Science is an exciting subject for students to learn. It allows students to explore, investigate, think critically and delve into a subject or experiment. They gain an understanding of the world around them, how things are created, how things work and why things look the way they do. Science allows the students to have a firsthand experience of what they are learning about, which increase their comprehension of the concept or idea being taught. The students also have a better recollection of the activities they do on their own, then those activities they watch the teacher demonstrate. Science can often be an outlet for the reluctant reader or poor math student because science can be trial and error, allowing for mistakes to be made.
Kindergarteners enjoy the kinesthetic activities that science provides them. They like to play with things to see how they feel, smell and sometimes taste, even when they should not. Science is an excellent way for students to explore using their five senses. The five senses allow a student to make their descriptions more vivid and understandable. Young students are very curious about the world around them and often want to know the why of so many things. Science allows the students to explore through hands on activities, thus engaging all students, even those with limited attention spans.
Five and six year olds are excited about eating, they always want to know when its time for lunch or snack. Food is a way to motive students into learning about science concepts. Incorporating food to a unit on changes allows the students to be able to use their hands and safely taste mixtures, even if they may not be very appealing. When students are active participants in creating a recipe, they become more excited and have a sense of pride and accomplishment. They are able to see what they have made and enjoy eating it as well. They are also able to recollect how the recipe was made and cannot wait to share their part in its creation.
The students will discover how ingredients transform depending on what they are mixed with. Flour and baking soda will react differently based on the liquid that is added to them. The experiments will show the students that not all solids and liquids react or change in the same way. They will discover how a liquid can become a solid and a gas. They will also discover how temperature can transform a food into something completely different from the way it originally started out as.
The students will also discover how a seed grows. They will watch as a seed transforms into something very different and edible. They will watch as a radish seed splits apart and opens and begins to grow. Explaining that not all foods begin the same way we see them before we eat them. Most foods have to change in some way in order for people to be able to digest and eat them.