What Can 4-yr-olds Understand About Science? 192
dr.karl.b asks: "My 3 and a half year old son is in Kindergarten. Here in Germany that includes 3 to 6 year olds. He is supposed to explain what his parents' occupations are. I am a scientist, and despite all the advice I have received saying he can't understand what I do, I am determined to try. I study self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation. We have several cool labs in my institute, like robot-arm motion simulators and full-immersion virtual reality set-ups. We can easily compete with amusement parks for wow-factor, but I have 2 questions: How can I explain my work to my son? How can I invite his class (3-6 yr olds) to our institute to have them learn AND have fun, rather than ONLY have fun?"
4-year-olds don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem arising from that is a very high psychological stress the kid must cope with. High expectations from their parents cause headaches and other health problems, especially when a kid fails at some task. Give a kid free time.
In fact at that age all kid's time must be a free time. Your job is to find a method to put fun into a learning. Small kids decide what they want to do with their free time only directed by their enthusiasm at some activity. When you find yourself trying to convince him to do something you have already failed. You can only show your own enthusiasm, and show how fun it is. It's in fact easy to convince a kid when you are enthusiastic yourself (which is not frequent with teachers who are bored with their job). But when you see that the kid loses an interest you must immediatly stop.
And expect nothing! If you will expect that the kid will be successfull at anything you will only increase the stress level.
If I recall correctly... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't expect them to learn much from a field trip. The best you can hope for is that some of them will say "wow, this stuff is cool" and might pursue it later in life.
IMO, hype up all the cool 'fun' stuff now, because that will stick in their minds. Then, in a few years, try to have another field trip when they'll be able to understand more about what they're seeing.
If you really want to figure out an educational plan, take the teacher(s) on a tour first & ask them to help you relate it to the kids.
P.S. The comprehension abilities between a 3 yr old and a 6 yr old are wildly different.
Re:First, lose all the jargon (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you can't translate it into words of one syllable, you probably don't really understand it yourself. :-)
Re:4-year-olds don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me stress (again) that this doesn't mean you can't teach children of that age valuable lessons about science, it just means you have to be careful with your goals. You can lecture the kids on the scientific method, and they'll repeat it back to you beautifully (kids of that age are incredible sponges for information), but that won't mean they'll understand it. I think you'll hve greater impact by playing to their understanding than their remarkable ability to absorb facts. Teaching them that there is more to the world than what their senses tell them, by demonstrating to them (via nice practical demonstrations that they can take part in) that their senses can be easily fooled, is a very valuable lesson. If that goes well you can cover more.
By all means don't underestimate kids, but overestimating their understanding will be at least as bad. At that age (and with the sort of time frame we're talking about) it is far better to give them questions that they can think about and explore themselves than answers which they may or may not understand.
your job description in 4-year-old's terms (Score:5, Insightful)
As for your job in particular, it sounds like you figure out how people can tell whether they're upside down, and whether you can trick them into thinking they are. Tell the kids you tried putting upside-down photos in front of people and that didn't fool them, so you're trying to figure out what would do it. See what they say about that. (Hint: every suggestion they give, no matter how ineffective you know it'll be... will be brilliant. Because as far as they know, no one's ever tried it, and they came up with it out of nothing but their own imagination.)
Things 4 year-old boys can understand (Score:3, Insightful)
2: Loud explosions
3: Loud explosions that make bright flashes
4: Loud explosions that make bright flashes and make their sister scream
5: Hot Wheels
6: Very loud explosions
It's all about motivation. Sell your kids on the possibility of making stuff happen, and when they grow up they'll do whatever it takes to understand how to make stuff happen. The trouble with most science teaching is that it's just too abstract. 4 year-olds are not good at abstract, and, actually, much the same is true of the rest of us.
Display, Involve, then Explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi kids! I'm a scientist, and I get to help figure out why people don't just fall over. Everybody stand up. Now, stand on one foot! Good -- Your muscles help keep you up, but why don't you fall? That's part of what I work on. OK, sit down, and I need a volunteer...
I study self-motion perception, from basic-science vestibular processing to the role of real-motion cues in flight simulation.
Ok volunteer -- have you ever caught a ball? Well, step back a little bit, and try this (tosses brightly colored sponge). You caught it! Toss it back, go a little further, and I'll try again. (Tosses sponge again) Great! Now -- just how did you know to do that? One time you were close, then you were far away! What happened to make it work? That is part of what I study too!
Who wants to pretend they're a tree? Stand up and hold out your arm! Wave arm with flappy winged bird doll. (Talk about flying birds coming in for a landing and not hitting the branch, or smacking into the tree.) Airplane pilots have to land their planes too, and not hit the ground too hard. I help figure out better ways to make that happen.
Visual stimulation and silly setups lead into simple explanations that kids can understand because they were entertained and their curiosity aroused. If they're giggling, they're able to learn becaue they're paying attention!
