Science, how does it work? (post educational/science resources here)

[Juan Rayo]

Looking at Io9 today and they posted six small vids that explain critical thinking to kids, it occurred to me we could have a thread here to post education/science resources, for kids mostly but anything goes really.

From Io9.com

Creative solutions agency Bridge 8 created these animations to offer a basic overview of critical thinking. The videos were designed for an audience of kids 8-10, but they're handy for anyone who wants to brush up on their logic.

Here they are

[Balasarius]

Ages 8-10 are you shitting me? I watched the Logic one and it was more like 16-99.

[Juan Rayo]

Evolution, animated with pre-schoolers drawings, you can see it (and show it to kids!) on scientific american (I saw it on io9 myself).

[Juan Rayo]

The 3 astronauts: A vintage semiotic children´s book about tolerance by Umberto Eco.

[Nellie]

Just to prove that this science malarky is child's play, I'm saying it counts because it's published by the Royal Society.:

Blackawton Bees (you just knew it was going to be about bees didn't you?)

It's actually well worth a read in its own right, but if you'd rather just the story behind it:

A scientific paper published today in the prestigious Royal Society journal Biology Letters reveals that "bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from." This is an exciting discovery that deepens our knowledge of the buff-tailed bumble-bee (Bombus terrestris) and is described in an accompanying commentary as a "significant piece of research giving a novel insight in the colour and pattern vision of the bee".

However, there is a more important discovery that is included in the paper, a discovery that I hope readers of this blogpost and the original paper will share with as many people as possible – the authors, while researching the behaviour of bees, "also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before".

As you've probably guessed, the authors of this particular paper are not your usual research team. The research was "conceived, carried out, summarized and written up by a class of 8 to 10 years olds" from Blackawton Primary School in Devon. The paper is deliberately written in "kids speak", which, as well as being charming ("if we are lucky we will be able to get them to do Sudoku in a couple of years' time"), serves as a constant reminder that this work was genuinely carried out by young schoolchildren.

[Houngan]

Junior Skeptic. A melange of articles, videos, etc. on every subject worthy of closer examination: http://www.skeptic.com/junior_skeptic/

[Juan Rayo]

Junior Skeptic. A melange of articles, videos, etc. on every subject worthy of closer examination: http://www.skeptic.com/junior_skeptic/

Thanks for posting this, very cool site.

[Maikarant]

Excellent thread, thanks all for posting and those links! :) I'm always looking for cool resources for my kids.

(and myself...)

To add to the thread, here's a link to the parent's section of Science Buddies.

[Shuma]

Ages 8-10 are you shitting me? I watched the Logic one and it was more like 16-99.

From the article: The videos were designed for an audience of kids (Edit: Australian grades, not ages) 8-10,

Yep, you got it.