Science in Kindergarten -- YES!!

I have a couple of kids in kindergarten that love science.  In fact, their favorite things to talk about are planets and stars, engines and gears, everything that crawls in the backyard.  The unfortunate thing is that they do not teach much science in school at their age.  That is why when I ran across an article about Purdue University's Scientific Literary Project, I became interested.

Purdue University has introduced a lesson plan that incorporates scientific inquiry with simple experiments even young children can enjoy.  The best part about the program is that kids learn to read, write, and do math--the essentials of Kindergarten--as they are introduced to science.  Their philosophy is that kids have a natural instinct for controlled experiments, and this should be applied early.

I've taken some ideas from their site, and started a science journal for each of my boys. The key to their journal is that they make predictions, take measurements, and make observations about what they are studying and write it down.  In school, my boys are required to do the same thing, except with books of fiction.  While I love fiction, (I spend many hours writing it!) I would love to see schools replace these books of fiction with some non-fiction.  Learning about science while you learn to read and write is an awesome idea!

They have two guides that parents can download.  For more information, click here for Purdue's site.

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KFran