HOW CAN I MAKE IT CHANGE?: CONSTRUCTIVIST CHEMISTRY

That week, I could not attend science session due to my illness; however, I followed the lesson from our book and ppt slides, so I have knowledge about how can I make it change: Constructivist chemistry. First of all, there is the definition that I want to mention it: Transformation. It is the term that reflects what children engaged in and focus ob when they play. Actually, there are different kinds of transformation types. Some of the transformations are physical; that is, it is about change the shape, form or substance of materials. Some of are symbolic. It means that children imagine the changes as an object or a person.

When I look at the categories of chemistry activities, I see that there are two categories and both of them involve change or transformation. The first one is Reconstruction. It is about rearrangement of parts and using structures in order to get a new structure. Actually, an outstanding feature of this type is that it provides children to see and act reversibility of the experiments. This is so important that reversibility focuses on the child's attention on the process of transformation. Other type is combination. That is, transformation experiences occurs as a result of combining materials. For example, color mixing activities are the popular experiments for young children. By that way, they find the possibility to combine more than one materials. during the activity, children do not only focused on changed color, however, they see how the process works and how combination occurs, so children can see the changing and the product.

In fact, when I examined my book, I saw that there are different kinds of way that we can show children changing materials, transformation and combination. I believe that simple chemistry activities such as mixing colors, creating bubbles, changing chain activity provides children how the matters changes easily. Therefore, children achieve the sense pf everything is not always stable. Moreover, I think that when children engage in changing or chemistry activities, they can feel themselves as a little scientists when playing. This situation provides teacher an appropriate observation environment and determine child's attention, ability and development.