As much faith as I have in natural laws, I have much less faith in my ability to lasso them as needed in a classroom. I've had some spectacularly loud, messy failures. Kids like this. As much as the Arne's and the Eli's and the Bill's want to control curriculum, they cannot control a child-driven experiment. To be fair, neither can I. Kids like ...

Telescopes, when introduced too early, kill interest in astronomy. Everything moves the wrong way, the field of view shrinks to impossibly small increments of sky, and, alas, a star is a point of light no matter how powerful the scope. Nothing looks like the pictures (with the startling exception of Saturn, if you can find it). The first night ...

 Horseshoe crabs and I have a long history.  Theirs longer than ours. These were tossed up on a huge hill of dredge waste, peering through the gray mud. I have witnessed much, most unspoken, in my years, as I am sure you have, too. I do not understand, or trust, my silence.   Their blood runs blue, copper grasps the same oxygen ...

I spend a lot of time staring at the several hundred gallon puddle we have in our back yard. My daughter dug a hole in the ground years ago, I tossed in a liner, and now it's full of rainwater and life. This is my Auntie Beth's pond, not mine. If you want to see, you need to sit still. Still enough, for long enough, to be part of what is. Be ...

If you want to kill a child's interest in astronomy,buy her the biggest piece of glass you can afford the first hour she expresses any interest in the stars. Make sure it's got a computer-guided star finder, and that it ''talks'' to her as she explores the skies. Better yet, have her log onto a remote telescope where she can ''guide'' the scope to ...

I'm letting go this year. I'm going to trust the collection of young humans sitting in my class, brains honed by countless generations before them, each and every child with a lineage going back as far as the first protobionts that globbed together in the seas here billions of years ago. I'm letting go this year. I'm going to remind myself every ...

I've gotten a tad involved with the kindergarten science curriculum in our district. I know a little bit about science, and a little bit about kids. Looking at much of the commercial stuff available, a lot of well meaning (and well paid) folks know little about either. It's time to put these well meaning folks who make a lot of money somewhere ...

This was sent to me by a friend I've never met. Today I watched a dozen young adults get excited staring at fruit flies. Fruit flies, like pretty much anything alive, have stories to share. The deeper you delve, the more interesting they become. Too much of what is called ''science'' in school is just pushing around big words with little ...