FIRST WEEK JOURNAL

IMPORTANCE OF SCIENCE TEACHING

In our first course, I gained new perspectives about science teaching at early childhood period. Actually, when I read the handout which is about developmental areas of 36- 72 months of children, I realized that science teaching supports all of these areas. At the beginning of the lesson, I thought the science teaching is necessary because of cognitive development but after the lesson, my ideas partly changed. Now, I think that all areas are supported, but especially language development are mostly affected from science teaching. I claim that when children begin to interested with science, they will start to wonder, start to think and try to answer questions in their brain. This situation causes beginning discussion and thus communication. That is, children will begin to ask questions to teachers and friends and discuss the different points of views. So, their language development improves very well. I try to say, all of the developmental areas are supported but I think especially language development drew my attention. Teaching science also gives children chance to improve their creativity, self esteem and ways of thinking. In brief, in our first week, I learned the significance of science teaching during early childhood education. It is sure that information that I learned will be efficient guide for my future classes.

In addition, in our lab. session, we did several experiments to teach basic scientific skills. Let's examine the experiments and their contributions one by one.

• Our first experiment is about how we can measure the volume of objects. I think in this experiment we also teach to children some geometric shapes. For example, we can ask to children "what this object (showing hexagon) looks like?" With this way we provide them thinking and express their ideas.
• Another experiment is about one of the basic element of scientific process: inferring. We put the different kinds of shapes in a box and try to infer their names, shapes etc. I think this activity is so beneficial for young children for gaining inferring ability.
• Our third experiment's aim is to teach children: prediction. For this experiment we used potatoes and scales. Before we measured their weight, we tried to predict which one is more heavy.
• Then we did an experiment with lots of pen and pencils. We classified them into six groups according to their different features. I think this experiment is so effective that teach children basic seriation skills.
• Another experiment's aim is observing. We observed two potatoes and tried to find differences

So, all of these experiments are so beneficial at teaching science to young children. Because they are enjoyable, all of them can take part in my curriculum.