Science Inquiry in Early Childhood Education
             Part 2: TEACHER AS REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER
             What theorist (s) and/or early childhood approach (es) support and/or challenge your ideas about the nurturing of science inquiry in young children?
             The development of educational environments to promote scientific curiosity and playful exploration in young children can be accomplished through PLAY. And there are theorists who support my ideas about the nurturing of science inquiry in young children, as well as the teacher being a reflective practitioner in the classroom by removing herself from traditional textbook-based programs.
             Do you realize that when children are mixing paints, they are demonstrating the concepts of chemistry, and something as simple as a game of hopscotch builds aiming, jumping, and thinking skills? PLAY is learning and having fun at the same time. It is surely through play that infants and toddlers learn their way about the world and exercise their growing physical skills. Their ceaseless tasting, smelling, poking, prodding, looking, and touching define them as SCIENTISTS, forever wanting to find out "what" and "how." Who can say where PLAY ends and learning begins, or where, at what point, random activity becomes abstract thought? Somewhere, and everywhere, in the activity of the under-threes lie the roots of thought, language, and conceptualization.
             Early years learning is clearly the most crucial period in the development of a SCIENTIST. Why then have we not paid more attention to this age in our teaching of science? We have not been worried about the number of scientists until the last few years as our country's scientific literacy deficit continues to grow. As this deficit grows, we develop a nation where scientific and technical use continues also to grow and companies struggle for workers who can function in these "science" oriented jobs. If changes are to b...