On April 8, 2014, I attended the Dancing Like a Scientist workshop presented by Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Amanda Layton Whiteman. The workshop was sponsored by the Children's Service Division of the Maryland Library Association.
Amanda taught us about the six components of pre-school scientific inquiry: observation, classification, experimenting, predicting, drawing conclusions, and communicating ideas. She also taught about observational language, or terms describing lines, size, spatial relationships, and body part relationships. She then combined all of these aspects and presented possible ideas of how to use them in storytime. I realized that, although I am not necessarily scientifically inclined, there are still fun things that I can do in storytime to introduce science concepts.
My favorite idea, which I really want to try in storytime is to cut pieces of fluffy white yarn for the children to use to make their own cloud shapes. The pre-schoolers would go wild, but would have fun doing it. Everyone who attended also coveted Amanda's metal chime wand- we need to get one for storytime!
Abigail Andrews
Children's Dept. in Hagerstown
No comments:
Post a Comment