ENGAGING KINDERGARTEN THROUGH FOURTH GRADE CHILDREN IN SCIENCE USING INQUIRY, LANGUAGE ART, AND EXPLORATION

Children can be thrilled by science if it is more than an exercise in reading a textbook. Science should not be a spectator sport but one in which children are engaged in the exploration of ideas through inquiry, reading and writing, and discovering answers on their own. Science should involve children in an understanding of the world around them since if we do not understand the world around us how can we make decisions to safeguard it? Understanding concepts should include experiencing those concepts using hearing, moving, touching, seeing and talking. Thematic units should be the norm where students learn about concepts in an integrated way using writing, reading, social studies, and mathematics as well as science. How would you like to fly with the whooping cranes as they follow an ultralite on their first journey south? Or travel to France to learn about caves by viewing the Lascaux Cave drawings using the internet? Or grow tulips with schools all over the world to learn about the coming of spring using Journey North? Let's move science out of the erudite clouds of Mt. Olympus by reducing the scientific language, making it relative to real life, and more understandable. Science can be an exciting adventure or the memorization of a multitude of facts. Let's make it an adventure. I am writing units that make it an adventure and this presentation is about what I have done and what I have learned.