Science is all around us

Science is part of our lives and learning about science helps us understand our amazing world. We depend on science in lots of ways every day, so it’s important for children to learn about it.

Supervising your child during all experiments is advised.

You don’t need fancy equipment. Many experiments use materials found around the house.

If we know about science it helps us to:

• make good decisions based on facts we can trust
• understand the world around us
• understand the language and nature of science
• investigate and come to conclusions based on evidence
• think about and question what people or companies say.
  (Goodrum, Hackling and Rennie 2001)

Become a science detective

Science helps your child understand how our wonderful world works. Science discoveries are fun as well as educational.

Professor David Blair, 2007 Premier’s Scientist of the Year, says science is fun, exciting and makes for a fabulous fulfilling life. He has earned a world wide reputation for his work on gravity waves.

His latest amazing project is the world’s first purpose built leaning tower at the Gravity Discovery Centre in Gingin. It is based on the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy and is open for families to explore.

“Science is a bit like being a detective. You have to solve problems, explain puzzles, invent things and expand your mind,” he says.

“You can help your children do things and make things; help them find answers to their questions. Instead of watching television or playing computer games, encourage them to go outside and explore. Above all let them use their imaginations. This way they will become smarter, more creative and healthier too.”

Science is about me!

Science explains how my body works.

• The body is amazing and science helps us understand the parts and systems of our body such as blood, our skeleton, our muscles and how we move.
• Science explains why I look like other people in my family. Science tells us about our hair and eye colour, our height and unique features and abilities.

Consumer science

Which product is the best? Test two or three different brands.

• Paper towel: Using a medicine measure, pour measured amounts of coloured water on to plates and see which type of paper towel absorbs most liquid.
• Jelly crystals: Make two jellies and see if the jelly crystals of one brand dissolve faster than the other.
• Toothpaste: Buy plaque disclosing tablets from a chemist to find out the most effective toothpaste. (Eat some plain biscuits then chew 1 tablet and note the amount of plaque on your teeth. Brush your teeth for 1 minute with toothpaste A, rinse and see how much plaque is left. Repeat the activity at the same time the next day, eating the same number of biscuits and brushing for 1 minute with toothpaste B.)
• Fat in potato chips: Crush 5 chips into a brown paper bag with a rolling pin. How much oil appears on the brown paper bag? Measure the size of the spot. How does the fat content compare between brands? Compare this to the information on the food label. Which brand has the least amount of fat?

Discuss the claims made by companies. Are they accurate? For example, some makers of chocolate chip biscuits claim a percentage of chocolate in each cookie. How can you work this out? Are their claims correct?

(Weigh one biscuit. Break it up and carefully remove the choc chips. Weigh the choc chips and work out the percentage with a calculator. Divide the weight of choc chips by the weight of biscuit then press = and x 100).

Use your results to guide what brands you buy.

Involve the family

Help your child think about and look carefully at things by trying some of these activities together.

• Play Who/What am I?
  Choose an animal, plant or object in the garden. Your child asks questions that you answer only with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Encourage them to use descriptions based on the structures of the animal or plant. For example, Does it have fur? Does it have four legs? Does it have leaves? Does it have fruit?
• Collect 10 objects and cover them with a towel.
  Give your child a quick peek for 20 seconds then cover them again. How many things can they name? Increase the number of objects and shorten the length of the peeks for added challenges.
• Talk with your child about science.
  Use news stories as a source of conversation topics.
• Discuss claims made by companies in TV, magazine and newspaper advertisements.
  Find out about the two 14 year old schoolgirls in New Zealand who forced Ribena to stop advertising high vitamin C content after they proved the claims were false. Be wary and question claims made in advertisements especially in the cosmetics industry. Discuss how you could test their claims.
• Encourage your child to do their own investigations.
  An investigation is the scientific process used to find out things. Your child can perform investigations for family members as the audience. Ask the audience to predict what will happen. Do the experiment and encourage your child to explain what was observed. We call this process Predict, Observe, Explain (POE).
• Ask questions such as:
  What do you predict will happen? What did you observe or see? Can you explain why that happened?

Did you know?
Observing often requires using all the senses of touching, seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling – although sometimes in science it can be dangerous to smell and taste.

Science in the home

When you are cooking talk about what could happen if you change an ingredient. Talk about the effect of heat on ingredients. Observe and talk about the changes you see.

When washing the dishes, talk about what detergent does to the fat when washing up plates or pans.

(Detergents increase the wetting ability of water by reducing the surface tension so it interacts more easily with the molecules of the fat and takes them off the plate.)

