Pursuit of Why: Scientific Reasoning and Botany

It's not an easy thinking teaching scientific reasoning to children because the facts and details of science can easily overwhelm any planned lesson. Facts and details are an important part of science learning, but they shouldn't be the only thing. We think scientific reasoning is best taught as a habit, and to do that, we need to give children the opportunity to observe, speculate, and criticize their speculations.

Here's something to try with your kids. Have them watch the sunflower experiment at the Plants in Motion page. These side-by-side experiments show an somewhat unexpected effect of sun on growing seedlings:



Questions:
1. What are the two growth conditions for the sunflowers? For a "good" experimental design, what variables should be kept constant (for instance, same soil, same seeds, etc.), and what one variable(sun) the experimental condition?
2. What do you see?
3. Why do you think this happens?
4. Bonus question: How could you test your hypothesis?

If you try this with your children, share some of your discussions with us! We probably do more science at home with our children than other families (we both did some stints in laboratories before), but I was surprised at how much they initially struggled with generating hypotheses. It is hard to do, so it's a good thing to practice!

We were surprised at how many interesting discussion points could come from this little web lab experiment... dark-reared plants are taller with smaller leaves, Greek root, photo (light), synthesis ("syn" = together, "tithermi"=place), energy needed or plant will die, dark-reared plant put energy and resources into vertical growth (plants without sun may be buried deeper and need to grow vertically to reach light), or photosynthesis and the making of leaves might have an energy cost, sacrificing vertical growth to the formation of broader leaves to collect more sun, the idea of the sun like a "switch" - could turn off growth factors affecting the vertical growth of a plant, or turn on factors that start the program for a leaf...

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