Discovering Stem In Nature

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Discovering Natural Paint Production

Participants: 3-5 years
Application: March 15-31, 2021
Subject Science: Science and nature activity, Art activity

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This project STEM event is one of the few activities of the European eTwinning project “exploring STEM in nature”, in which Turkey, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and North Macedonia participated. The theme of the project is “We learn from plants”.

While starting…

In this project, we aimed to teach kindergarten students to explore nature and to make natural dyes. We started our project in March 2021. Our natural paint making event was held between 15-31 March 2021. Our work with 19 teachers and 250 students has spread to a wide audience. The aim of the activity is to draw the attention of the students to the chemicals in chemical dyes, to understand the damage that chemical dyes cause to our health and to teach what we can do.

In the first place, we created a root center, prepared a root center with materials such as books, puppets, seeds on the subject to reveal young students’ discovery abilities.

Our Goal

While practicing this activity, our aim was to teach to produce our own colors from coloring plants found in nature, instead of using artificially coloring materials containing many chemicals to meet today’s consumption demand. Because avoiding chemicals is the healthiest way. At this stage, we aimed to improve their cognitive skills. Among these are the concept of the system with different functions, the concepts of primary colors and intermediate colors, and the development of competencies such as color decoding. Our Activities Children became aware of the concept of natural color

A poster of our project that we prepared together with our partners…15 teachers came together to prepare this poster.


Problem Case: Damages of chemical dyes
Our goal in this study is that children who are allergic to chemical dyes cannot actively participate in coloring activities. Because we understood that the inability of students to attend events with their friends was a problem for them. It is important for students to carry out their activities. But in doing so, it is also important to maintain their health.

My students and I created natural paint in the distance learning process. Colors were formed, but they had to be tested and improved.
My students made these paintings with natural dyes that we created… It was a good experience for my students and for me.
While I was in the face-to-face education, we experimented with my students to discover natural dye again. We have observed that the colors are more vivid when you make the paint from vegetables and fruits and especially when you add sugar to the paint, which you could not get enough vibrant colors before.


MALZEMELER:

Transparent containers. Food processor, brushes, seeds, water, fruits and vegetables, herbs, plant roots, plant dust, filters for filtering dyes, paper and pens

RELATIONS BETWEEN DISCIPLINES:
Cognitive Development Gains (Science)

Winning 1. Pays attention to the object / situation / event

Cognitive Development Gains (Mathematics

Win 2. Makes a guess about object / state / event.

Cognitive Development Gains (Technology)

Winning 19. Find solutions to problematic situations.
Cognitive Development Gains (Engineering)

Plans, develops, tests and improves a design process.

Other Earnings; Social-Emotional Development, Motor Development
Our students are motivated to accomplish a job or task.

WORKING PROCESS

1-DISCUSSION OF THE PROBLEM:
Unfortunately, chemical products come into our lives more and more every day. In other words, it invites many diseases that we are not aware of. For example allergies, asthma, cancer…Therefore, we should avoid chemical products and use natural materials to maintain a healthy life.

2- SOLUTION PRODUCTION: We gave students a problem situation where chemical dyes in crayons were harmful in the first place. Then we asked them what they could do to find a solution. They’re brainstorming. Students offered very different ideas. For example, there were people who said that we could paint with gloves. At the same time, there were people who said that we should find a machine that would destroy the chemicals in the paint. They then gave several design examples to solve the problem.

3-PLANNING – DRAWING: At this stage of the project, I first distributed paper and pens to student groups. I asked them to paint with natural dyes that we then created.

4-PRODUCT CREATION:
The student team of the project beat, squeezed and strained the vegetables and fruits they brought to the classroom, such as beets, spinach, strawberries, purple cabbage and peppers.

5-PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEST:
In the final stage of the project, the children painted it with water derived from fruits and vegetables. Then in the planning-Drawing section, we tested whether the colors matched the predictions.. A team of students who took an active role in the project observed that colors are more vivid when sugar is added to natural dyes.

We matched the colors in the color chart with the flowers and plants in nature.
We read our “little tree” story on the interactive board and learned how to grow plants and deal with challenges.
Together with the children, we examined the seeds and noticed that their colors were different.He then asked, ” Do you think germination will be a different color when we plant them?”I asked. By the way, the children brainstormed. Everyone planted different seeds to observe. Because everyone knew what he was planting and wondered what color he was going to sprout. We made a garbage flag next to it. When they sproutd, they marked their height.

SPECIALIST TRAINING- CHEMICAL ENGINEER

The chemical engineer gave information to our students, parents and us about the harmful effects of chemical dyes.
Our students showed each other the pictures they made with natural dyes in the student webinar. The children were very excited. Because they shared their work with children from different cities and countries.

NATURAL PAINTING EVALUATION:

What do you think is our problem?
What did you and your friends do to solve this problem?
How can we solve the problem?
What did we pay attention to when we made the formation?
Did we solve our problem?
What words did we say the most during the event?

word cloud was made with web02 tools. What were the most used words during the project?

Results
As a result of the project, we created natural paint from natural materials according to the engineering design stages. They made paintings using natural dyes that we prepared. My students have learned to produce, think interactively, collaborate and find solutions. We exhibited the pictures we made in our class.

All visuals belong to the Author – Attribution CC-BY

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