Bringing Back Science, Was it Lost?

The Parent Bloggers Network and PBS’s Zula Intergalactic Warrior are sponsoring a blog blast on science education. They are wondering what parents are doing to make science more accessible to their children. It was an interesting question for me. I am a elementary teacher and my husband is an Aerospace and Materials engineer with a PhD. (Just in case there is someone reading my blog that doesn’t know me.)

My first response is when are we not providing our preschoolers with science exploration? We may not call it that, in fact a lot of the time we call it toddler time, or dawdler time. The fact that all babies, toddlers and preschools explore their world in minute detail is scientific exploration at its finest. Babies begin the journey with putting everything in their mouth. Toddlers explore everything, sometimes with their mouth, but always touching and really looking at things. They also try to describe their world and ask tons of questions. Who hasn’t spluttered a wild-assed answer to one of their many questions about the world. They are always looking, touching, exploring.

I think a lot of time we scare kids with science by showing them what we are scared of. How many kids are scared of bugs because their parents are? How many thing do we teach them to be afraid of? How do we keep science, well first we start by remembering what it is like to explore. How do I do this with my child? The answer is simple: geocaching. My husband and I along with our almost three year old spend almost every weekend going off with our GPS, some coordinates and then we explore somewhere we have never thought to look before. Aidan calls it treasure hunting, or caching. He now is almost always going on his own steam so we go slower, look at more things, and generally take more time to smell the flowers. Ok so not flowers, yet, but we get to play in the woods and use our senses to explore our world. What better way to raise a curious, scientific child? If you have an answer let me know. 🙂