Reply to comment

I liked Rosemary's comments. I am trying to teach air to our first graders at West Philadelphia Achievement Charter. They understand that solids are things you can touch, and that liquids take up any given shape, that air is a gas. They repeat after me "Solid Man, Liquid Lady, Air is Gas!" They are using hands-on inquiry to explore the ways that soilds can be used to move things, to build things, and to simply feel soilds. Getting chikldren at this age to comprehend that everything is matter, is another matter! But tomorrow we are going outside (unless it rains) to draw outside solid objects that are shaped like a triangle, rectangle, cylinder or sphere.

Our next unit involves the exploration of liquids.

I recently met Larry Lowry, who invent the FOSS science kits. He call hands-on learning, "Multi-Sensory" learning.