I’ve been teaching this age range for the last ten years. Knowing that the dynamic and priorities of each family are different, I hesitate to over-advise.
But I have a few areas to focus on:
Closely observing the natural world, asking leading questions to get them to articulate details of what they see.
Learning a bit about key scientific principles, and using them to explain the world they’re familiar with.
Use paradox to awaken the puzzle-solving itch.
Ask them what would happen if a store started charging $100 for their favorite candy bar. Or what if the principle of their school had to buy all the kids’ school supplies and decide who gets what. Explain evolution and the basic needs of a plant, then dig up a garden weed and use those ideas to explain its structure. Ask them “When you put ice cubes in a glass of water, why does the ice always melt rather than the water turning all to ice?” Or tell them that “you said abracadabra when you got a cut on your finger and it got better a few days later, so saying abracadabra makes cuts get better,” then ask them how they know you’re wrong.
Together, this gives them practice in all the basic methods of science. Keep it light, keep it fun. When their puzzle-solver’s habit is well established, they‘ll be more likely to feel a need for the clarity that more formal methods can offer.
I like these ideas, and you’re right that these KISS type questions are good at getting at the heart of mechanisms and generalizing outside of context.
I’ll mention now though, that I’ve been rightly advised to not disregard the flashy stuff kids like to see, because it is effective at getting them excited about science. Do you have any specific recommendations on how to take some of the classic “experiments for kids!” stuff you can find with a google search and add in a dose of “construct a falsifiable model and attempt to falsify it”? Some way I can keep the flash, but still teach them to the importance of models which allow them to make bold predictions?
This hasn’t been my experience with kids, honestly. Nor is it my interpretation of the education literature that there’s overwhelming evidence that making science education flashy is an optimal strategy. It’s hard to do good science education while keeping the flash, and flash isn’t the most durable emotion.
Instead, I find that kids like novelty and play, and they also like to feel capable and appreciated for their knowledge. Things don’t have to be flashy to be novel and playful to children. Close observation of the world can reveal novelty to them even in things that are familiar, like the patterns on a garden spider’s back, or seeing a rainbow in water sprayed from a hose. Making a routine practice of pointing out these phenomena, asking them about it, and making exploring the world in this manner a part of your relationship is the way I would approach things.
I question whether making young kids invent falsifiable models and do controlled experiments is really the best way to kick off their science education. Science education, even in college, is far more about having them read about other people’s discoveries and observing the world closely than it is about lab work. Undergraduates rarely if ever invent their own experiments or models.
Nothing wrong with having your kids do an experiment here and there if it’s fun. But if it were my own children, I’d have them peer through telescopes, look at bugs with a magnifying glass, follow an ant to see if they can find its nest, build a Halloween costume that incorporates some home-made electronics, learn to program a computer game, help you cook a recipe that requires them to double all the proportions of the ingredients, and other things like that. I earnestly believe that the desire to analyze the world follows from a habit of observing it closely.
Yes, I agree that doing good science is hard with flash, I’ve just had everyone telling me that that’s what hooks them. Good to know that’s not really true.
I’m thinking along the lines heavily leading to/giving the model, not necessarily having them come up with it themselves and then testing it. But part of the reason I’m asking here is to see if anyone has ideas regarding models which are discoverable by kids this age so that they can get there by more of their own processes.
That’s fair! I think that’s a good idea to explore and I think it’s great to try things out. If you try something and the kids don’t take to it, no harm done :)
One thing you could try is some probability. There’s a classic intro stats demo where you have a class come up with fake sequences of 20 coin flips in a row, and generate some real sequences of 20 coin flips as well, all while the teacher is out of the room. Then the teacher comes in and guesses which are real and which are fake.
They can do that because people tend to generate fake sequences with too few stretches of repeated heads and tails.
Kids can flip a coin, they’d have fun trying to trick you, and when you guessed right, it might seem like a magic trick. You can also teach them a few things about probability and dice rolls and help them see how it applies to board games.
I like the coin flip idea. I have done something along these lines as a single session with homeschool kids where I gave them two decks of cards and had them stack the deck while I was out. When I came back I used an Excel VBA program I had made to continually reassess the maximum likelihood for the red/black proportion and updated it as I drew cards. Didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped, mostly because I didn’t emphasize that in order to get quick results they needed to really stack the deck, and they had made it 24 red, 28 black, or something similar.
Anyway, yes, I was thinking exploring probability might have some more possibilities along these lines, so I will think about that a little more. We did optical illusions today: persistence of vision, pattern juxtaposition, etc. Then we talked about how they fool system 1 thought, but you can use system 2 techniques to defeat them, did things like measuring the apparently converging lines, slowed down the thaumatrope, etc.
