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I'm Jackie.
I care for six children in my home, ages three to five.
All my kids like doing science, but they all have
different ages, they come from different backgrounds,
they have different interests and abilities.
And they bring all that into our exploration.
I try to vary the activities we do
according to the children's learning styles.
Some of my kids like to draw and I had them trace
their friends' shadows as they posed in different positions.
Some of my kids are auditory learners.
So I made sure to give them lots of opportunities
to describe shadows.
- This is shiny and it's shiny on the table.
- Oh...
At snack time, we discovered we could use the overhead lights
to make shadows on the countertop.
I helped the younger children position their hands
so they could see their shadows.
But the older children figured it out quickly on their own.
They even took it further by trying to make animal shapes
with their hands.
- I made a bird.
- Can we all make a bird on the shadow?
What color is your shadow?
- Black.
-- Black.
Throughout all our explorations, I try to make sure
that I take into account the students' different
cultural backgrounds.
- I think I'll wear my small ears to show my respect
for this momentous occasion.
- For this unit, we talk about how different cultures
make shadow puppets.
Then we watched videos of shadow puppet stories
from around the world.
The kids loved it.
Then they created their own shadow puppet stories.
- Let's go somewhere.
- You want to go get pizza?
- Let's go get pizza.
- Oh, that was the end of the story, friends.
- Even though all the children that come to me have
their own personality, I find that all children
are naturally curious about science.
So it's not hard to get them excited about the science we do.