ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Stephanie Sisk-Hilton provides a framework for understanding how young children’s scientific thinking develops. She uses the idea of connection – with the natural world, interpersonal, and between content ideas – as the basis for understanding how young children make meaning of and find their place in the world. She discuss three factors that are critical to building strong connections that support early science learning: repeated exploration of materials and environments in meaningful natural and social contexts, development of language to support emerging ideas, and development of an inquiry orientation in the service of understanding ideas that are important to children. She also cautions against the use of a “fall/recovery narrative” that idealizes an imagined past in which children were supposedly more in tune with nature. Instead she proposes that early childhood educators make use of even the smallest of natural spaces in whatever environment they are in to support children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development.
