'What is Gravity?' my daughter didn't ask this question; she was prompted by her grandmother who was temporarily taking care of her. I must say I messed it up by saying, "If your mother and I jump from the roof who will land on the ground first?" - You all can imagine the stir it created - my Ex is a plump lady. This was 20 years ago.

Anyway, at age 10, textbooks carry lessons on nature - introduce big words 'photosynthesis', burning candle - combustion and carbon dioxide and density - why ice floats - and through all this, something in the child begins to slowly shut down.
To counter this, a couple of home experiments may help.

So here's a homily way to introduce photosynthesis.
As usual I'm looking forward to your comments. It's for the book, remember?



At 2nd and 3rd stage of exp., ask the kid to explain the reason?

He may struggle, a good sign - then talk about vacuum created and air pressure. - so far, so good.

Once it's clear, ask him, 'how do trees suck up water from the ground to their leaves?'

If he says 'I don't know.'

Then tell him, 'I don't either. I only know that the sun evaporates water moisture off the leaves and creates a 'straw effect'.

Some day he comes back and says another big word 'osmosis' - and then you know he will find out all about photosynthesis and osmosis - by himself in the higher classes.

Now someone may say this is all 'Round-about'. I think the purpose is to get the kid to find out rather than plying him with useless info. Why care about osmosis anyway?
==xx

My turn: Question is do you recall any such 'seeding moment / questions' in class 3 or 4? Does not have to do with science. My daughter once asked (she was 5 or 6) during some debate during dinner about Hindu and Muslim religions, 'What religion is our cat?'

Read somewhere that Einstein received a compass as a boy and fascinated, he carried it with him always. As boys we all have received toy compasses - why didn't we carry the question in our pockets?

The idea of seeding came from Eli Maor's book 'E 0 The story of a number'


In the preface to his book, Professor Maor tells about a time when he was 10 years old and first came across the number ‘π’.



A seed planted at 10 and later:



Thanks

For me, seeding wasn't really needed.
My children were naturally curious about the sciences pre-puberty. That was easy.

Puberty is when the real challenge started.
Social dynamics of teens can be scary and confusing to young minds.

Post-puberty issues then focused on responsibility and maturity. Luckily, my children had the capacity to understand the complexity of adulthood because they were raised with 'practice scenarios'.

Parenting is more than providing answers and challenges to your children. You need to be able to allow them to fail, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.

Many parents think of discipline as punishment but discipline is best taught using reinforcement.
Seeding is only part of the strategy and only applicable some of the time.

Seeding also happens during the normal day without intent.
At all ages I explained many things inspired by their questions while and after watching TV shows and movies.
Many of their questions dealt with physics and sociology.
"Dad, if a car flips over does it always explode?"
"Dad, if I meet a girl should I tell everyone she's easy?"
"Dad, Why do airplanes stay in the air?"
And on and on...

Plus there are real-life encounters which inspire curiosity as well.
"Why did the mother bird push her babies out of the nest?"
"What are those big cans on some of the telephone poles?"
"Why is the river faster here but not over there?"

I remember one time when my daughter was asking if her friend could say the night. I looked at her and asked "Only if she is a nitrogen breathing surface dweller." My X burst out laughing but my daughter had no idea why and had such a perplexed look on her face I had to explain.
From that point on my daughter knew air was not just oxygen and nitrogen is in higher concentration.

Every seeding exercise doesn't have to be a formal learning progression. Kids respond to light humor and jocularity faster than serious talks. Its more effective when you can incorporate the seeding into their real-life drama.

Me personally, I often seeded myself.
In kindergarten I was a stacker. I had/have a knack for balancing objects. As that developed I personally became curious about gravity. As a got older, my curiosity expanded to physical sciences.

What it all boils down to is, Seeding only works when the child has interest in that subject.
So with the very young it might be best to first seed many different things and take note of where the interest peaks. The older the child is, the more directly you can ask them what they are interested in.
To 'push' a child in the direction YOU want them to go is not fair to the child, or yourself.

Thanks Tom,
The fact that 'seeding' happens

followed by examples is insightful

I don't see the need for what you call seeding.
They already go to school, no need to try and get them into their heads 24/7. Let them play, be children, enjoy life.
Things go by themselves and all depends on a) the parents' interest and way of raising the children and b) the child's curiosity.
A child will ask when it wants to know about something. At that moment it is also willing & ready to absorb and learn.
Trying to make a child learn when it's already been to school for the better part of the day isn't a great idea.
And if parents have no interest or no knowledge of science, they cannot and will not pass it on. Not a problem at all. If the child has a natural curiosity concerning science it will learn at school AND ask questions or look it up online to learn.

Personally I think it's more important to have quality moments with the children. For instance my dad took an interest in stars and moon and there were times that we were both outdoors at night and he pointed out the full moon to me. He didn't elaborate much, would've spoiled the moment. It wasn't a 'let's make a scholarly lesson out of this" but a 'let's enjoy this moment together!'.
I never lost that feeling and when alone in Australia, age 20, I'd look at the full moon and feel utterly connected to my dad, knowing he could see the same moon.
I was baffled when I heard a few years later that he had been doing the EXACT same thing!!

