Science as the center of a coherent, integrated early childhood curriculum

This article describes the ScienceStart! Curriculum, an early childhood curriculum that takes coherently organized science content as the hub of an integrated approach. ScienceStart! maps onto the typical preschool day and may be adapted for use in full-day or half-day preschool programs. It is designed to support the important developmental achievements of the preschool years, particularly in the areas of language development, acquisition of preliteracy skills, problem solving, social interaction, and self-regulation, for example planning and attention management. Science content is highly engaging for young children because they are biologically prepared to learn about the world around them. Within this context, they are capable of acquiring a rich knowledge base that supports the acquisition of vocabulary and the use of higher order cognitive skills such as planning, predicting, and drawing inferences. Engaging content also provides a setting for a variety of language and literacy-related activities such as talking about activities, exchanging information, asking questions and planning how to answer them, reading aloud, consulting books for information, making charts and graphs, dictating reports, and describing careful observations. Each day's science lesson is structured according to a simple cycle of scientific reasoning-reflect and ask, plan and predict, act and observe, report and reflect. The daily science lesson is supported by literature that is read aloud, by props included in the various learning centers, and by planned activities for art and outdoor play. Math and social studies content is integrated into the science activities on a regular basis. Lessons are organized into four modules, each of which lasts approximately 10-12 weeks. Within the modules, each lesson builds on the content of previous lessons and provides a foundation for subsequent lessons. In addition to being highly engaged, socially active, and rarely disruptive, children in ScienceStart! classes regularly show a significant gain of approximately 0.5 standard deviation on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a standardized instrument that is commonly used to assess young children's cognitive and linguistic level and the impact of intervention programs geared to better prepare preschoolers for academic success. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.