Some scientific learning will occur in all indoor areas of the setting. It is a useful exercise for teams of practitioners to discuss the opportunities they are offering children when planning provision, perhaps highlighting these on written long-term plans.
The way in which areas are organised and equipped will significantly affect the learning that takes place and, as with the outdoor area, teams need to think carefully about the resources they provide in order to promote scientific learning. There will be some areas of the nursery that are particularly rich in scientific opportunities. The following ideas focus on these areas: Food preparation area
* Daily routines such as preparing fruit with children can lead to scientific discussions and further investigations. Allow children opportunities to explore the fruit using their senses and to make comparisons - for example, discuss how the orange peel feels different to the apple peel. The discovery of apple and other pips is an ideal starting point for a planting activity and investigation of growth. Juice from fruits can be collected and made into drinks and a lemon squeezer is a useful and inexpensive piece of equipment.
* Milk time can also provide scientific learning opportunities for children. Comparing milk stored in the fridge with milk drunk at room temperature will lead to interesting discussions about temperature. Further investigations could include heating up milk and making milk lollies.
Questions such as 'Where do you think our milk comes from?' can challenge children's thinking and lead to activities where the children have to find out the answer. Making milk shakes encourages children to talk about flavour and colour changes.
* Cooking is an ideal medium through which to look at change. When baking cakes, buns and biscuits, give children time to explore the ingredients using all their senses. Encourage them to observe what happens when the ingredients are mixed together and support them in finding out how heat changes the mixture irreversibly. Also use baking activities to investigate physical changes that can be reversed, such as melting chocolate.
* Prepare vegetables, fruit and salad vegetables grown in the nursery garden with children. Encouraging them to eat 'home-grown' produce will reinforce their understanding of where our food comes from, and probably result in new 'taste experiences'.
Note Always be aware of hygiene and safety issues with food. Assess risk factors and take steps to reduce or eliminate these beforehand.
Paint area
* Give children plenty of opportunities to mix their own paint. Adding water to powder paint, and stirring it in, will enable children to observe what happens when two materials are mixed and to determine the consistency of their paint mixture. Provide other materials that can be added to the paint such as sand and glue so that children can experiment with consistency and texture effects.
* Encourage children to experiment with mixing colours and support them in working out 'formulae' such as when we mix red and yellow together, we always make orange.
* If you provide both easels and a flat surface for paint activities, encourage children to question why paint sometimes dribbles down the paper on the easel, but not on a table. Does the paint still dribble when we display dry paintings on the wall? Ask children what steps they could take to prevent the paint running. Encourage children to find out what happens when they blow through a straw into watery paint. Does the same thing happen if the paint is thick?
Note Resist the temptation to rush children into making marks on paper.
Allow them plenty of time for exploration and investigation when mixing paint. Some children become fascinated by the effects of mixing materials and colours in a palette and are not interested in making representations on paper. Learning experiences do not have to have a concrete outcome to be valid or valuable. Use a camera to record those special 'eureka moments'!
Water area
* This area can offer children valuable opportunities for learning about forces and the properties of water. Provide equipment such as siphons, pumps, funnels, sieves, water wheels, tubing, lengths of plastic piping and guttering, plastic balls, marbles or pebbles and a range of containers. If space allows, provide water trays at different levels to enable children to construct waterways and systems and to find out what happens to water on an incline (such investigations may be more practical in the outdoor water area). Find out which materials float and which sink. Make boats with children and use them to transport small-world people across the water tray.
* Use the water tray to raise children's awareness of colour and light. Add food colouring or Brusho inks (available from suppliers of art materials), glitter and sequins to the water.
* Plan for children's learning about freezing and melting. Add ice cubes that contain items such as buttons, pebbles, shells or beads, to the water (do not let children suck them). As the ice melts the items will be released. Ask questions to arouse children's curiosity and extend their thinking such as 'What do you think will happen to the ice when we put it in the water? Which take longer to melt, the big or the small cubes? How could we turn the water back into ice? Do you think the ice cubes will float? Do the pebbles float when they are released from the ice?'
Malleable materials
* Make play dough (see recipe, page 22) with children, involving them in the measuring and mixing of ingredients and encouraging them to comment on changes they notice during the mixing and heating. Encourage children to handle the dough,and explore its properties. Provide tools that enable them to experiment with texture, consistency and shape. Add colours (use food colouring), smells (such as peppermint or vanilla essence) and other materials (such as small pebbles or glitter) to stimulate the senses.
* Introduce children to clay, allowing them opportunities for exploration before suggesting more focused modelling. Teaching children about how to store clay correctly can be a valuable scientific learning experience in itself. When they have finished with the clay, encourage them to make it into a ball, help them to indent a thumbhole in the clay and then store it in an airtight container. Ask them to compare clay that has been stored in this way with clay that is left out over time. If you have access to a kiln, fire children's models; if not, their clay work will dry out and harden, when left exposed to the air.
* Mixing cornflour and water together is a simple but compelling activity guaranteed to engage children and provide a wealth of hands-on opportunities for scientific exploration. Placing the mixture in a large, shallow builder's tray (available quite cheaply from builder's merchants) brings added advantages: the children can work co-operatively on a large scale, since five or six can access the tray at one time; they can ask each other questions and develop rich descriptive language. Depending on the amount of water added, the mixture varies from very runny to quite stiff.
At its most fascinating, it appears to be wet but, when handled or cut with a tool, responds like a dry material. It can be rolled into a ball but when the ball is placed back on the tray, it runs out like a liquid. Colouring the water can add to the learning experience.
Workshop
* The workshop should be a place where children can explore materials.
Provide a range of materials such as fabrics, threads, papers, card, coloured acetates, wood, foil, cork, cotton wool. Store the materials in baskets on open shelving so that children have easy access. Encourage them to talk about their observations through the appropriate senses as they handle the materials. Support them in learning about the properties of different glues and the functions of tools. Allow them the freedom to experiment when making models and to learn through 'mistakes', asking questions such as 'Why did that happen?' and 'What could you do/change to make sure that it doesn't happen again?' Only when children have had these exploratory experiences are they able to make informed decisions and choices when designing and making for a specific purpose.
* Provide a range of wheels (different sizes, materials) and axles and encourage children to build their own vehicles. Look at the effects of using various wheels, altering inclines, and adding weights to the vehicle.
