Science Explained To Children

James Burton
11th January 2021

Science is the poor cousin of the education of young children. Parents are often afraid to bore children with scientific complexities. It is a view of science that has not always been wrong. Boring, empirical, and ultimately far from children’s lives and their dreams, science has long been forgotten. Locked in its gilded cage, education made it the home of adults. However, precursors have succeeded in transposing the different sciences into the world of children. Children’s curiosity is endless and there is no reason to deprive them of knowledge. 

The difficulty was to find the pedagogy and the tools so that the curiosity of the children could blossom. Finally, one might wonder what is the use of teaching Chinese and science to children who barely know how to write and especially how to do it. Children want to know This is arguably the simplest and most obvious reason. The thousands of questions they are able to ask are the expression of this curiosity, of this need to understand how the world works.

Knowledge is therefore essential to create curious brains and bring them further in the reflection. The difficulty is obviously not to overwhelm them with academic knowledge. 


Children live in a world where technology is everywhere. Some of them are already connected. However, this connection and this dictatorship of screens have been studied and it can prove to be harmful and above all harmful for development. It is therefore essential to show them something else and in particular that science and experimentation are more fascinating than sliding your finger on a touch screen.


Children must acquire an efficient representation of reality and living. Experimental sciences make it possible to confront the elevated to reality and experience. It’s a way for them to learn to distinguish the real world from the imaginary world.


It may seem obvious, but we too often forget that it is the scientific spirit that allows you to build critical minds from an early age. The child learns to look from a different angle, to ask questions, to find answers by observing, by analyzing to find a demonstration to prove what he sees or what he will know by intuition. This analytical mind will make a conscious and enlightened citizen.


Scientific work allows experiments to be carried out in small groups. Children, therefore, learn teamwork and the rules of sociability that are essential in a workgroup. Learning oral communication, sharing information for a common goal while taking into account opposing opinions are skills that come together with pure scientific discovery. 


This is a factor often forgotten when we think of science, creativity. To understand, to set up an experiment, you have to understand the results. The same goes for inventing circuits, protocols and thinking in advance about what can produce, for example, an electrical experiment. With hindsight, we actually realize that children are very creative, we must even know how to control them so that the experiences do not turn into orbiting the school. What is even confusing is children’s intuition in science.


There is of course the school has set up a real program to carry out science in the primary classes, but also that of the nursery schools. This craze is causing children to seek out and there are more and more streaming channels dedicated to children where science is presented with an experience to be reproduced at home. It is therefore strongly recommended to share these moments as a family activity to avoid dangerous or too complex experiences.

The phenomenon has spread to the leisure world and science is at the heart of many proposals with each time workshops dedicated to children when it is not an entire festival.
From the volcanoes of Auvergne to the city of space, aquariums, or nature reserves, everything is a pretext to make children think about, and with science. Obviously, in a period when science is mistreated by “skeptics” as if they were a vulgar superstition, science puts itself at the service of the environment and the living so that knowledge is also a tool of combat.

By taking science out of the academy and allowing it to adapt to its audience, we raise awareness …