Informal Science Experience

As a kid I always enjoyed science. I like to be outside, and I was always curious about how things worked. However, only a few experiences have really stuck with me.

One I shared in class was the 6th grade science fair at my school. People could basically design their own projects with few limitations. All of the grades would go and visit the fair from PK to 5th. Because of this, by the time you were in 6th grade you knew how much the younger kids were going to look up to you. This made it that much more important o put a lot of time and effort in to your project so you could have the coolest one. Another reason this was important was because the 7th and 8th graders who had already done a fair were going to come and judge your projects and those that won would get prizes. It was really a school wide event that the students really looked forward to no matter what age group they were in. I think the best part about this fair was that it got kids to really take initiative in getting involved with science. They weren't just doing it because their teachers said to. We all had our own motivation.

Another experience that I really loved was raising ducklings in the 2nd grade. We had the ducks from the point at which they were eggs. We kept them in a back room in an incubator until they hatched. Every other day our teacher would take us back two by two to look at the eggs and see if they had changed. There was a light we shined on them so we could see inside. Then we got to watch them hatch one day. We all got called in early from recess to see the process. After they had hatched we got to keep them for the rest of the year until we gave them to a farm. Every student that wanted to take them home got to sign up for a weekend. I remember having them in my house and feeling responsible for taking care of these small animals even just as a second grader. I really cared about the ducklings which motivated me to really observe their growth process even at such a young age. I think that living animals are a great way to get kids involved, especially if they feel that they are responsible for part of taking care of them.

In the 5th grade we also raised Monarch Butterflies. We got them as eggs, which then became caterpillars, then they formed a chrysalis, and then they became butterflies. We let them go after this but we had a tag put on their wings. We then had a website where people would report seeing butterflies with tags on them. Our class would check the site continually, and one of our classmates actually had a butterfly that was reported seen in Mexico, which is where we learned they migrated to. It was exciting to know that we had raised these butterflies and that they were migrating just like we had learned about. It was a great way to make what we had learned real to us.