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Welcome to our early science blog.

View posts by our early science blogger to gain valuable insights into the developing brain and learn about activities that you can easily incorporate into your early childhood curriculum to foster the development of early science skills in young learners.

Check back often so you don’t miss a single blog—and join in the conversation by asking questions or leaving comments at the end of each post.

About our blogger Diann Gano, M.Ed

Diann Gano

Diann Gano, M.Ed

Diann Gano—who opened her family child care program, Under the Gingko Tree in 1986—has long believed that “the earth gives us what we need to learn” and that nature is “the perfect environment for little brains to grow and learn in every day.” While conducting research for her master’s thesis on outdoor learning in early childhood settings, she learned about the Nature Explore Classroom Certification Program, which recognizes schools and other organizations that have made a commitment to providing outdoor classrooms and comprehensive programming to help children use the natural world as an integral part of learning. She enrolled in the Nature Explore Classroom certification program after completing her master’s degree in 2010, and Under the Ginkgo Tree was certified as a Nature Explore Certified Outdoor Classroom Program in 2011.

A member of the Erikson Family Child Care Portal Project Advisory Board, Gano has also participated in the Erikson Institute’s Early Childhood Leadership Summit and served as a webinar panelist for Town Square Illinois, an online resource and professional development tool for home-based providers. She has presented at the local, state and national levels on topics such as indoor and outdoor learning environments, the importance of loose parts in early math education and the impact of immersion in the natural world on brain development in young children. In 2016, Gano was honored as a recipient of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Child Care Innovator Award for creating a school environment that inspires children to become more active and engaged learners. In May 2019, she received the prestigious Terri Lynn Lokoff/Children’s Tylenol National Teacher Award, which honors 50 outstanding early child care professionals across the nation each year for making a lasting difference in the lives of the children they serve and setting them on a path to success in school and in life. She received her BS in liberal arts from Western Illinois University and her MEd in education from St. Mary of the Woods College in Indiana.

Sparking Curiosity With Static Electricity

  Winter is a magical time of year, full of wonder and excitement. On this particular day, the air is crisp and cold, and a special kind of magic is in the air: static electricity! To take advantage of this teachable moment, we’ve embarked on a scientific investigation that involves a classroom full of preschoolers, […]

Embracing the Concept of “Fast Fail” in Play

    Crash! The Magna-Tiles that the children have been stacking against the window come crashing down to the floor. “Fast fail!” shouts Mallory. “I think that was a fast-FALL!” quips Noah, our resident punster. The children giggle and pick up the tiles to restart the stacking process—but only after they share their ideas about […]

Setting the Stage for Scientific Inquiry with Stackable People Blocks

What happens when you pair three preschoolers with a table full of stackable people blocks? A child-led scientific investigation! This out-of-the-way corner of our early childhood center is unusually quiet this morning as these friends gain insights into concepts such as gravity, balance, and weight, and build their spatial awareness skills. This is the scientific […]

Physics in Motion

Four-year-old Jordan is deep in thought and uncharacteristically quiet. When Jordan—one of our more rambunctious early learners—is this quiet, he is either sleeping or engaged in a scientific investigation. I walk over to see what has captured his attention. Sure enough, Jordan is engaged in an impromptu physics experiment, which involves placing a piece of […]

“Whoo is it?” STEM Activities for Budding Birders

“Did you hear that? shouts Arden, our resident naturalist. “I just heard an owl, and it’s not even bedtime!” he reports, his eyes as big as saucers. “He must be really hungry to be hunting this early in the day.”  “Are you sure it wasn’t our mourning doves?’ I ask. The mourning doves nest in […]

Helicopters in the Sky

“Look at all of the helicopters! It’s like they are raining down on us,” exclaims four-year-old Hope. “Let’s catch them!”  Whether you call them whirlybirds, twisters, whirligigs, or propellers, they have been swirling everywhere in our neighborhood this month. These helicopter seeds from the giant maple tree next door are named for their amazing aerodynamic design, […]

Building Brains and Muscles Through STEM Play

“Thalhah, can you bring me that rock over there? I think it is just the right size we need.” Noelle points to a long, narrow golden rock.  “Okay, but this rock is really heavy!”  Thalhah grunts as he carefully lifts the large river rock from one area of our rain garden and carries it over […]

Building STEAM Vocabulary With MAGNA-TILES

“Is this the eagle triangle?” Kiana asks, holding up a MAGNA-TILE for my inspection. “An eagle triangle?” I respond, baffled. “Kiana, I don’t think I know what an eagle triangle is.” “Yes you do,” she insists.  “You were helping Joseph and you showed him two of the MAGNA-TILES. One looked like an eagle and the […]

Early Science Matters is Now Multilingual!

  Hello, Hallo, Hej Hej, Hola, Ciao . . . well, you get the idea! To expand our reach to families and early childhood educators around the globe, we’ve added a translation option to our Early Science Matters website. With this new functionality, our readers can now translate Early Science Matters into more than 100 languages. Breaking […]