SCIENCE AT HOME

For many of us, the thought of doing science with our children seems extremely complicated. We think about gowns, special materials and instruments, microscopes, and so on. And yes, all of that can be important to get, but all in due time. Because doing science is so much more than just that, and it has incredible benefits for our little ones.

They learn new vocabulary, develop their fine motor skills, learn to follow instructions, learn about patience, learn to take turns, and frustration tolerance, as there are experiments that take time to reach the result or things do not go as expected. In addition, through experiments, they can learn concepts such as: empty, half full, full; cause and effect, hot and cold, and even begin to better understand the concept of time, in addition to improving their social skills when doing experiments together with others.

Children always have explanations for everything, which means they are observing and sorting through data to draw their own conclusions. Many of those early predictions are modified by our comments or by things they discover on their own as they experience what they have imagined and finally understand the phenomenon through the whole process. They have done this since they were newborns when they explore the world with their senses and continue to do so as they grow up because that is how they learn and better understand what surrounds them. It is not surprising then that science is something they are very good at.

As a science teacher, I wanted to awaken in my daughter a taste for science. My interest has always been for her to see the fun and wonderful side of experiments. These are the stages my daughter and I have gone through during this time of doing science at home:

Observe: in the beginning, it was me doing everything while she was the spectator. I would tell her what was going to happen and then explain to her why we were getting those results. We started with this when she was 1 year old.

Participate: my daughter was 18 months old when I let her start in the world of science by pouring liquids, transferring solids, showing her the steps to follow, and letting her learn to follow the instructions step by step. For this, in the beginning, I had everything pre-measured and just let her place them and later, when she had more skills, I allowed her to start measuring by herself.

Inferring: from the age of 2 and a half I started with simple questions that allowed my daughter to explain what she thought was going to happen and then what she was observing during the experiment.

Relate: from the age of 4 it is already possible to have a talk with her where she begins to establish connections between different things she has been learning in the experiments and activities we do.