This book is included in the Family Affairs - Children, Parents & Home Economics section.
Introduction
This is a guide to doing fun and meaningful science in the classroom, after school program,
home or Girl Scout troop. Our hope is that doing enjoyable science, technology, engineering
and mathematics activities will foster enthusiasm for these subjects and that girls will consider
careers in related fields. It is one of the products of a three-year project funded by the National
Science Foundation called Girls in the SYSTEM whose aim was to improve science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education for girls aged 8-12. It brought
together the Sahuaro Girl Scout Council and five departments of the University of Arizona
(Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mathematics, Mining
and Geological Engineering, and the Southwest Institute for Research on Women in the
Women’s Studies Department). This partnership linked formal and informal educators in its
effort to reach girls, especially those from low-income and ethnic minority communities.
(Throughout this book any adults working with children are referred to as educators.)
By including parents, teachers and troop leaders, it connected the educational system with the
community. The components of the program were: STEM Academies, Girl Scout troop
programs, summer day camps, parent workshops, and mini-grants for leadership development.
In STEM Academies experienced teachers, pre-service teachers, Girl Scout troop leaders,
and parents received training in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and gender
equity. These workshops provided opportunities to work with innovative educational resources
that increased their knowledge and confidence in STEM, and provided instructional ideas for
their work with youth, placing emphasis on issues of gender equity.
In Girl Scout troop programs, STEM Academy participants facilitated the incorporation of
STEM activities into Girl Scout troop meetings during six-week sessions at selected sites. The
program was designed to stimulate and nurture girls’ interest in using methods of inquiry to
enhance their understanding of STEM. Facilitators used challenging hands-on STEM activities
that supported and expanded girls’ abilities to solve problems using the tools of scientific
investigation and their natural curiosity about how things work.
During the one-week summer day camps, participating adults provided engaging
activities that motivated children’s interest in STEM. In addition, the camps served as teaching
laboratories in which teachers and leaders implemented new teaching strategies with small
groups of children. Some of the weeks included boys in order to enable educators to analyze
and refine their own practices with regard to gender equity.
Parent workshops were incorporated into the Girl Scout troop setting and the summer
camps, as well as STEM Academies. The goal of reaching the parents was to inform them of
available resources to strengthen their children’s interest and engagement in STEM. The
workshops involved family members in STEM activities and provided information about women
in science careers. Parents were reminded of their significance in the academic preparation of
their children.
Mini-grants were awarded as leadership development opportunities to allow adult
participants to take initiative in extending the impact of the project. Some of the activities
funded were a field trip to the Pima Air and Space Museum, trips by a Tohono O’odham troop
to gather grasses used in traditional basket-making, and a suspension bridge construction day
for a troop in an outlying area.
Using This Guide
You can use this guide to encourage your children to investigate the world and to ask why
and how things work. Maybe they can find the answers on their own, which is the most
satisfying thing of all. As adults, some of us tend to jump in with the answer in our own
enthusiasm and curiosity. But when we can restrain ourselves, it is much more satisfying to
see the looks on young people’s faces when they make their own discoveries. Most of these
activities can be done at home, in the classroom, or the after school setting. Elementary
school teachers were a big part of this collaboration, and we are sure many took the ideas
straight from (or back to) the classroom. They would love for you to do the same.
If you are a troop leader reading this, it may be your first year as a Girl Scout leader, or you
may have been leading girls for years. If you are new, this guide will be useful when you
realize your next meeting is TONIGHT and you have not prepared an activity. If you already
have plenty of ideas on arts and crafts, songs, and games, this could encourage you to work
on some badges you may have shied away from in the past. You may be a camp director
looking for new themes for summer camp. Whatever the case may be, you will have some fun
with this guide, as you explore new subject areas with your children. Most of the activities take
45 minutes to an hour and a half. Be sure to use safety goggles where necessary and give
instructions on the safe use of tools prior to beginning any activity.
From Jennifer Rickard As A Troop Leader:
“But I Was Never Good In Science Or Math”
Please don’t be intimidated by the subject area. Personally, I took as little math and
science as possible to get through high school, went to college for a year, took eleven years off
and then graduated from college with a degree in “multi-disciplinary studies.” After I took
Algebra 1(both my freshman and sophomore years in high school), I took a year of Geometry
and was done with formal training in math forever. I took the science courses necessary to get
through college, taking mainly Anthropology, Art History and language courses, which I thought
at the time were more interesting. It’s funny; you never know what you will end up doing if you
keep an open mind!
I am now learning that science is great fun, and kids love it, because it means trying new
things, getting messy, and YES, sometimes burning things up or launching them great
distances into the air!
It’s Too Much Work
Science activities require no more planning than other activities. Don’t be concerned with
having everything set up ahead of time. Use the kid power in front of you. They want to do
something useful! My first year as an adult counselor at a Girl Scout summer camp, I was
watching an old pro. I think she was all of seventeen, but had been in Girl Scouts forever and
had probably spent a good deal of time watching her mom who had been a leader for years. I
was wondering how to keep about 10 kids (aged 6-8) occupied, while at the same time cooking
lunch for them in a solar oven. She gave every girl something to carry, and marched them
outside to a table near the solar oven. Each one had a job to do. Open this, pour that, sprinkle
this; it was great to watch. Then they put the creation in the oven and off they went to play a
game while lunch baked in the sun. Thus having a vested interest in the meal, they all at least
tried it when it was ready to eat! So, put the kids to work; they feel needed which is important,
they aren’t baked bored, which is also important, and the job or experiment gets done, by the
kids, which is very important!!
