Expanding Children's Capacity for Scientific Inquiry

This professional development training kit helps early childhood practitioners understand that scientific inquiry is the purpose of science experiences. The kit provides activities and resources to help adults learn to facilitate children’s exploration and discovery and learn how they can build opportunities for exploration and discovery into their curriculum and daily activities.

Out of the Box Components
“Beyond Nature Hikes and Butterflies: Expanding Children’s Capacity for Scientific Inquiry” contains a complete professional development training designed to enable early childhood professionals to achieve competencies in science. This kit includes the article, practical and easy-to-implement training ideas including handouts, strategies for classroom action research, suggestions for small group discussions and individual reflection, evaluation tools, additional resources, and a certificate.

Who's the Target Audience?
The target audiences for this training kit are beginning, intermediate, and advanced Learners who are working with young children ages 3 through 8 years.

Teacher Skill Level

beginning intermediate advanced

Children's Age Level

infants toddlers preschoolers school-agers birth to 8

Kit Timeline:
This kit provides 3 independent, but related, group sessions that each include 45-minutes to 1-hour of Face-to-Face Training. It also provides 30-minutes to 1-hour for related Independent Study. The sessions are especially suited for a director to use in 1-hour staff meetings. Individual sessions are not dependent on other sessions and can be used alone or as a series. Preparation time is estimated at 15�"20 minutes per session.

Learning Objectives:
Although there are many learning objectives for this kit, the primary objectives are based on the kit’s article, “Beyond Nature Hikes and Butterflies” by Kelly K. Twibell and Diane Harkins. Learners will demonstrate their understanding of the article’s concepts by:

• explaining the value of science in the early childhood classroom.
• identifying ways they can support scientific inquiry in their classrooms.
• evaluating their current practices related to science.
• developing a plan to improve their work in science using information from the article.

Note: Downloadable PDFs are only available for download in pdf format. Directions for downloading follow immediately after purchase.