Your classroom is a science lab, bursting with questions, hands-on experiments, ideas, and innovations. What will happen if I mix all the colors together? What makes flowers grow? How is a rock like a shell? All around the room and across the curriculum, children observe, predict, experiments, and analyze -- it's the scientific method in action.

How do you encourage children's use of the scientific method? Start by viewing the world as scientists do. Be inquisitive. Wonder out loud. Ask questions that have no easy answers. Be open to many ways to approach a problem or learn a skill. Your curiosity will be contagious.

Here are some other ways to encourage children's experimentation:

Focus on comparisons. If you could have just one overall theme for an entire year, what would it be? The concept of same and different! Why? Through observing and comparing, children use the skills that initiate scientific inquiry and thinking. Comparing a pencil and a crayon, for exaple, can lead to exploring size, shape, weight, marking style, methods of manufacturing, even favorite colors. children can compare almost anything: the leaves on different plants, their shoes as they wait on line, upper- and lowercase letters on signs, the food different insects eat, or works by their favorite authors.

Explore new approaches. Try teaching something in a new way or looking at something differently. How about inviting the children to teach you something about a current topic? Or discover what happens when you follow the daily schedule backward!

Support exploration and risk-taking. Always keep an eye out for new and inviting items for children to explore on their own. What happens when you put out a new material at the art table, for example? The children observe its appearance, composition, and texture; they predict what they can do with it and which materials it will work with; they experiment with techniques of manipulation and construction; and then they evaluate their experience, their creation, and the fun of making it. That's science.

As the children experiment with different materials and methods, they explore the concepts of balance, adherence, and structure -- all while making a work of art. You've created an environment that supports scientific investigation -- and the children have taken advantage of it.

Remember, for young children, all of life is a science project. The fun part is that when they ask their questions, they don't know where or how the answers will be found -- the learning is in the playing and the experimenting!

This article is an excerpt from the May/June 1998 issue of Early Childhood Today. The author is Ellen Booth Church, an early childhood consultant for programs across the country.