Have you read much Feynman? He has some stories of how his father encouraged him to develop the scientific mindset (like this) that might be helpful. The core thing seems to be focusing on the act of thinking things through, not the memory trick of knowing how things are labeled. I’m not sure how to incorporate that into biology, though.
Today, we played a game of identifying common (Ukrainian) foodstuffs. There were 4 plastic bottles with wide mouths (1 transparent, 3 opaque but somewhat see-through when light goes through them), holding a small amount of stuff, and separately a handful of beads. The transparent bottle contained rice, the other ones—either soya or wheat or buckwheat (I’m thinking mixes for next time, and maybe use some other things like pepper,..). The task was to learn what was inside without opening and looking.
At first she didn’t know how to, then she didn’t know how to describe sounds made by sloshing the stuff around, then tried to brute-force it by guessing, then spilled the rice vacating the bottle for beads (a reference point for larger particles), then described smells I could not detect (but that’s neither here nor there), then misjudged the shadow size, and then we ran out of time just as we came to the conclusion that the last bottle contains either peas or soya or lentil. I had to give her some hints since she didn’t know everything to be found in the kitchen, and soya is certainly far from the commonest things (but she knew it) and to look for pepper which I hadn’t anticipated, but still. Love my job.
Yes, I agree, but there are… complications:
1) she cannot read, write half an alphabet or count beyond 30, because ‘nobody at home has the time to teach me’, and I keep thinking ‘surely teaching her to read is the best thing I can ever do’, but she wants to talk about botany, of all things, and I don’t really have any formal power to make her do anything else;
2) she doesn’t understand the value of observations and records, and I don’t want to show her ‘tricks’ like pigment separation because inferential distance and so on, and so we are stuck with ‘simple fast transformations’ which are very difficult for me to keep fitting into some kind of system, so I just wing it;
3) for an hour and a half! Torture! We keep veering off into binocular vision, birds and so on, but it’s like n All-Biology Test and I hate the lack of structure, but I cannot just tell her to go away;
4) and until today I kind of thought she was a good little polite girl, who humored my rants.
I can show her pictures of time series (of some developments), but it’s something you prepare without haste and usually with much trouble. I think it would be a good exercise in pattern-matching, but… there are so many things which can go wrong.
I think that children are very good at learning even the most unexpected things. I think that whatever you do things are unlikely to go wrong, as long as you pay some attention to what she likes and what bores her and don’t force her to do things she hates. Children are curious, but their attention benefits from some direction.
Does she object against learning the alphabet in principle, or merely because she doesn’t consider it the best use of the time when she is with you?
If it’s the latter, you could prepare her a tool to learn the alphabet when she is back at home. Just print a paper containing all letters in the alphabet, and next to each letter put two or three pictures of things that start with that letter. (“А = автомобіль, антена; Б = банан,...”; free pics.) Or maybe make it two-sided cards, so she can practive active recall. Then give her a book on botany, as a motivation.
A book on botany with great pictures I already gave her, and her relatives read to her from it. I think I’ll have a chat with her dad, though. There are many primers she can use which are much better than anything I can printout...
The book sounds good. I think ultimately there are two things that are important here: the first is teaching her about botany and the second is to instill and build on her drive to want to learn the material or more broadly a problem solving/curious mindset. In my opinion, the second one is more important.
Two pieces of advice:
Forget about the structure. Just think about setting up an environment that will let her explore, play and teach herself. The book is a good start. Maybe, a plant for her room would be a good idea.
Explore with her. The best thing you can do, I reckon, is to take her outside and explore with her. I don’t know much about Botany, but I think it would be cool, as an example, if you picked up a flower and pointed out to her that most people are born with two arms and then asked: “So, would that mean that the amount of petals on this type of flower will all be the same”. Then, no matter what she says you can go to a group of the flowers and let her count the amount of petals to see if they’re the same. Then, you can ask another question: are the buds the same etc.
