Kindergarten Students Explore Energy in Science Workshop
The Kindergarten Workshops have been a wonderful addition to the Primary Y3 curriculum. The students have thoroughly enjoyed learning different subject matters through Readers’ Workshop, Writers’ Workshop, Readers’ Theater, and Science Workshop. Additionally, the Kindergarten Workshops have given the children a chance to become more acquainted with students in different classrooms. Throughout the year, the teachers invite relevant speakers into each workshop to talk with the children. These visitors help the children take the information they have learned and apply it to a real-life situation or understand a profession that might be new to them.
Over the past couple weeks, the Y3’s have been studying Energy in Science Workshop. The unit was launched using experiments and books. At NMS we are lucky to have parents who work within this field who were excited to share their knowledge with the children.
Solar Energy
The children were treated to an afternoon with Zaid Ashai, and during his presentation the children learned the importance of finding new energy sources. He inspired the children to become future explorers of natural sources of energy, especially solar. Zaid shared with us a new type of flexible energy panel that absorbs light from any source of light. This makes it easier to harness power from many different sources during the night in addition to daytime. Zaid ended the session with a fun video starring scientist, Bill Nye, who explained the perils of global warming and greenhouse gases.
Wind Energy
After the children learned about solar energy, Will Havemeyer shared the importance of wind energy. Wind can do amazing things! Children learned how wind is made and that wind farms are becoming a popular way to create and store energy. Did you know that wind turbines collect wind and turn it into electricity? Amazing! Will brought in models of turbines, and showed a video about how they work. The children were fascinated to learn that wind turbines are so tall because the higher you go, the windier it gets. Will concluded his presentation by reading The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind by William Kamkwamba. The story is about a boy in Malawi who brought electricity to his village by using scraps from the junkyard nearby.
As a culminating event to help the children solidify the unit, they explored different material to learn which will conduct electricity by creating elaborate circuits. Some materials used were batteries and the flexible energy panels that Zaid shared. If they circuit was successful, the light bulb turned on! How neat!
When parent volunteers are willing to share their expertise with the children, their presentations enrich the children’s learning in a memorable way. Thank you to Zaid and Will for joining us! We encourage you to reach out to your child’s teacher if you have a skill or hobby that you’d like to share!