What if the Experiment Fails or I Don’t Know the Answer?
The next thing to keep in mind, which dovetails nicely with point one (no science training), is
that you need not have all the answers. In fact, if you don’t have the answers, you can’t jump
in with them, thereby ruining the surprises and discoveries for the kids! However this book will
give you some background and definitions regarding the science content in the activities, for
your own peace of mind. If you happen to have a science or engineering background yourself,
these definitions may bring things to a layperson’s level for you.
But if you know you read it, and can’t remember, and some sweet, trusting child looks up at
you with those liquid, brown eyes, and says, “WHY does the boat sink when it’s full of pennies,”
just smile and say, “What do YOU think?”
The main point of this informal science education is to get the kids thinking and enjoying the
process. We want kids to see that exploration and experimentation are fun and exciting.
Another great aspect of working with kids and science is this: Not all science experiments
turn out the way you expect. Some teachers tend to find this distressing, but it doesn’t bother
some of us at all. One time we had about 30 girls outside in 100-degree heat trying to make
sun prints on specially coated blue paper. The instructions were pretty basic: Go outside. Put
some object on the paper for five minutes or less. Rinse the paper in water. Let it dry. What
could go wrong? Well, we’re still not sure what did go wrong, but almost all the prints
disappeared and the paper just looked wavy and faded. We suspect that the Arizona sun in
summer was just a little bit too much for this paper. But, the point is this: the kids didn’t mind,
and the kids and adults all got to keep trying variations on the theme to see if we could get it to
work. Less time in the sun, less tme in the water, more time in the water, no water, dry them
inside, etc., etc., etc. This sort of experimentation teaches us not to give up, not to expect
perfection and to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
So, science is not like spelling, where the word is either spelled right or wrong. The
experiment can have the desired end result or not, but it has still been valuable in teaching us
methods in science, questions to ask, and love of trying new things.
How the Book is Organized
This book is divided into sections by subject theme. Each section has six or more activities
listed on a single theme such as solar energy, so that you can put together either a six-week
format or a one-week camp on a particular theme. If the actual activities are not here, for lack
of copyright permission, we have included names of web sites where you can find the same or
similar activities. In some cases, we have included original activities that we may have
modified for our use. For example, we included all the pages of the NASA activities and the
GEMS1 activities even though in many cases, we did less than what was suggested. If we
considered something too “schooly”, we often left out written portions of activities and just
discussed findings aloud.
We also tell you how we organized and planned our six-week sessions and one-week
camps. The clusters of activities by subject are valuable for the person who wants to pull
together a meaningful sequence of activities on a particular subject theme, or toward a Girl
Scout badge. However, the most essential and vital part of the book, in my opinion, is the
Criteria and Indicators for Successful Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Activities for Girls developed by the project staff (see pp. 9-11). By using these as a guideline,
you will choose the best activities to interest your particular group of kids and present them in
such a way as to captivate your young participants. In about six camps, boys participated, and
just for the record, these criteria and indicators work just as well for doing science with boys!
Materials
Most of the materials we used can be easily bought, donated, or found at home. Because
we used such large quantities of some things, wood was bought through a catalog and some
of the solar items were purchased over the Internet. But if you just keep some basic materials
on hand, you can pick up a couple of things specific to an activity and look like a magician,
pulling great activities out of your hat at a moment’s notice. Some good, basic items for your kit
are glue, scissors, rulers or measuring tape, felt-tipped markers, masking tape, eyedroppers,
pennies, paper, pencils, clay and basic tools (like screwdrivers, wire cutters and hammers). It’s
also essential to have a first aid kit and a roll of paper towels.
Table of Contents Introduction Doing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math With 8-12 Year Olds Criteria and Indicators for Successful Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Activities for Girls Organizing, Planning and Implementing a One-week Science Camp SYSTEM Summer Camp Format Organizing, Planning and Implementing a Six-week Program Links Between Activities and Girl Scout Badges Themes and Activities Chemical Engineering Silver Polish Play Dough Playground Oobleck Ice Cream and Freezing Point Depression Flight/Aerospace Engineering Rocket Glyph The Fantastic Garbage Bag Blow-UP! Become a Paper Helicopter Engineer Simple Parachute Balloons Aloft Balloon Rocket 3-2-1 POP! Paper Rockets Rocket Car Altitude Tracking Bottle Rocket Launcher Bottle Rocket Mathematics: Two Six-Week Formats Format 1: Scaling Down and Proportional Reasoning Format 2: Six Weeks of Math Disguised as Art, Puzzles, and Cooking! Tangram Puzzles Optical Art and Salsa Making Body Proportions M.C. Escher-Style Tesselations Making and Solving Puzzles Parent Night Math Puzzles Math Games Simple Machines Machine Detectives Pulleys Wheels, Axles, and Inclined Planes Gears Solar Energy Sun Prints Sun and Earth Solar Oven Solar Homes Building Model Houses The Solar House Experiment The Solar Water Heater Experiment Solar-Powered Cars Solar Still Wood Burning Viking Bearing Dial or Solar Stone Structures Exploring Structures - Different Shapes, Different Strengths Patterns for Building 3-D Shapes from Paper Newspaper Engineer The Yolk’s on You Adobe Bricks Technology Web Surfing Logo, Computers, Turtles, and Angle Measuring Tools Properties of Water Sink or Float Convection Hot and Cold Plankton Race Discovering Density Environmental Education: Build Your Own Aquifer Cool Groundwater Activity: Edible Earth Parfaits Water Drops on a Penny Girls in the SYSTEM Glossary Science Sites on the Internet Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics STEM Academy
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