Have you read much Feynman? He has some stories of how his father encouraged him to develop the scientific mindset (like this) that might be helpful. The core thing seems to be focusing on the act of thinking things through, not the memory trick of knowing how things are labeled. I’m not sure how to incorporate that into biology, though.
(Braggity brag)
Today, we played a game of identifying common (Ukrainian) foodstuffs. There were 4 plastic bottles with wide mouths (1 transparent, 3 opaque but somewhat see-through when light goes through them), holding a small amount of stuff, and separately a handful of beads. The transparent bottle contained rice, the other ones—either soya or wheat or buckwheat (I’m thinking mixes for next time, and maybe use some other things like pepper,..). The task was to learn what was inside without opening and looking.
At first she didn’t know how to, then she didn’t know how to describe sounds made by sloshing the stuff around, then tried to brute-force it by guessing, then spilled the rice vacating the bottle for beads (a reference point for larger particles), then described smells I could not detect (but that’s neither here nor there), then misjudged the shadow size, and then we ran out of time just as we came to the conclusion that the last bottle contains either peas or soya or lentil. I had to give her some hints since she didn’t know everything to be found in the kitchen, and soya is certainly far from the commonest things (but she knew it) and to look for pepper which I hadn’t anticipated, but still. Love my job.
Yes, I agree, but there are… complications: 1) she cannot read, write half an alphabet or count beyond 30, because ‘nobody at home has the time to teach me’, and I keep thinking ‘surely teaching her to read is the best thing I can ever do’, but she wants to talk about botany, of all things, and I don’t really have any formal power to make her do anything else; 2) she doesn’t understand the value of observations and records, and I don’t want to show her ‘tricks’ like pigment separation because inferential distance and so on, and so we are stuck with ‘simple fast transformations’ which are very difficult for me to keep fitting into some kind of system, so I just wing it; 3) for an hour and a half! Torture! We keep veering off into binocular vision, birds and so on, but it’s like n All-Biology Test and I hate the lack of structure, but I cannot just tell her to go away; 4) and until today I kind of thought she was a good little polite girl, who humored my rants.
I can show her pictures of time series (of some developments), but it’s something you prepare without haste and usually with much trouble. I think it would be a good exercise in pattern-matching, but… there are so many things which can go wrong.
I think that children are very good at learning even the most unexpected things. I think that whatever you do things are unlikely to go wrong, as long as you pay some attention to what she likes and what bores her and don’t force her to do things she hates. Children are curious, but their attention benefits from some direction.
Does she object against learning the alphabet in principle, or merely because she doesn’t consider it the best use of the time when she is with you?
If it’s the latter, you could prepare her a tool to learn the alphabet when she is back at home. Just print a paper containing all letters in the alphabet, and next to each letter put two or three pictures of things that start with that letter. (“А = автомобіль, антена; Б = банан,...”; free pics.) Or maybe make it two-sided cards, so she can practive active recall. Then give her a book on botany, as a motivation.
A book on botany with great pictures I already gave her, and her relatives read to her from it. I think I’ll have a chat with her dad, though. There are many primers she can use which are much better than anything I can printout...
The book sounds good. I think ultimately there are two things that are important here: the first is teaching her about botany and the second is to instill and build on her drive to want to learn the material or more broadly a problem solving/curious mindset. In my opinion, the second one is more important.
Two pieces of advice:
Forget about the structure. Just think about setting up an environment that will let her explore, play and teach herself. The book is a good start. Maybe, a plant for her room would be a good idea.
Explore with her. The best thing you can do, I reckon, is to take her outside and explore with her. I don’t know much about Botany, but I think it would be cool, as an example, if you picked up a flower and pointed out to her that most people are born with two arms and then asked: “So, would that mean that the amount of petals on this type of flower will all be the same”. Then, no matter what she says you can go to a group of the flowers and let her count the amount of petals to see if they’re the same. Then, you can ask another question: are the buds the same etc.