Activities For Teaching Kids About Adaptation
Whether your kids are artists, natural born scientists, or older video game lovers, I have some ideas for activities that will teach your children about biological adaptations that drive evolution.
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August 21st, 2006 @ 11:20 am
Thanks for your great ideas. Sean is 6.5 and it will be interesting to see what he does with the cat. I’ll let you know. Also thank you for the blog. I love it. One of the most difficult things about dropping out of the church-going realm is that you lose an established community. But it is a real breath of fresh air to hear from like-minded people. It’s nice to know others who care that their children are raised in a healthy, non-religious way.
August 22nd, 2006 @ 9:44 am
Nice article!
I hope there is a camp like that near us for my daughter when she is old enough to attend. How did you find this particular camp - internet searches, or newsletter/publication with local events?
You could make an adaptation game out of free form bedtime stories. Start out with a standard fairy tale, space opera, or everyday walk in the neighborhood and present your child’s character with increasingly complex obstacles. They have the power to adapt - so that when a hole opens up they sprout wings, or when a disease is passed on by mosquitoes they develop repelling pheromones or get hardened skin the bugs can not penetrate. They can have assistant characters (helpful magician, scientist, wise old turtle) that you can use as a voicebox for suggestions. They could be inventors, too, and approach problems that way (alla the Series of Unfortunate Events series).
It could be a fun game for road trips, too!
Another adaptation game I know, for parents of very young children, is a game played when the parent needs a shower - and the child can not be left alone, (and being stuck in the bathroom while you shower works for about 10 seconds). You hop in the shower and your child can park themselves on the floor or potty. You call out “Oh no - there are mice coming out of the shower!” and prompt the child for a solution - they can reply “Here come some cats to help you!”. Then when the cats have taken over - send in the dogs, or Alligators - and on and on. You act it out and make a ruckus while they laugh and forget they are stuck in the bathroom with you.
I got this idea from “The Stay-At-Home-Dad’s Handbook”. Good stuff!
August 23rd, 2006 @ 6:00 am
Fun ideas, Ron.
The city of Mesa, my hometown, sponsors this camp through the two local city-run museums (although the future of the camp is in question because my city voted down the property tax and we are in a financial crisis).
I was very surprised to see my children bring home an activity that revolves around evolution. As soon as I saw the words, “Animal Adaptations” on the cover and flipped through it, I got the point of it. The disappointment is that when I asked my children what they explained to them about it, they said “nothing.” They just gave them the booklets and let them change their cats. This is why I explained adaptation to my kids. As long as my kids explained it correctly (haha) there was no actual instruction about adaptation.
Still, I meant to commend the camp coordinators with a letter of graditude for introducing concepts of evolution, a subject so many are afraid to address with the public. And perhaps fear is the reason they only barely addressed it indirectly.
August 23rd, 2006 @ 6:05 am
BTW, Ron, to answer your question about how I found the workshop: I knew another atheist family who said their son was attending a science camp at the Natural History museum a couple summers ago. So I contacted the museum and requested information. If you have a museum in town, you could call and ask if they have camps or children’s workshops. Our arts center and the arts college at the local university has children’s arts programs.
In general, I also look for events in my newspaper, I get the City Of Mesa quarterly events catalogue that feature classes and workshops (go to your city’s website to see what they offer), and I just all around keep my eyes open to what is going on. Coffee shops and bookstores often sponsor or advertise events.
Start with your city publications and the local paper. It’s guaranteed to have stuff going on, although rarely science-related.
August 23rd, 2006 @ 8:42 am
Quite interesting from several perspectives. Science without some measure of entertainment like a game or story tends to reduce to tables of data and equations or some similar rather tedious format. Some of the most complex theories of science end up in very true form in science fiction or docudramas and become quite palatable as such to a broad audience. I cite Janna Levin’s “How the Universe Got Its Spots” as a good example. Note, this is not a children’s book.
It is also quite interesting from the perspective of the true nature of adaptation or evolution. The little game does get the point across without bogging down in detail such as how the variations arise and the whole discussion of DNA and the concept of how indifferent nature is. It would be interesting to see if an equivalent type of parlor game could be devised with memes in a group of adults.
Finally I would be sensitive to some young person using evolution as a REPLACEMENT or ALTERNATIVE for (all of) religion which I doubt is the intended reaction. There are obviously many other dimensions that need to have their nonreligious basis established. An example could be child level ethics. How should you treat your brother or sister and why? How should you treat the family pet and why?
Still, it is good to take advantage of what is available when it is available.