When putting away the shopping talk about how many forms of corn you could have in the pantry. Why do they look (and behave) so differently?

• Cornflakes (Each grain of corn is cooked, rolled and toasted.)
• Corn on the cob (It is cooked as the whole ear of corn.)
• Cornflour (It is cooked and ground very finely to form white powdery starch.)
• Popping corn (It is a special variety of flint corn grown especially for popping when heated.)
• Corn chips (It is steamed, soaked, ground, made into dough, cut into shapes and cooked.)

Science in the garden

Share, observe and talk about things around the garden with your child.

• Germinate seeds and plant them in the garden. Slide broad bean seeds down the inside of a glass jar of soil, so you can easily see the seeds. Water lightly and put the jar where it gets light and warmth from the sun. Check daily to see what happens.
• Compost vegetable scraps and breed worms. Conduct an experiment to see how worms help to improve soil. Fill a large, clean glass jar with layers of damp sand, compost and soil making each layer about 1 cm deep. Add some worms and put the jar in a dark place. Keep damp, not wet, and check every few days and see how the layers change. Talk about this with your child. Return the worms to your garden when you have finished.

 The shed holds lots of interesting tools that you can talk about together such as:

• examples of levers such as the wheelbarrow, pliers, spade
• how the different tools in the shed make work easier for us, such as an axe. (It is a wedge that makes it easier to split wood.)

Science in our environment

Roger Harris is a teacher and manages Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre. He won the 2007 Premier’s Prize for Excellence in Science Communication Outside the Classroom.

Roger is passionate about the environment thanks to his father. “My dad was a farmer and he used to get off the tractor so we could track down an echidna or carefully dissect a flower. I caught my love of the natural world from him,” he says.

Roger says parents have an important role to play.

“You don’t have to be a scientific expert. Your enthusiasm is what your child needs, as well as the opportunity to get up close with nature. Spark their interest and then they can go and look things up,” he says.

“If we as parents don’t influence the way our children think, facebook and myspace will do that for us.”

Help our world? Yes, we can!

Here are some ways to protect our environment and reduce the impact of climate change.

• Switch off (electrical appliances) before you take off.
• Reduce, re-use, recycle (in that order).
• Compost green waste to improve the soil in your garden and grow vegetables – you can’t beat fresh, organic produce!
• Enjoy a ‘water wise’ garden full of native plants and the local fauna they attract.
• Walk or ride a bicycle where possible instead of using the car.
• Live more with less. Slow the impact we have on the environment, ecosystems and biodiversity by asking the question Do I/we really need this?

What we do today has a big impact on future generations, especially regarding climate change.

Did you know?
The natural environment provides the important life support systems for human beings. We cannot live without the ‘ecosystems services’ such as clean air, water, food and medicine.

Science is the way of the future

Science has made a huge difference to our lives through areas such as health (vaccinations to control diseases); environment (water recycling and desalination); work/ school (electricity and computers); and transport (more efficient cars and aircraft).

Science also helps our economy grow through clever ideas and new products. Science can be trusted because it explains things that have been tested and proven.

Science will help solve our environmental problems, food shortages and the fuel crisis. Science is needed to invent, test and refine new and better ways of doing things that will benefit all of us and our world.

Allan Whittome is a teacher at Badgingarra Primary School who won the 2007 Premier’s Science Award for Primary Teaching. Allan involves his students in projects that include permaculture, worm farms, astronomy and forensic science.

He believes in combining science and technology. His students have raced in competitions using carbon dioxide dragsters, hydrogen powered cars and are currently involved in model formula one racers.

In each case, students have constructed their model cars and then used science investigations to evaluate the effectiveness of these cars.

“Experiment with your child. Enjoy it! Learn with your child and find out the answers together. There are so many exciting things that you can do together,” he says.

Experiments and things to do together

Don’t stop once you have made the slime. Investigate:

• the effect of temperature on slime (warm it by rubbing with your hands, cool it by placing it in the fridge)
• how far it can stretch before breaking • what happens if we change the amount of water or psyllium husks used.

Look at the night sky at the same time each night for one month and track the position and shape of the moon. Note any changes you see. Note the direction the moon rises in each night. Talk about what causes the different shapes of the moon.

Set up your own weather station and compare your readings to the official results in the weather report after the news on television or in the newspaper. Include a:

• rain gauge
• wind vane – you can make one together
• thermometer to see how hot or cold it gets.

Download a pdf version of Fun with science Years 4 to 7.