Learning to Be a Scientist: Week 3, Review

Continuing Learning to Be a Scientist: Review

Yesterday Builder Boy practiced comparing and sorting stuffed animals and different blocks into categories as part of his play (all on his own.) Today when George got here they picked up all the stuffed animals they could find around the house (yea for them cleaning all on their own!) and started comparing and sorting. Builder Boy wouldn't let George pick up the stuffed Thomas the Tank Engine or the stuffed Rocket (from Little Einsteins) because they weren't animals. He also wouldn't let her include the fuzzy bunny-bank because it wasn't a stuffed toy. The book's activity that we were going to do today is simple and a bit boring. I don't have a wagon, or even something with wheels, so we can't do the third activity for the comparisons concept. George is coming over again tomorrow, so I decided to do a review of the concepts we have learned and apply them to real life things like Builder Boy has been doing on his own.

LOTS of toys to sort.

Yea! for applied science!

First I showed George and Builder Boy a plastic toy train track and had them make observations. (Early Bird was playing with George's Little Sister.) Then I showed them a plastic toy slotted spoon and had them make observations about that. Then I showed them both toys and had them make comparisons between the two toys. Then I talked about the different categories our toys are in. I've had specific drawers for specific toys for a long time. We talked about why we sort toys instead of just having them all mixed together, and how it makes finding a specific toy easier. I had them name the categories of all the drawers (they've known them a long time, but it doesn't hurt to refresh their memory.) The recognized that by looking and thinking about the toy (making observations,) realizing that the toy is different from other toys (making comparisons) and sorting them into the right drawer that they were being scientists even in an every day action. Then I had them pick up all the toys on the floor and put them on the play table. I'd had four kids in the house for several hours by then, so there were plenty of toys to pick up. After they had a sufficient amount to toys to work with they sorted them into their proper drawer. I think it was an excellent applied science activity.

Then we switched gears for another activity. We had all together talked about food groups before but that was quite some time ago so we talked about them again. We also talked about how different things from different food groups (calcium from milk, protein from meat, vitamins from fruits, and carbohydrates from grains) help our bodies in different ways. I got out a bunch of grocery store adds that I had been saving and George, Builder Boy, and I cut out pictures of different foods. I also used different colored construction paper to mark different categories.

After we had cut out a lot of foods I had them sort the foods into the different food groups and then paste them onto their papers. At this time Early Bird became interested in what we were doing and I let him paste some of the pictures onto his own piece of paper. The collages turned out really well, and we re-learned about foods and practiced what we have learned scientists do.





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PBSKids.org has a Sid the Science Kid game about the different food groups with an emphasis on creating a balanced meal using foods from all the different food groups. Builder Boy has had a lot of fun playing it in the past, but all the kids needed some mandatory quiet time once school was done.

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