Publication: ACECQA website | Published on: 7 August 2017 | Article: Making Bubbles
Publication: ACECQA website | Published on: 7 August 2017 | Article: Making Bubbles
‘Look how many soap bubbles I made!’ Ben exclaims enthusiastically. Sarah, his teacher, is excited: ‘Wow, this is great! How did you do this?’ ‘I blew into the soap bubble water with the long yellow tube and now my bucket is full of bubbles,’ he replies. ‘This works much better than stirring it with a spoon’.
‘I have an even better idea!’ Ben’s friend Julia says. ‘You could stir really, really fast with an egg whisk. I am sure that makes the most bubbles!’ Sarah has an idea: ‘Well, these are some interesting assumptions, but wouldn’t it be good to test what actually works the best?’
The children are excited about Sarah’s suggestion and want to explore this question in a more scientific way.
Sarah, the educator in the soap bubble story above, is an example of many Australian early childhood professionals who are strong advocates of co-construction and inquiry-based, child-led learning. More and more education and care services across the country are integrating scientific exploration and discovery into the children’s routine, based on the strong belief they benefit tremendously from early opportunities to discover the world in an open and creative environment.
Little Scientists Australia offers a professional development program for teachers and educators to support the implementation of inquiry-based STEM learning. The program offers a range of hands-on workshops designed to encourage and promote scientific investigation while giving insights in educational concepts and methods. A key concept of Little Scientists is an inquiry-cycle approach which supports structuring children’s discovery process.
To demonstrate how scientific research in an early childhood setting could be done, let’s return to our soap bubble example:
In the morning, Sarah and her preschool group explored and played with home-made soap bubble liquid: blowing, stirring and shaking the liquid. Sparked by Ben’s discovery that blowing into the liquid worked better than stirring, the group decided to investigate further. Drawing on the previous scientific explorations and experiments facilitated by Sarah, the children knew how to proceed:
Learning opportunities like the soap bubble experiment arise every single day. Most young children make numerous investigations and ask inquisitive questions about everything. And how do educators and families respond? We often don’t know what to say because we don’t have an adequate answer or have never thought about this before. The good news is – if we implement an inquiry-based learning approach – it doesn’t matter! It might even be an advantage not to know the answer. Scientific exploration and research give children and adults the opportunity to explore, to problem-solve, to cooperate with others and to be even more excited and curious about the world around us.
A provocation to take back to your next team meeting might be how the educators in your service are engaging with STEM in their programs.
Little Scientists is one of various organisations across the country providing fun and engaging events for children during National Science Week (12-20 August 2017).