Welcome to the Science Room. This "room" is enormous, because it includes not only the indoor space but also the workbenches and tools outside and the entire campus, including the stream, the bird blind, and the bamboo forest.

From nursery onward, science at Miquon is something children do in the most active way possible. They learn about materials and structures as they build toys and create simple machines and objects such as switches for battery-powered electrical circuits. They learn to conduct experiments as they study creek life and make botanical dyes. They learn to use the internet for research and to write simple computer programs using Scratch and Logo. As they observe the plants and wildlife of our rural campus throughout the year and care for their own gardens in the spring, they learn about the natural world. They use balance scales, microscopes, and power tools. Time and temperature are important parts of our cooking projects. Our rich library of print and video resources is only a supplement to the hands-on nature of most classes. As someone once remarked, "Science is a verb . . . or at least it should be."

Science is a popular subject in all of our groups, and there is a lot of overlap and cooperation between the science program and the things that go on in the home classroom. Watching the sky during special nighttime events, caring for classroom pets that range from albino frogs to chickens, adopting a tree to observe and write about it throughout the year, studying and collecting data about the sun at noon each day, making looms to weave with botanically-dyed wool yarn, raising caterpillars and releasing adult butterflies, building kites out of straws and bridges out of toothpicks, year-round trips to our bird blind as part of a unit on birds, lots of classroom cooking . . . all of these things extend and deepen the science program beyond the time children spend with me.

One of my favorite websites is Windows to the Universe. You'll find many more excellent science-related websites listed here.

Check back often for descriptions of activities and pictures. You can email me and I'll try to respond.