Igniting the Spark

October 2007 Special Sections

Which Sneaker Is the Fastest?

Think of science as you would a foreign language: The earlier a child is exposed to the language, the more fluent and interested in it he or she will be. Early exposure to science gets kids excited about the subject long before they even start school. “If we haven’t gotten children excited about science to begin with,” says Kirsten Ellenbogen of the Science Museum of Minnesota, “and they’re entering the classroom uninterested, it’s going to be harder to make science interesting for them.”

It’s actually surprisingly easy—and fun—to foster kids’ scientific curiosity because science is everywhere—even in places you might not have considered. If you bake a cake with your child, let them see what happens if you take away the baking soda, if you substitute applesauce for eggs, or if you set the oven fifty degrees lower than the recipe suggests. Yes, you’re baking a cake (in some cases, a rather inedible one), but you’re also participating in a scientific experiment.

Consider everyday encounters a gateway to cultivating scientific curiosity. Why does the light come on when you flip the switch? How does the car run? Why do magnets stick to the refrigerator? Why are bubbles round? If your teenager is interested in skateboarding, research the design and materials that make the best boards and why. If you don’t know the answers to your kids’ questions, don’t worry—that’s part of the journey. “It’s okay for parents to say, ‘That’s a cool question. I don’t know. Let’s find out together,’” says Rebecca Schatz of The Works.

It’s easy to find answers. Take advantage of museums, libraries, newspapers, books, and the Internet. “There’s a huge educational infrastructure that exists in the world today and schools are only one part of it,” Ellenbogen says. “Your child’s learning experiences become stronger as you use more parts of the learning infrastructure.”

Nurturing our children’s interest in science is critical, but moving to the next level of inquiry—experimentation—is equally essential. Experimentation is the “what if” of science. Through scientific experiments, kids observe, develop, and prove (or disprove) theories, and reflect on why certain results were derived.

It’s easy to stage kid-friendly experiments—we’ve suggested several here and you’ll find more by visiting the resources listed in “The Science Zone” at the end of this supplement. When you experiment, you test and learn together. Measure rainfall and compare it to figures from the National Weather Service. Are your numbers similar? Why or why not? Or choose two brands of sneakers, and then run in each pair to see which shoe produces the faster time. Why was one faster? Was the experiment conducted under the same conditions both times?

When you can, complement science experiments from school with activities at home. “Take the experiment that occurred in the classroom, change one thing, and see what happens,” Ellenbogen suggests. “Learning about something the first time is good, but children learn so much more from doing it a second time and doing it differently.”

Such curiosity not only inspires learning, it also begets creativity—a necessity for tomorrow’s science workforce. “Our society doesn’t necessarily need smarter scientists, technicians, or engineers,” says Steve Jevning, founder of Leonardo’s Basement, a hands-on learning facility in Minneapolis. “We need creative ones—people who are comfortable taking risks and trying to solve problems that have been determined to be insolvable.

“The only way to foster an environment that encourages young people to think in those terms is to give them unfettered freedom to explore.”