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I'm Jackie.
I care for six children in my home, ages three to five.
This week we are exploring water and how it moves.
As the children do their explorations,
they're doing a lot of science talk.
By that I mean they're asking questions, describing
what they see and wondering why things are happening
the way they're happening.
Have you ever seen a river?
- Yeah. - Yes.
- What can you tell me about rivers?
And I can write it down.
Before we started our exploration,
I asked the children what they already knew about water.
Marcello, have you ever seen a river?
What does it look like?
- Wavy water.
- What can you tell me about a river?
- I'm thinking.
- You're thinking, okay, take your time.
What can you tell me?
- The water has waves because the wind is blowing the water.
- One of the first things we did was an outdoor activity.
I took the hose out in the backyard and told the kids
I was going to turn it on to make a little river.
And I asked some open-ended questions to get them
to think about water a little more deeply.
What do you think is going to happen
when we turn the water on?
- It's going to come here to here.
It's going to come right there.
- It's going to travel through the hose?
I'm going to turn the water on.
Can you tell me what's happening?
- It's going, the acorn, if I put this on it.
It goes forward.
- What happened to your leaf, Mateo?
- I put this in there.
- And then what happened?
- It just floats.
- Is that floating? - Yeah.
- Open-ended questions are so effective
because they ask children to explain what they're thinking.
What's happening to the water?
- It's getting yellow.
- It's getting yellow?
- It's going down.
It's moving.
Down the hill.
- It's moving, it's flowing.
I had the children draw pictures of what they had done
and present them to the group.
It was another way for them to describe, explain
and share their ideas about water.
Can you tell us about your picture, Elizabeth?
- This goes around here.
- Oh, I see.
Can you tell us about your river, Mateo?
- It's going up here.
- I like the pink and the purple, Mateo.
- I know.
Another activity that generated a lot of science talk
was floating and sinking.
I set up a tank of water indoors and we tested objects
to see which ones sink...
(gasps)
- It sinks!
- What happened?
How did it sink?
Why?
- Because it's big.
- ...and which ones float.
- It floats!
- This was a great opportunity for me to introduce
some science vocabulary.
When we squeeze the whale we're taking the air out.
You want to try, Janeta, and tell us about it?
What did you squeeze out of the whale?
- Bubbles.
- I love hearing children using science talk,
because it's important for them to develop science skills.
And it's great that they can use science talk
at such a young age.
- It floats!