Re:Don't forget the Left Brain (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of things (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Hiking - you can talk about biology, geological processes, etc.
3) Visit the local zoo - discuss different animal species.
4) A trip to the local airport, or (better yet) - an air and space museum.
5) Legos and other 'construction' toys.
6) Toy plastic dinosaurs and (if available) a visit to a natural history museum.
7) Read bed time stories about science and exploration.
8) Computer games and simulatation.
9) Visit a planetarium or an observatory that has an open house.
10) Enroll the kid in martial arts, so later when other kids call them a nerd, they can kick their ass.
Kids are BORN scientists.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Until they hit 5 or 6, at which time pop culture, peer pressure, and the public school system start working together to stomp the spark of interest wight out of most of them....
Re:be careful (Score:3, Insightful)
What Can 4-yr-olds Understand About Science? (Score:2, Insightful)
"I learn, then I teach." (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what science is.
Re:Don't forget the Left Brain (Score:2, Insightful)
Applied math is great, but saying science is a sub-specialty of applied math is like saying music is a subfield of math, painting is a subfield of chemistry, or writing is a subfield of computer science because everyone uses word processors nowadays.
Science is an approach to finding out about the world. Math helps with that tremendously, but lots of scientists have done great work which didn't involve significant math--Galileo and Darwin among them.
As to the original question--practice explaining what you do. I bet most Slashdotters don't understand what you mean (is your research in psychology? optics? AI? material science? it's pretty obfuscated), never mind a random high school student, and to a kindergartener you'd be better off saying "I do cool things with computers!" with a big smile on your face. I teach my 3-year-old son about what I do (economics & game theory), and sure, he doesn't get much of it, but he's picking things up (he's learning to not always play Rock in Rock-Paper-Scissors, for instance). Most areas of study have some intuitive story which captures their spirit, you need to find that for your field.
As to how to have the kids learn--if a 3-to-6-year-old is in a new environment and also having fun, they're learning. Probably the best way to help them learn is to figure out what they can screw around with without destroying your work.
Re:4 year olds and science (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not making fun of religon, I'm making fun of those who would pollute science with their superstition in an attempt at creating a theocracy.
The whole idea that no religion == no morality is crap. Morality is ingrained in us as a social animal, the loner of the tribe wouldn't have likely had survived long enough to reproduce. There are countless books that touch on the subject (ie.: The Moral Animal, Breaking the Spell, etc.) The "Let the children decide after exposure to both" is an absolute cop out from the religious nuts. Once a child has been indoctrinated into a religious cult they have a hard time getting out.
Raising children to believe in any sort of mythology is child abuse.
Re:4 year olds and science (Score:1, Insightful)
It's exactly as believable as Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy.
Look at it from my point of view: What's irritating is that a bunch of supposed rational adults are attempting to run their lives according to a firm belief in the tooth fairy. They are trying to change laws and reshape society in a way that only makes sense if a crazed woman in a Tu-Tu steals teeth from small children and pays them for the privilage.
This is exactly how ridiculous your belief system seems to me. You'd find it irritating too.
> Do you truly believe that all Christians are simply morons?
Frankly - yes. Well - perhaps they were brainwashed as children - perhaps there are societal pressures - but I find them trivially easy to shrug off - I think rational human beings should think rationally. Yeah - morons.
> You might consider that there a quite a few counterexamples to that assertion.
Few - very, very few.
> That it is psychological weakness that brings us to accept this crutch?
I have no clue - it's totally irrational.
> You would have to be ignorant of the demands of faith.
There are no demands - you can simply choose to disbelieve at any time - what demands?
> That we are all hypocrites?
Certainly! If you truly believed that there was this supreme being who told you how to live your lives - you'd live them that way - you would fear to steal a pencil from the office supply closet at work. You would have to think twice about rather fancying that new car.
Religious people are no more careful in that regard than a typical atheist - that's certainly hypocracy.
> There you may have more ground, for a Christian is just as human as any other, and we all harbor a greater or lesser degree of hypocrisy. That we are judgemental? There again, many times we are, but that is our failing, and not that of our faith, or of our God. I ask you only to consider that some of the greatest minds in history, and of our own time, have been those of Christians. If those as learned and intelligent as they, who questioned all things mightily, found reason to believe, might they not have seen something you missed? Or were they all simply fools?
Blah, blah, god, blah, blah. I can't be bothered to parse this load of crap. You are a biological computer that's evolved from the primordial ooze by a series of coincidences, your goal is to pass your genes onto the next generation. Beyond that, be nice to people - have fun. The end.
(I'm posting as A.C because I don't happen to be at my PC right now - I'm not hiding - I'm Steve Baker and you can email me at steve AT sjbaker DOT org - but please don't try to convince me or anything - it just makes me even more angry at you idiots).