I
Can See It ~ I Can See Structure |
When
Nissa looked down the barrel of a microscope for the first time
she found herself much closer than a stones throw to a
chunk of granite she picked up along the creek.. "Wow.
I see lots of blurry things. And I see some pink stuff and white
chunks too," she began telling me.
Nissa
strained her eyes even more as she looked down into the barrel
of the microscope at the piece of granite shining in the bright
sunlight on the microscopes stage. She tried to focus
on the different shaped structures jutting up in all directions
from the surface of the stone. The
fuzzy outlines of black sheets and milky white slabs of something
began to clear as she turned the focus knob. It looked like
they were advancing toward her eyes. "Now I see thin sheets
of shiny stuff," Nissa told me. I wouldnt like
to be hiking along that stuff. Theres no water even. It
is all dry and rocky. She turned to me and asked, What
is that black shiny, sheety stuff? It looks slippery. I could
slide down it real easy.
I
looked into the microscope and told her, "Yes. That is
very slippery looking. That is mica.
I
see lots of that stuff and some milky kind of pieces and salmony
colored pieces," she went on as she peered into the microscope
again..
The
salmony pieces are the mineral feldspar, potassium feldspar.
The milky pieces are feldspar also, but they have a different
mineral in them."
"Feldspar?
What does that mean?" she asked as she peered down the barrel once again.
I
see chunks of white stuff. And I see chunks of gold stuff. Is
that the fools gold?
Yes.
That is what fooled the miners over one hundred and fifty years
ago. Notice how the gold chunks look like they are caught in
the chunks of whitish stuff? That's quartz.
Yeah.
It looks llike they are stuck to the quartz. Serene brought
the specimen up closer to her magnifier and peered through its
lens as if peering through a window at a jewelry store. The
gold pieces look slippery to me. Everything looks dry too. I
would not like to walk along those quartz chunks. They look
sharp on the ends.
"Hey,
my stone has lines in it. It looks like layers of caramel pudding
and layers of vanilla pudding." I went over to Jill who
was examining her stone with a hand lens. We shared the view
and noticed the stone was much more tidy than the other stones
we had seen with Chance and Nissa. "Look," Jill offered,
"this stone has layers of different colored stone in it.
And it flakes off with my fingernail."
"
We are going on a treasure hunt." I gathered the children
together and gave each one of them a magnifying lens and a small
bag to hold treasures. "Here is a map and a compass too so
you can find your way to the treasures."