I’ve been teaching this age range for the last ten years. Knowing that the dynamic and priorities of each family are different, I hesitate to over-advise.
But I have a few areas to focus on:
Closely observing the natural world, asking leading questions to get them to articulate details of what they see.
Learning a bit about key scientific principles, and using them to explain the world they’re familiar with.
Use paradox to awaken the puzzle-solving itch.
Ask them what would happen if a store started charging $100 for their favorite candy bar. Or what if the principle of their school had to buy all the kids’ school supplies and decide who gets what. Explain evolution and the basic needs of a plant, then dig up a garden weed and use those ideas to explain its structure. Ask them “When you put ice cubes in a glass of water, why does the ice always melt rather than the water turning all to ice?” Or tell them that “you said abracadabra when you got a cut on your finger and it got better a few days later, so saying abracadabra makes cuts get better,” then ask them how they know you’re wrong.
Together, this gives them practice in all the basic methods of science. Keep it light, keep it fun. When their puzzle-solver’s habit is well established, they‘ll be more likely to feel a need for the clarity that more formal methods can offer.
I like these ideas, and you’re right that these KISS type questions are good at getting at the heart of mechanisms and generalizing outside of context.
I’ll mention now though, that I’ve been rightly advised to not disregard the flashy stuff kids like to see, because it is effective at getting them excited about science. Do you have any specific recommendations on how to take some of the classic “experiments for kids!” stuff you can find with a google search and add in a dose of “construct a falsifiable model and attempt to falsify it”? Some way I can keep the flash, but still teach them to the importance of models which allow them to make bold predictions?
This hasn’t been my experience with kids, honestly. Nor is it my interpretation of the education literature that there’s overwhelming evidence that making science education flashy is an optimal strategy. It’s hard to do good science education while keeping the flash, and flash isn’t the most durable emotion.
Instead, I find that kids like novelty and play, and they also like to feel capable and appreciated for their knowledge. Things don’t have to be flashy to be novel and playful to children. Close observation of the world can reveal novelty to them even in things that are familiar, like the patterns on a garden spider’s back, or seeing a rainbow in water sprayed from a hose. Making a routine practice of pointing out these phenomena, asking them about it, and making exploring the world in this manner a part of your relationship is the way I would approach things.
I question whether making young kids invent falsifiable models and do controlled experiments is really the best way to kick off their science education. Science education, even in college, is far more about having them read about other people’s discoveries and observing the world closely than it is about lab work. Undergraduates rarely if ever invent their own experiments or models.
Nothing wrong with having your kids do an experiment here and there if it’s fun. But if it were my own children, I’d have them peer through telescopes, look at bugs with a magnifying glass, follow an ant to see if they can find its nest, build a Halloween costume that incorporates some home-made electronics, learn to program a computer game, help you cook a recipe that requires them to double all the proportions of the ingredients, and other things like that. I earnestly believe that the desire to analyze the world follows from a habit of observing it closely.
Yes, I agree that doing good science is hard with flash, I’ve just had everyone telling me that that’s what hooks them. Good to know that’s not really true.
I’m thinking along the lines heavily leading to/giving the model, not necessarily having them come up with it themselves and then testing it. But part of the reason I’m asking here is to see if anyone has ideas regarding models which are discoverable by kids this age so that they can get there by more of their own processes.
That’s fair! I think that’s a good idea to explore and I think it’s great to try things out. If you try something and the kids don’t take to it, no harm done :)
One thing you could try is some probability. There’s a classic intro stats demo where you have a class come up with fake sequences of 20 coin flips in a row, and generate some real sequences of 20 coin flips as well, all while the teacher is out of the room. Then the teacher comes in and guesses which are real and which are fake.
They can do that because people tend to generate fake sequences with too few stretches of repeated heads and tails.
Kids can flip a coin, they’d have fun trying to trick you, and when you guessed right, it might seem like a magic trick. You can also teach them a few things about probability and dice rolls and help them see how it applies to board games.
I like the coin flip idea. I have done something along these lines as a single session with homeschool kids where I gave them two decks of cards and had them stack the deck while I was out. When I came back I used an Excel VBA program I had made to continually reassess the maximum likelihood for the red/black proportion and updated it as I drew cards. Didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped, mostly because I didn’t emphasize that in order to get quick results they needed to really stack the deck, and they had made it 24 red, 28 black, or something similar.
Anyway, yes, I was thinking exploring probability might have some more possibilities along these lines, so I will think about that a little more. We did optical illusions today: persistence of vision, pattern juxtaposition, etc. Then we talked about how they fool system 1 thought, but you can use system 2 techniques to defeat them, did things like measuring the apparently converging lines, slowed down the thaumatrope, etc.