Importance of Science

Incorporating science in the classroom it can teach children how to hypothesize, explore and investigate as they have discussions with each other and explore with the materials (Marshall, 2006). Children can start to learn the “inquiry process” as they start to create and seek answers for their own questions about cookies such as “what does baking soda do?” test out their questions as they try to find the answer by adding baking soda to their cookies and seeing what will happen, make investigations on their own and find their own procedures. They may do this before they start the activity and throughout the process of the activity they may start to raise and answer their own questions. (Worth, 2010) Some of the questions the children may start to ask or the teacher may ask the child as they are exploring with the science activity  “what would happen if I added lots of flour?” or “what would happen if you added one cup of flour in in a smaller cup (1/2 cup)?” by doing this it encourages children to start to make their own hypothesize on what is going to happen and as they do the activity they may be able to answer their own questions. By having age-appropriate materials such as measuring cups, books, and scales can encourage children to start making observations and connections as they are exploring with the activity (Marshall, 2006). The connections the children may make might be based on their past experiences with baking, seeing their parents in the kitchen or making connections based on the book that was read to them before the activity as do the exploration. Science in the classroom can also build upon other learning areas such as language through discussions they will have before, during and after the exploration, science terms such as hypothesis, capacity, measurements, writing a hypothesis and reflections at the end of the exploration on what they think will happen to the cookies with the ingredients they choose and what they would do differently next time, they can learn dramatic play by role playing and making connections on their past experiences being in the kitchen, watching their parents in the kitchen or seeing a baker and math concepts through graphs that they may make with the class to see which groups cookies were hard, soft and crunchy, as well as counting the amount of cups they use for each ingredient such as "4 cups of flour" (Marshall, 2006).  Science encourages children to have lots of hands on experience, which can help the child start to investigate different objects, such as having lots of opportunities to manipulate the different ingredients and materials (Marshall, 2006). Science also can help children stay engaged with one exploration for long periods of time. Science explorations can be long term, so it provides enough time for children who take a while to get involved in activities to start to engage in the explorations (Bosse et al., 2016). 

Counting using measuring cups

Role Playing

Collaborating ideas