My dad was all about nature, birds, animals, plants, herbal medicine etc etc. I automatically was raised with that and a deep respect and love for nature. Although my way is different than his, which is perfectly fine.
Somehow this got passed on again to both my children, yet again in their own way.

It's great to be writing a guide, but you have to bear in mind children are children, not automatons that must be made to be students all the time. It's far more important that they learn to get OUT of their head and enjoy and appreciate life, learn to respect all things living, and are given time to be themselves and do what they themselves enjoy.
A child will ask if it wants to know more. Unless parents discourage that behaviour, which they will do by trying to force 24/7 studying.
Might create people that suffer from emotional-poverty.

And please don't take offense, writing a guide for parents is a noble thing, but insight & affinity with pedagogy is necessary for this.
I'd advice to focus more on raising happy, healthy & stable children into adulthood, for which much more is needed than mental stuff.
What I see is needed in this day and age is that new generations are allowed to go out of the old system of cramming their heads with information that is totally useless to them and teach them how to deal with feelings and emotions and how to express these in healthy ways so they don't develop in unhappy, potentially unhealthy people later on in life.
That's far more important than gravity, which they will learn about at school anyway.

Very poignant write Crystal-ji (as they say in India)

In fact, this is what's happening in India, 'study for tests' and so on. I don't think any guide that goes away from tests is going to grain traction here. Children, may succeed academically, gain financial success; but something is lost on the way. Fathers here are disciplinarians.

From you and Tom have shared, I hope to take some excerpts from you sayings. Your story is very touching. Thanks

I've an associate who has the university background and more; to review - so yes; where children are concerned, we are probably going to be very, very careful. He agrees that booklet is more important than authorship, etc.

It's too early to say but if you both permit, I would like to include your and Tom's names in the contributor's list. Your encouragement has given a second life to a work - that dates back to 2013 when I first imported textbooks on Neuroscience and discoveries. I was lucky to catch the wave while still in infancy. Now there's lot more on the Net - so overwhelming that people here - don't quite know where to begin and if there's an end at all.

The real theme I'm toying with is creativity-ness.
I look at old biographies and the greats had great childhood-s. Faraday for example, living in Australia - not so well to do family but he lived the outdoor life. TY Crystal.

The truth is,
they say the Lotus blossoms in still waters. On a family vacation, while in college, we went to Dal Lake in Kashmir. I've seen the very long stems of the Lotus rise in the crystal clear waters - a collective of blooms - as I slid past-water skiing. My mother took a photo of me skiing; I didn't enjoy it - nor the flowers; nor the boathouses, nor the food. At 19, i was healthy but pliable by other older people's advise because father was near. The motor boat owner would not offer the pair of water skies - that was for foreigners - stress of skiing on them would tear my body apart he said - he did not know me; I accepted the wooden plank he offered. (Mother was anxious, Dad was silent. He had just lost his younger brother in an accident - that's why we were vacationing to take his mind off the tragedy). It was the unreal world of long healthy green stems rising silently from some 6 feet bed below or maybe 18 feet = not the science or osmosis - that impression remains. i see this all the time. We Indians are our best enemies. Indian lotuses also. They feel insecure when a foreign girl talks to her man.

Mother asked me to help unload a fisherwoman's basket from her head. Mother wanted to see the fresh water pomfrets she was carrying. As I helped unload the basket, I saw the elderly woman's face - craggy lines. She was beautiful! That impression remains.

From Tom's write, there's a calmness - and when children can lean on their father - even if they don't need to - call it culture or something else - Here it's different. Fathers are behind the scenes. Mothers are so possessive that fathers gain a poor name - disciplinarian.

"I will tell father", the threat, to a child, is greater than the whack he generally never receives from fathers. Maybe I'm wrong. Sunrise moment earlier - Tom termed it as - Family Integrity - means both parents are in unison - and for once, fathers are not diminished down with cynicism.

One of us suggested I join up some parents forum on the Net. There's a calmness / joy in Mingle which if i mention to the reviewer he is likely to misunderstand being bannered as dating rather than a social site. All said and done, in some spot in the dark caves of my brain where I reside; a ray of light sometimes visits, bounces off the walls and my consciousness breathes in deeply; as darkness returns. Mingle has a hold on me for so long - since 2013 - and yes, there's a she; a projection; I don't even know why. These cannot be explained. If this booklet comes through, my debt is repaid. TY
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I had a natural ability to desire to learn how things work, so around 7 years old, my parents got me books on rebuilding engines, and I was rebuilding them by myself, my parents were not into it. then motorcycle engines and welding when I was 9, car engines when I was 13, & I still pull engines with lift I welded when I was 13, 42 years ago.

for life of me I cant find 1 kid that wants knowledge, to understand the how & why of theory and thermal dynamics and how it relates in automotive world