Now, when it comes to certain projects that are designed for KS1/2 making their way down to EYFS I find this quite hard, however my mind may just have been changed a little. In my current school we have linked up to a local science centre and were tasked with creating a poster (to present) about a chosen science experiment. Now, having taught mostly in EYFS when thinking of a science experiment that would relate to the children in my current class, I struggled a little. If I do something like this, then I always want to make it meaningful and purposeful for the children, so I did the usual thing and went to Google and typed in science experiments. I have done a couple of these before, but the experiments were short lived. I’m not totally sure how this happened, however one day I came up with an idea linked to our current overarching theme ‘all this work, but who can help’, similar to ‘people who help us’, well this particular week we were looking at the role of a dentist and a child in my class told me that they like to drink coke. After the discussion about how it’s bad for your teeth, I thought about the experiment where you look at how much sugar are in different types of drinks and measure this out. But after some further thoughts, I felt that this again may be a little short lived. However, after researching some science experiments linked to tooth decay I think I finally found one that would suit us.
https://www.science-sparks.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Tooth-Decay-and-Egg-Experiment.pdf
This experiment involved putting eggs into containers of different types of drinks and observing if the egg would decay. You could then follow this on by adding toothpaste to a part of the egg to see the effects of this, but due to time constraints we didn’t do this part of the experiment. The point of this being that the egg shells are similar to the enamel on your teeth. So after talking about the role of dentists and the child saying that they like to drink coke, I thought it’s be a great opportunity to complete this experiment. The chosen liquids were coke (due to this child’s confession), coffee (as lots of children tell me this is what their parents drink) and water (the healthier choice!).
Recently I have been lucky enough that one of my parents found an old fish tank for me, which I turned into a ‘curiosity cube’, this would mean that children are able to observe what is in the cube during their free flow play and keep coming back to it, great for looking at observations over time. So, first I got the resources for the experiment and used a carpet session to show the children what the experiment was and we discussed having to observe over a few days to see any results. What happened next I didn’t predict? One child in my class piped up and said that the coke and coffee looked the same in the glass, so how could we tell the difference? I asked the children what they thought we could do, great resources let’s label them! So I got 3 children to come up and label the glasses. We then talked about how the children were not allowed to touch the eggs, but they were able to look at them. I posed the question to the children of ‘how can we make sure other people know not to touch what’s in the cube’, again some great answers, but we thought about writing them some notes next to the cubes. Luckily, a few days before I bought some chalkboard pens, which allows us to write on glass too, so I got a couple of children to come up and write messages on the cube. They wrote things (phonetically) such as ‘our experiment’ and ‘do not touch’. All of which I didn’t even plan, the ideas and inspiration for writing came from the children. This always fills me with joy when children find a desire and purpose for writing because it becomes so much more meaningful to them!
So, we left the experiment in our curiosity cube and observed it over time. Each day I would ask one of the children to record the results in our results book. They would write things such as ‘the coffee hasn’t decayed’ and ‘the coke is brown’. Another great purposeful writing taking place. We also looked at some key vocabulary and learnt about the word ‘decay’ and what this means, we then added this to our vocabulary wall and kept coming back to this to make sure children fully understood it. We continued to loosely discuss the experiment and whenever the children would see the cube, they would share their knowledge with each other. You can already see the cross curricular links happening, not to mention the characteristics of effective learning. So many predictions, links and investigations taking place. Next, I talked to the children about making predictions and what they thought might happen to our experiment. I decided to record some of these predictions, ready to turn into QR codes to add to my poster.
After observing over a week long period, we finally took the eggs out to see exactly what had happened in each liquid and if any of the liquids began to make the egg decay. This was such a great experience and I would highly recommend you do something similar because the engagement was phenomenal! Again, something I couldn’t predict. So we took the eggs out of their liquids to see what had happened. We concluded that the water did nothing to the egg, so it must be healthy. The coffee turned the egg a dark brown colour and the coke had started to make the egg decay, as it had some little dots and cracks in it. I should mention that throughout this experiment we continuously took photos of what was happening so that we could share on our online platform with parents so that they could discuss with the children at home too, which was so important as the children were so engaged. Once discussed with the children we put the eggs back into the curiosity cube for the children to share and discuss with others. I then asked a couple of children to explain the results of the experiment, whilst I recorded this and could turn it into a QR code for our poster.
Our final job was to create the poster and present this to our Headteacher (it will later be presented to the science centre for judging). So I printed the photos, got the children to cut and stick them on to the poster, added the QR codes of prediction and explanations of the results, I added the pages from our observation book and then asked a couple of my more able writers to write a sentence about what each egg looked like at the end of the experiment. The end result turned out better than I ever imagined! When it came to presenting to our Headteacher, it’s always tricky with younger children because everyone wants to talk all at the same time, so to try and avoid this and to create a clear presentation, I assigned some children parts to explain to our Headteacher, which made it clear what would happen, I also asked one of the children to be responsible for using the Ipad to scan the QR codes to show her the video (we’ve used QR codes a lot within the classroom and the children have had lots of training on how to use these). Well the children presented their results with such passion and clarity - I was so proud! Due to current circumstance we have not been allowed to have parents into the school building, however I managed to add the poster to the outside of my classroom and sent a message to parents asking them to talk to share this with their children. I also told the children that the first thing they needed to do when they left was to show their parents their poster, which they were all proud to do!
This was truly such a valuable experience for the children and one I probably would not have thought about if the opportunity had not arisen. I hope to do more long term observational experiments such as this to further engage this investigatory, cross curricular learning. If you are ever in doubt of whole school activities and how to make them work, don’t just pass them off, give them some thought and make them work for you and your children. I now have many children who want to be scientists when they grow up!
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