Sep 30, 2020
Jing Li
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM is important because it is already present in every aspect of our lives.
STEM experiences are part of what children experience every day through play and interactions with others. STEM activities provide hands-on lessons for the children. Active hands-on experiences that support children’s exploration, curiosity, and inquiry. Our parents can also help our children develop their science process skills at home. Here to introduce a simple science experiment for our parents and children to do.
Materials:
1.Tin foil
2. Container
3. Buttons
4. Water
Steps:
1. Fill your container with water.
2. Use your tin foil to create a shape that will float.
3. Once you have a shape that you are happy with and one that floats on the water, add your buttons.
4. Start to add 10 buttons at a time to your boat.
5. The challenge is to try to get 50 buttons on your shape.
Observation:
What will happen to the tin-foil boat after you add 10 buttons each time?
The process:
Adding 10 buttons.
Adding 20 buttons.
Adding 40 buttons.
Adding 50 buttons.
Before doing this experiment, our parents can ask the children to predict whether the buttons on the tin foil will sink. After the first 20 buttons was placed on the tin foil, the result was that the buttons on the tin foil did not sink. The appearance of this result will arouse children’s interest and they will want to know if they can put more buttons on the tin foil without sinking. The question will stimulate their curiosity to continue to explore. Dietze and Kashin (2016) shows that curiosity stems from interests, ideas, and actions.
Children have a natural desire to explore and understand the world, so they often ask adults, “Mom, why does the sun only come out during the day?”, “Daddy, why do chopsticks bend into the water?”. These “whys” are the signals that children send to their parents to be curious and inquisitive. In our daily life, we should respect and protect the curiosity of children, take seriously, and respond to their every “why”. When children are curious about the unknown world, we can take them together to find answers through scientific experiment like the one above, stimulate their interest in science, and cultivate their ability of scientific exploration and problem solving.
Reference:
Dietze, B, & Kashin, D. (2016). Empowering pedagogy for early childhood education. Toronto: Pearson.