'Experience Science' - Anubhava Science Resource Centre
"A felicitous environment that guides the children and offers them the means to exercise their own faculties permits the teacher to absent herself temporarily. The creation of such an environment is already the realization of great progress" - Dr. Maria Montessori
Anubhava Science Resource Centre has been conceptualised with the aim to provide an experiential learning environment for children in the field of science and to promote rich learning experiences. The centre is set up on Sarjapur Outer Ring Road, Bangalore and is offering after-school science learning programs. This facility provides a well designed environment for children to conduct science experiments, engage in discussions and record observations thereby providing a unique opportunity to learn through experiences. The program focuses on helping the child to develop an attitude to think and explore along with offering fundamental science concepts.
The environment at Anubhava endeavors to nurture the capacity for inquiry. The facilitators at Anubhava help them to arrive at answers or provide them a direction to think further.
The learning environment, methods and materials together contribute to the learning experiences thereby helping to stimulate the children to appreciate the natural phenomena in each of their experiences.
The environment is geared to the needs of individual learning at his/her own pace without any scope for peer pressure. The environment provides an opportunity to explore by giving children the space and freedom under guidance.
Anubhava Science Learning Sessions: 5-8 yrs old children
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A topic is chosen every month say for eg: Air, Magnet, Sound, Plant, Light, Microscope etc
Experiments/activities are designed based on the funcdamental concepts in that topic.
Every session will have a demonstration from the facilitator followed by interactive session to discover how things happened
the way they were observed. Then each child is given a set to perform by herself/himself.
This will be followed by a worksheet exercise which will have some objective questions with multiple choice or true /false options. Children are encouraged to express what they did through drawing.
There could be some sessions when the facilitator invokes a discussion and everyone participates in doing the experiment. |
Anubhava Science Learning Sessions: 8-10 yrs old children
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For children in this batch, experiences are offered posing challenges and encouraging them to think and try different things.
Children are allowed to try experiments of their choice once in a while basically prepare them to choose, follow instructions, perform, observe and analyse on their own. |
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Anubhava Science Learning Sessions: 10-12 yrs old children
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The experiments are designed based on concepts in various science topics. For each identified concept, there are multiple experiments. The children aged 8 years and above are given the freedom to choose an experiment, follow instructions, perform and record observations. A facilitator will help children in understanding science behind these experiments by triggering questions. The experiments are arranged based on the topic and children can work with any experiment based on the topic of his/her choice.
Facilitator helps the children to discover the scientific reasoning for their observation through questions, hints and related experiences. Children are given freedom to choose, repeat and are encouraged to try variations other than what is provided in the instruction sheet |
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Ram enters the centre saying "I got the reason why it happens...". He chooses another experiment and says "last time I saw one girl was getting confused while doing this experiment." Ram headed towards the "dancing moth balls" experiment. He wondered why the moth ball that went up sank and came up again! These questions probably bothered Ram and made him choose this experiment when he came to the centre. |
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Somu repeats the same experiment a number of times. He was not bored of repeatedly boiling the water in a test tube and inverting it in a beaker with water to figure out how water was re-entering the test tube. He reached a stage when he realized that he internalized enough and was completely open to an external explanation. On hearing the explanation, there was a big smile on his face indicating the sense of satisfaction in learning and articulating what he was looking for. |
Making Toys
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We all know that children understand better if they experience things. They understand science principles better if they see them in some toy or are able to relate them to a real life experience.
Mr. Arvind Gupta is the source of inspiration to launch this program. He has received several honours and distinguished alumunus award from IIT, Kanpur for making science interesting for children.
We acknowledge our usage of the resources created under http://www.arvindguptatoys.com |
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In this program, emphasis is on children making toys using low cost materials and experience them working.
Focus is not making them understand the science behind each and every toy how it works.
The idea is to provide an opportunity to children experience making simple toys and wonder how it works,
create the inquisitiveness, develop the skill of scientific observation, stimulate interest for science activities and experiments.
Experience and absorption will be at different level for each child based on various parameters including child's age, exposure, interest etc. |
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