Introduction

Children have an immense, largely untapped potential for discovery, and an innate desire to learn.

The founders of BETR recognize this potential and have developed a "hands on" approach for kids to understand and appreciate the discovery process--what we in the adult world call "science". The BETR mission is to expose children to a variety of scientific principles and to demonstrate that science is everywhere we look and in everything we do, but to do so in a format that places emphasis on the fun and excitement of learning rather than on the rigorous memorization of scientific facts.

How do we do this? Simple!!! We stimulate each child's natural curiosity providing exciting experiments and presentations for them to participate in. In these "lessons", we encourage them to incorporate knowledge from their own experiences, and to become an integral part of the scientific process by asking the "whys" the "whens" and the "hows" of a given experiment without the fear of being "wrong." Most importantly, we want them to have FUN in this safari for developing minds.

Format

BETR activities are intended to be multi-directional and open-ended in their style. They are exercises in learning science by doing science. Each activity is designed to allow students to build upon previous learning and to develop creative and imaginative variations. The children are at first given relatively simple, introductory projects and progress to more complex activities. This helps influence them to develop modifications, improvements, variations, and challenges them to continually build on their scientific knowledge and the method of scientific knowledge and the method of scientific reasoning which they employ.

Multi-directional and open-ended activities facilitate creative thinking.

This format relies heavily on the development of general scientific skills,which are the foundation of organizational and methodical process that is the basis for all scientific thought.

These skills include but are not limited to:

• Observation- Learning to use our five senses.
• Classification- Identifying, matching, sorting, naming, comparing, contrasting, grouping and distinguishing similarities and differences.
• Measuring- Arranging in sequence by: length, weight, volume, chronology, and numbers.
• Prediction- Developing skills of thinking systematically and logically about what might happen next, and beginning to think about planning ahead.
• Communication- Verbalizing descriptions, asking questions, relating observations, and using words accurately.

In our open-ended activities our instructors are directed to refrain form giving the students all the answers or explaining everything that happens. Instead the children are encouraged to unravel the solutions individually or in groups. They are guided in finding the common links which occur in all or most investigation, and in seeing the value of unique and unusual approaches to investigations.

Activities The BETR Science Programs are divided into diverse daily/weekly themes. The day’s activities and experiments are based on these themes. The following guideline profiles some of the BETR activities in each of these topics:

• Rockets- Cannons, “Pop” bottle rockets, engine rockets, and balloon rockets. Related topics: aerodynamics (paper planes, marble racers).
• Chemistry- Make plastic, bath salts, glue; test food for acids & bases; starch test chemical investigation; invisible ink, ice-cream, volcanoes, plastic bag bombs, cornstarch goo, silly putty.
• Biology- Leaf chromatography, recycled paper, natural dyes, egg animals, air testing, nature collage, making birds nests, insect collecting, cell artwork you can eat, cheek cells, mold garden, grow “hand” bacteria, plant experiments, nature scavenger hunts, camouflage contest.
• Physics- Design catapults, dry ice cannons, marble roller coasters, bridges, egg cars, paddle boats, helicopters, speed of sound Vs light, straw flute, junk yard band, telephone, center of gravity mobiles, hot air balloons, solar oven, mini motor, experi ment with siphons. Density- Sink or float soda cans, foil boats, Cartesian diver, wave bottles, lava lamps. Light- what makes a blue or red sky?, make kaleidoscopes, rainbows, and moving pictures.
  Click here to see more images of past Activities.

Visitors

As often as possible, our classes are visited by academic researchers and other science professionals to share their piece of the scientific world. These presentations reinforce our daily topics through experiments and/or presentations, as well as introduce campers to new areas of scientific pursuit. This is a great opportunity for the children to engage in dialogue with practicing scientists and to gain some appreciation for science as a career. Some of our more notable visitors have been; in the summer of 2000 we were exclusively invited to the National Geographic Museum for a discussion about global warming given by Bill Nye the Science Guy and the United States Vice President Al Gore! This past summer BETR was visited by a NASA scientists from the Goddard Space Flight Center to discuss deep outer space exploration. Click here on more visitor information.