More than Messing around with Magnets

Peggy Ashbrook

This month, The Early Years is focusing on magnets. The predicting and testing students do in this month’s activity also relate to Science and Children’s theme this issue, teaching the nature of science.

Magnets are typically included in early childhood science curriculums because they are irresistible to children. Also, understanding that magnets attract and repel each other and some other materials is part of the physical science content standard for grades K–4 (NRC 1996). But, unlike subjects of study such as seeds or worm segments, magnetic force is not visible. What can children learn from working with magnets?

Aside from introducing magnetism, exploring magnets makes a good introduction to learning about the nature of science, especially because magnetic force is not visible. Approaching magnet play as investigation opens the door to learning about science.

In the activity, students experience magnetic force in play, and then in a methodical way. Interweaving comments about how science is carried out with investigation into magnetic force is one way to introduce students to the nature of science. Throughout the activity or experiment, students can be reminded that good science means making observations, creatively testing the evidence, replicating the results, sharing them with others, and quite often revising our theories.

In this column, we’ve also highlighted some of the excellent suggestions Early Years bloggers have shared on how to get students to think of themselves as scientists. For more on teaching science to young students, visit http://science.nsta.org/earlyyearsblog/.

More Than Messing Around With Magnets

There are as many ways to play with magnets as there are students. Creative magnet play includes seeing how many objects one can pick up at a time, pushing one magnet around the tabletop by the repelling force of another, and testing objects around the classroom for attraction to magnets.

While magnetic force is not visible, it is consistently applied. As children practice with magnets, they’ll discover that the “power” of attraction lies in the nature of the material, not the nature of the person (age, strength, or special knowledge) wielding the magnet. It is not a magic gesture, word, or power of adulthood that creates magnetic force but the nature of the material, even though the mechanism that creates the force cannot be seen.

It is very common even for adults to say that “magnets attract metal objects”—until they test a magnet’s ability to attract a brass key or ball of aluminum foil. Children, too, will reformulate their hypotheses several times as they work with magnets and become familiar with what magnets will attract and what they will not.

Working in a small group, children make observations, describe why they think the magnet behaves in such a way, get feedback from the other students, and try to replicate others’ work and use of magnets—effectively modeling the behaviors of practicing scientists.

When children find an object that (contrary to their expectation) is, or is not, attracted by a magnet, they learn that scientific theories are often modified, another important element in understanding the nature of science. Unexpected results in magnet play lead children, like scientists, to revise their theories. Because young children cannot see what causes magnetic force, they cannot create an explanation about it from anything other than their observations of it at work.

Attracted by Magnets

Objective
Students observe that magnets attract and repel objects and have magnetic poles.

Materials

• Various small objects of different materials, such as metal and plastic bottle caps, wooden craft sticks, nuts and bolts, acorns, leaves, glass beads, wads of aluminum foil, scraps of fabric, small pencils, coins, and keys.
• Trays to hold or sort objects.
• As many magnets as you can afford, at least enough for two per child at the activity.
• Chart paper for recording ideas.

Procedure

1. Before holding a formal discussion with the class, place the magnets and various objects at a science center, or make them available for use in indoor recess or free choice time. Explain that, like adult scientists, students will be exploring the properties of magnets to find out what objects are attracted to them.
2. In a group discussion, raise some questions to direct the independent exploration.
   • What kinds of things do magnets attract?
   • Will all magnets attract the same things?
   • Will the magnets work in other places, such as on the floor or in the water table?
   • How do magnets work?
   Remind students that a scientist’s ideas can change when new observations are made.
3. Introduce the concept of magnetic poles by handing each child two magnets that you have forcibly arranged with like poles touching. For example, use two doughnut magnets slid onto a pencil so that the force of magnetism pushes them apart. Ask the students to make the two magnets stay together and to describe what they feel when they push the magnets together or pull them apart. The students will quickly find out that the magnets have “sides” and will begin using the words poles, attract, and repel if they are introduced.
4. Record the students’ descriptions of how it feels when they push like poles together (“Like a bubble between them.”) and when they put opposite poles together (“They’re sticking together.”). Revisit the questions in step 2 and record the answers on a chart as a group, or have the children record on an individual sheet. As answers are compared, remind the students that scientists do not work alone but frequently work in teams and read about other scientists’ work.
5. Have the students arrange a test of the hypotheses presented in response to the questions, such as testing “magnets attract metal” by touching the magnet to many types of metal. Allow them to revise their previously recorded theories and hypotheses, saying, “Even though based on our experience we thought that this theory was true about magnets, we now have new evidence and must change our theory. Scientists also do this.”

Extension
Arrange for a discrepant event by painting all but one of the objects that are attracted to magnets blue. After discussing and testing theories arrived at with untampered objects, have students use magnets with a mixture of objects that includes the blue-painted objects and see if any student makes the observation, “only things that are painted blue are attracted to magnets.” Then have students test that hypothesis with an unpainted bolt and a piece of blue paper and explain the results.

Peggy Ashbrook (scienceissimple@yahoo.com) is the author of Science Is Simple: Over 250 Activities for Preschoolers and teaches preschool in Alexandria, Virginia.

Resources

National Research Council. 1996. National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

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