I work in a playgroup, for3-5yr olds. I need info about electricity, ie heat, movement, light& sound. Help.?

Question

We need to find some activities involving light from electricity, sound, heat & movement also

Answer 1

Teaching science to young children is wonderful! Are you looking for activities for a center, or for lessons? Here are a few ideas.

A flashlight is a safe, great tool for showing children the basics of electricity. Show them the batteries and how the flashlight does not work without them. Simple electrical circuit boards are widely available from science supply catalogs. You can even make your own with simple plastic-coated wires, batteries, and small bulbs. You can show children that a complete circuit will make the bulb light up. (Have one wire come from the negative end of the battery to the bulb, and another from the bulb to the positive end of the battery.)

Sound is so much fun to play with. A neat group activity is to blindfold a child, and then have another child play a chime. The blindfolded child needs to point in the direction that the sound is coming from. You can add to this by having two chimes, one high and one low, and ask the child to point to the high sound. For a center, you can have glasses filled with different amounts of water. When children touch them lightly with a spoon, they will make sounds of different pitches. Another center idea is to have different objects to hit with a mallet and make a chart of what makes a noise and what does not. (Hitting a soft object, for instance, will not make much of a sound, while a stainless steel mixing bowl will make a neat sound!)

A simple activity is to go on a sound walk, where you walk through the neighborhood or even through the center and make a list of all the sounds that you hear.

Heat is pretty fun as well. You can try taking ice cubes and talking with the kids about where you can put them so that they will stay frozen. They will have some pretty interesting ideas! After they melt, you can talk about why they melted. At the water table, you can put two bowls of water--one warm and one cold--and have students play with both and talk about the words to describe them. For a flannelboard, you can make pictures of things that are cold and things that are hot, and have children sort them. (Ice, snow, ice cream, an oven, hot soup, etc.)

I hope this helps. Educational Innovations is a really neat catalog with information and neat activities. You might want to check it out. Keep working on these early science concepts. They are so important!

Answer 2

i wouldn't of thought children that age be allowed round electricity i mean the place i worked never but maybe a blender is a good one for sound and movement and a toaster for light and heat

Answer 3

i work in a child care centre too have you tried enchanted learning thats a good site i use it all the time.... good luck