, this ties in closely with them having no concept of "looking silly" for saying or thinking something. There's one final thing that pre-schoolers have on their side when living in the moment - that is the ability to become utterly absorbed in it for those 5-10 minutes. Unlike our adult minds which are cluttered with responsible thoughts about what's for lunch or did I pack that banana, which can pop up and interrupt our curiosity. Another great quality that a pre-schooler scientist can bring to the lab bench is their use of their senses. They make more use of their senses in day to day life than most adults tend to. A big part of being a scientist is observing for changes, so pre-schoolers are well placed to notice when something feels different, or produces a smell, or even sounds different. The final "superpower" of pre-schoolers that I want to highlight is perhaps the most unexpected; their unpredictability. Yes this can seem like a drawback but bear with me… Accidents happen, we all know and accept that. But did you know that some scientific discoveries have been made by accident? Now I'm not suggesting that a 3 year old is going to discover a solution to anti-biotic resistance, but I see that these "accidents" (that are inevitable) can lead to something awesome. Not a discovery for human kind, but perhaps a discovery for that pre-schooler. Maybe it makes a connection in their mind that an adult wouldn't have thought of, but that helps them to understand the world around them.
