Outdoor spaces- whether your backyard or a local nature area- are the perfect setting for preschoolers to learn scientific inquiry through play. While exploring alongside children, parents and teachers can act as facilitators, guiding children in creating their own science experiments.
I (founder Liana Grey) put this to the test at home with my twin sons.
One early summer morning, we went outside and observed squirrels near a tree with berries in various stages of ripening. The kids noticed that some berries were red, and others were green. They collected berries in a bowl to feed the squirrels “breakfast.”
“Which berries do you think the squirrels like better?” I asked.
One of my sons guessed that squirrels like green berries; the other insisted the red berries would be preferable because they look “sweet.” The boys tried to open the berries to see what was inside, and noticed that the red berries were soft and filled with seeds. The green berries were tough and difficult to open. They started counting the green berries, and that gave me an idea for a science experiment:
“How about we leave the bowl of berries here all day and night, and see which ones the squirrels eat: the green or the red?” I suggested. Would this experiment truly be accurate? No! Unless we set up cameras in the yard, we wouldn’t know for sure which animal had eaten the berries, assuming they were eaten at all. But it still got my sons into the spirit of scientific inquiry.
The next day, we checked to see which berries remained in the bowl. All the berries were gone! I followed up by repeating the initial question: “so, which color berries did they squirrels eat? Do we know if they like red or green?” The boys quickly came to the conclusion that the backyard critters are fans of both.