honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, March 2, 2010

It's science!


By William Hageman
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Your child can learn all about science, whether in your kitchen or in your backyard.

GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer

MAKE A VOLCANO!

This experiment can be done in a jar in the sink; we're conducting it in a homemade volcano for dramatic effect. Stand clear when the chemical reaction begins.

1. Cover the work area with a plastic drop cloth or newspapers. Build an 8- to 10-inch-tall volcano out of modeling clay (we found it at Ben Franklin craft stores); hollow out a hole in the top all the way to the bottom. (As an alternative, use a plastic water bottle around which you have molded a volcano made of clay or dough.)

2. Pour in 2 tablespoons of baking soda (for a more colorful eruption, add a couple drops of food coloring). Add a few drops of liquid dish soap to help the eruption flow.

3. To set off the reaction, pour in 1/2 cup of vinegar. Stand back.

What happened? The chemical reaction between baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and vinegar (acetic acid) produces carbon dioxide gas (the bubbles).

Source: http://kids-science-experiments.com

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Sid and his friends celebrate discovery on "Sid the Science Kid," a science show on PBS geared toward kids 3 to 6.

PBS

spacer spacer

'SID THE SCIENCE KID'

7:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., Mondays-Fridays; 9:30 a.m. Sundays

PBS Hawaii/KHET

On the Web: http://pbskids.org/sid

spacer spacer

Anyone who has fed a baby in a highchair has experienced it: The child throws a dish and watches it hit the floor. You pick it up. It gets thrown again. And again.

He isn't trying to annoy you. He's learning science.

"They're creating theories about how the world works," says Joyce Duckles, a doctoral candidate in human development at the University of Rochester Warner School of Education. "It's cool. The thing keeps going down. I think we underestimate young children a lot."

Duckles and other researchers believe that kids are capable of grasping science earlier than previously thought. In the past, science education wasn't emphasized until the middle-school years. But we now know that kids' attitudes toward science are already pretty well formed by that age.

"Children in the earlier years are already deciding what they have a passion for, and in some ways are making an emotional commitment to it," says Lisa Henson, chief executive of The Jim Henson Co., which produces "Sid the Science Kid," a PBS science show for 3- to 6-year-olds.

Duckles is studying how families present science at home, looking at 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds. "I have families ... who take their kids to the train station and watch the trains go by and talk about how the trains work," Duckles says. "And I have parents who go to the science museum every week. So it's a wide variety of ways of doing science."

Using a straw to blow a small piece of paper across a table is science. So is watching rain fall.

Duckles says a parent can put a scientific spin on any of these activities.

"Sid" was created with the idea that science can be found everywhere. Henson's company has geared not only the show but also additional materials online to make "Sid's" lessons teachable.

"The philosophy was that there's so much science to be learned right in your kitchen, at the steps in your backyard," she says.

This sort of science isn't the same as school science, the standard lessons taught for years.

An effort needs to be made, Duckles says, to reconcile the two approaches.

"When we think about why we want to have a scientifically literate society, it's not to have kids succeed in school science," she says. "It's because we want them to be able to interact with their world."

• • •