I recently shared about how we explored the tools of a scientist. Â Today I’m sharing another activity that we did with our pre-k students to extend our study of the tools scientists use and to encourage them to “think like a scientist”…
In the book “Meet Einstein” we learned that scientists like to ask lots of questions. Â As we all know, asking questions is one of the many things children do best but when put on the spot, coming up with a question can be quite challenging…
Deborah created this fun and interesting game to encourage the children to begin to think like scientists and to practice the skills of asking a thoughtful question. Each child had their own paper game board, with spaces that formed the shape of a question mark…
There was a stack of cards with question marks on one side and question words, such as “when, who, where, what, how, why, and do” on the other side of the card. Â A few cards just had the letter “Q” on them which meant you could ask any kind of question you wanted instead of starting with the question word…
One at a time, the children picked a card and Deborah would read the word aloud for them. After drawing a card, the child was invited to come up with a question that started with the word on his or her card. Each time a question was asked (and sometimes answered) everyone colored a space on their question mark game board…
The children did a remarkable job with this. I mean, these kids really know how to ask questions! Â Once each square of the question mark game board was filled in, the game was over…
Next, the children were given blank question mark cards and invited to once again make up their own questions. Â Deborah wrote their questions on their blank cards and the children drew a picture to illustrate their questions…
Again, we had some excellent questions being asked and the illustrations were fabulous! Â Some of the questions we heard were, “Why do dogs chase cats? How do ducks swim? Â How do snorkels make you breathe under water?”
“Why do people need to ride on lions? and “Why do people go poo pooh?”
Okay, so maybe some of the questions were a little silly, but we didn’t care. What matters is that they understood the concept of asking a question and came up with all kinds of original questions that would challenge any scientist!…
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