I love my kids. I also love the scientific method. They mix well.
I don’t use the scientific method on my kids, though in truth parenting is just one huge uncontrolled, unfunded experiment carried out by untrained staff. No, instead I use the scientific method with my kids.
Dang, it’s fun. We generate hypotheses (those ants will prefer eating a peanut to a banana), test them (put a peanut on one side of the anthill and a bit of banana on the other), collect data, (“Mom, can we sit here all afternoon to watch the ants eat?”) and accept or reject our hypotheses (totally preferred the banana).
My favorite part is the expression of uncertainty. I love saying “I don’t know, let’s test it out,” or “Oh, it turns out my idea was wrong.” I imagine these are powerful lessons for little ones: the “authority” can be wrong, open questions are the most interesting ones, observation and reasoning are a great way to learn about the world, and even a little tiny dude could come up with the hypothesis that turns out to be right.
Recently we wanted to figure out which variety of apples we should buy from the dizzying assortment available in our supermarket. We brought ten different kinds home, cut them up into separate bowls, and had a family-wide taste test. A friend was visiting that day who happened to dislike apples, so we added a bowl of bananas.
Everyone chowed down. Each bowl was numbered with a little slip of paper, and we wrote down our thoughts about each number: sweet, yucky, mealy, fickle, scholarly, unpatriotic, whatever. Many of us noticed that one variety tasted a lot like a banana.
At the end I revealed which apples were which. Our result? Honeycrisp and Jazz are the bomb, while MacIntosh and Red Delicious are epic fails. Some middling varieties hover in between. Now when we go to the supermarket, my little guy (6) runs to find “our” kind of apples, as determined by rigorous scientific research. He also gets bananas. For the ants.
