BOX #1
"I'm going to draw my truck with fire and smoke. That means it was goin' real fast, faster than the other one."

Tania holds some Unifix® cubes in her hand ­wondering, "What are these for?"

"That squirrel is hiding the acorn so other squirrels won't steal it."

Johanna took all the large nuts and screwed them onto all the large bolts.

"I think we'll need all the long blocks and all the short ones, too, to make the stage big enough."

"Uh-oh. When you take the top off the glitter that way, it comes out really fast. Try it the other way, like a salt shaker."


START STORY

Each of these anecdotes represents an example of one of the six components of the preschool scientific method: OB=observing; CL=classifying; E=experimenting; P=predicting; DC=drawing ­conclusions; and CI=communicating information. When you finish the article, see if you can identify which component goes best with each anecdote. The answers for matching activity: CI, OB, DC, CL, P, E.

How often have you opened an early childhood book and read within the first few pages that from birth children are explorers, experimenters, and observers —- in short, they are young scientists. In their aptly titled book, The Scientist in the Crib, Gopnick, ­Metzoff, and Kuhl (2001), refer to an infant as "the most powerful learning machine in the universe"
(p. 1). In Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2000), the editors tell us that young children already have "considerable implicit knowledge about topics that are found in ­science books" (p. 207). And finally, Ruth Wilson (2002) writes:

Children are naturally curious about the world and want to find out as much as they can. . . . But they don't want adults to give them the answers. . . . They don't want science to be something that is imparted to them; they want it to be something they do.

(Conclusion)

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