Life Science

Life Science

Life science investigations focus on the study of living things and their habitats. It makes the most sense, in terms of concrete learning and consideration of prior experience, to begin the study of living things with those that are most relevant and in closest proximity to your setting. So, for example, if you live in a rural area, you might study farm animals and local crops; if you live on the coast, you might study ocean animals, reptiles, and beach grasses.

Important life science concepts for young children to learn include the facts that:

• All living things grow and change over time.
• Living things need food.
• When living things die, they decompose.
• Fossils are the remains of living things.
• Living organisms have systems that make them work.
• Living things inhabit and interact with different kinds of environments.

Plants

Children learn about plants of different kinds with first-hand experience by growing, examining, and observing them and using them for different purposes. Even in programs without enough outdoor space for a traditional garden, vegetables and flowers can be grown in containers or a terrarium, in window boxes, or from seed or bulbs in pots or trays in the classroom. Some plants grow in soil, others in sand, and some even in water. Children can observe the stages of growth from germination through the plant’s life cycle.

They can learn about how plants distribute nutrients by putting celery in water with food coloring and watching as the color moves through the stalk and leaves. They can measure growth, care for, draw, and photograph plants as they grow. In short, gardening provides many opportunities for learning. For example, Ms. Mary’s preschool class has a garden receiving varying amounts of sun/shade during the day; children wondered if all their bean plants would grow to the same height. This question led to a controlled experiment that continued over two months as children tracked the growth of plants mostly shaded and those mainly in the sun. These same children went to a nearby park and harvested bamboo stalks which their teachers helped them fashion into trellises of different kinds to train their (pole) bean plants, eventually growing a “bean house” big enough to put a small table and chairs inside.

At the end of the school year, the children wondered aloud how big the weeds would become over the summer, so they were left unattended; to the children’s delight, when they returned in the fall they had a “forest” of weeds, through which they trampled paths. They made “houses” and “forts” in this forest and enjoyed it for several weeks before pulling it out to begin a new garden. Finally, these children wondered what would happen to a pumpkin they had carved if they left it in the garden. Over the entire winter they documented its decomposition until it eventually hardened into a petrified, shrunken shell.

Children love flowers and can collect, press, dissect, and classify them by color, petal type, etc. They can sort and classify seeds, pods, and leaves; make collages or rubbings of different kinds of plants; cut or slice vegetables and fruits; and make prints to compare shapes and characteristics.

Similarly, to learn about trees, a “tree cookie” (cross-sectional slice of a tree trunk) provides opportunities to measure circumference and count rings. Planting or adopting a tree in a city park or finding and photographing the oldest tree in the community helps children begin to understand the long-term investment that trees represent. If there is a tree on the playground, to help them learn how trees experience changes over time, children can collect all the twigs that fall from it for a month; they can press leaves between sheets of wax paper or assemble photographs of the tree taken at different times of the year.

Animals

One organized approach to the study of animals is by habitatsea, farm, jungle, desert, mountains, etc. As with plants, learning about animals can be a hands-on experience. Indoors, activities such as incubating eggs; taking care of a class pet, aquarium, or ant farm; and dissecting owl pellets all offer opportunities for children to observe the life cycle. There are also many activities for the outdoors, such as planting milkweed to attract monarch butterflies, installing a bird feeder on the playground, or doing a pond study to observe the stages of life. National Geographic offers crittercams at different global locations that enable children to observe wild animals in their natural surroundings in real time.

Children can practice close observation skills by examining insect specimens or making them with bugs they catch or find themselves. They can apply what they learn to sort and classify plastic toy animals and construct habitats for them; they can also make collections of animal pictures and then match them in different ways, such as baby and adult animals.

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