"I'm
going to find a bunch of treasures. Maybe I will find a treasure
for my mother," Nissa told Jill.
"And
maybe I will find a wishing stone," Serene spoke softly.
"My mother says that a wishing stone is like a Chinese
fortune cookie. It brings you good luck."
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Just
by listening to a child express what nature is up to gives
the lesson a degree of informed analysis, depth instead
of shallowness and understanding instead of attitude.
We at StarChild Science are commited to pursuing a vigorous
presence of children's explanations and observations in
science activities. We can't loose sight of this one critical
ingredient... the child's input! |
Nissa
looked at my treasure map, following the blue line with her
eyes. She looked up, then down at the creek bubbling beside
her several times before she told me "This map shows the
treasure over there somewhere on the other side of the creek.
But we have to find the bridge first then cross over the creek."
She looked at me to make sure I was in agreement.
"So,"
I began, "we walk northeast along the creek. And we will
come to a bridge and cross it. Then we will turn south and walk
along the creek for a ways." I kept guiding her eyes with
my finger on the map. "If we look to the west, though,
we can see a fallen log. And the treasure is behind the log.
Do you see that on your maps children?" After they all
agreed, we began walking slowly, northeast along the creek. It wasn't long
before Joshua stopped and picked up a round, perfectly spherical
stone. "Hey, this is a punk rock," he mumbled to himself.
"I wonder what is inside of it. Can you chop this open
for me?"
"Yes." I took my hammer and began pounding on what looked like
a lava bubble of a rock. A geode. But it began to break apart
too easily to be a geode. When it finally split open, I rotated
one face toward the sunlight.
When
Serene came over to me she couldn't gather her words fast enough.
"I am going to take this one home with me." She grabbed
the rock away from my hands with such aggressiveness I thought
her to be Chance for a moment. "It has more sparkles in
it than I have ever seen in my whole life." She held up
the broken piece of rock and announced, "It's my Christmas stone."
As she watched the thousands of pieces of mica sparkle in the
sun she confided, "This stone makes me happy. Those sparkles
look like little fireflies caught in the stone," she told
me, tipping the stone this way and that. "Watch it sparkle!"
Maybe
this stone was once a star!" I looked up the creek in silence.
Serene shot a glance up at me then looked up at the sky then
down below at her stone. "Yeah, a falling star, she
muttered in a small churchyard whisper.
Nissa
and the other children quickly scrambled up the embankment to
join Chance who had already found the jewelry box I had filled with treasures. They landed on their knees looking like they were
kneeling before the story of the world. Structure. All there
was was structure. "Wow.
Look at the treasures." Nissa took a handful of treasures
out of my jewelry box and began putting some of them into a nearby
glass bottle while Joshua examined a piece of quartz with his
magnifying lens. "Hey, this gold in here looks like little
gold blocks. It looks like they are stuck to short fat white
sticks or something."
"Let's
take a look at those sticks under our microscope after our treasure
hunt." I suggested to him. Jill and Joshua crammed as many
treasures in their pockets as they could while Serene took a
piece of rose quartz and put it in her pocket.
"Come
children. Let's go back to our microscopes and take a close
look at our treasures." I told them.
"A
fire stone?" Chance asked as he shoved a small rock up to my face..
|
Stop
here! What have we observed so far? Think
about what we just observed.
Rocks
and pebbles are a great opportunity to examine structure.
Structure has information in it that can tell you many
things. When the children examine a rock by using a microscope,
they at once see crystals, conglomerations of colored
minerals, tiny clumps of sparking matter that are invisible
to the naked eye. For the first time, they see tiny shapes in a rock that are smooth,
jagged, spikey. Seeing structure under
the microscope invites children to speculate on how that
structure got into a rock. And, they naturally wonder
how did the rock get here in the weedy field, the playground,
the park, the creek, the forest?
One
of the ironic results of this kind of microscopic investigation
is that it seduces children to think of grand things that
can't be seen with a microscope; grand things like floods,
glaciers, and volcanoes; large pieces of land such as
alluvial fans, valleys, plains, shorelines and marshes.
During
this experience with children, think small and big
at the same time! If you are able to pull this off, children
can become very intrigued. They may even come to think
they can examine whole volcanoes if they only had a big
enough microscope!
Move
over Leeuwenoek! Satellite technology is here! We can
now see whole glaciers, alluvial fans, and marshes and
plains, whole shorelines and valleys just as easily as
you, Mr. Leeuwenoek, could see spores, wiggling amoebas.
We just used light to look the other way!
|
There's
something I don't understand about stones." Joshua's mother
came over to me and began picking up nearby stones.
"Dont
understand about stones?" I waited anxiously to hear what
she had to say..
"Well,"
she began, "where's the energy? If nature is saying, 'between
us two there is nothing between but energy and information '
then, where is the energy? Obviously the information is what
the stone feels like, how it feels to the child, what color
minerals are in it, what it's crystals look like. Things like
that. But where is the energy?"
Come,
come up to the lesson area where I keep my fire," I answered.
"We will be leaving in a few minutes."
"Your
fire? What does fire have to do with anything?"

The
articles you see on this web site act as activities and
explanations of smaller topics within each main idea. For
example, the articles on various atoms you read about below
act as explanations on the behavior of atoms.
|
The Salt Hiding in Your Diet

"It became clear we would have to address the food supply."
Scientists Measure What It Takes to Push a Single Atom

Talk to your children about these tiny pieces of matter and how we can push them around to where we want them to go. Allow your children to use their imaginations and imagine they are walking around this yellow atom inside of daddy's watch! What would it feel like to be in his watch? Would they roll around inside the watch as daddy moves his wrist? Get creative, parents. The clock is ticking!
Carbon
Power

Our
children can understand the behavior of energy inside
an atom on a level that they need to understand it. It's
not complicated when you stick with the flow of energy
scenario. Read our ebook, Chapter 3
StarChild
Science: Teach Your Own |
Ferroelectric Switching Discovered for First Time in Soft Biological Tissue

Could this be an avenue where we find we can prevent heart attacks and stroke in diabetics?
Color Change Confirms a New Way to Harvest Energy from Sunlight

This is really new stuff. Get the children talking about this kind of transfer of energy.
Chunk
of Famed Meteorite Goes to Auction

Could
Iron Fertilization Of Oceans Combat Global Warming?

Give
me half a tanker of iron and Ill give you the next
ice age. Iron fertilization has since been tested
in at least a dozen experiments around the world. |
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