Teaching materials for a 3 day summer camp

[Why]

Hello,

It is often observed 9th standard kids are first introduced to the ideas of science in a systematic manner. I am leading and designing the main content for maths and physics for a summer camp in Mangalore. My knowledge of chemistry and biology is zilch. Hopefully the organizers will find good chemistry teachers and biology teachers.

My reasons for designing this camp is to instill scientific temper in kids and teach them how to do Science.
So this camp would mostly feature learning physics through experiments. I think the idea of falsifiability must be subtly impressed upon them. I will try to teach them to do mathematics by visual representation and puzzles. I am an ardent fan of Prof. Kumaresan(the founder of MTTS) and Mr. P.N. Subramanya(the local champion in mathematics teaching) who teach this style of doing mathematics.

I would like a couple of pointers on the documentary I am trying to make. This documentary focuses on introducing kids to different fun parts of Science.
As of now, I want to mix Walter Lewin's videos and Dr. V.S. Ramachandran's.
So,

1) Are there fun animations/cartoons that explain basics of physics, chemistry, math, biology to kids (9th and 10th)?

2) Do you people know any video series on evolution (that is simplified for kids) told by Prof.Dawkins or some other authority in the field. If I could cover neuroscience, evolution, mechanics, electromagnetics, fluids, algebra, geometry, counting and calculus, I would be happy. Clearly, I have no clue of what to include in chemistry. So some suggestions of video series in chemistry will be dandy.

Thanks.


P.S: It is supposed to be on May 15th, so I request you consider this request urgent.

[Sajit]

Qualia Soup has some nice videos you might want to check them out on youtube.

Here is one on evolution.

http://youtu.be/vss1VKN2rf8


And here is a video on critical thinking a subject that could be interesting for kids.


http://youtu.be/6OLPL5p0fMg

[arvindiyer]

(08-Apr-2012, 01:11 PM)Why Wrote: ...My knowledge of chemistry and biology is zilch. Hopefully the organizers will find good chemistry teachers and biology teachers.

Some child-friendly chemistry lectures I could find are some Christmas Lectures from Oxford, Imperial College(London) and U Utah, inspired by the original ones by Faraday. Here is a playlist of smaller clips from the U Utah lecture.

Here is a chemistry lecture by Prof. Christopher Bishop, better known for his contributions to Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. Here is a trailer.

Why,
Do keep our community here posted of how these lectures go, especially about the feedback from your young audiences.

I really miss the clips of the 'Kyon aur Kaise' show from Doordarshan in the early 1990s. Does anyone know how the video archives can be obtained and uploaded for a wider audience?

[Why]

Thank you for your suggestions, arvindiyer and Sajit.

I will collect all the suitable documentaries in this thread. In Facebook, once the thread gets buried into the abysmal pit of posts, it is hard to dig it up. So I am adding the user's name and their suggestions from this post.

Nita Bulani Thomas suggested Richard Dawkins - Growing up in the Universe.

Pravin Kulkarni pointed out that this answers the common misconception of "why are there still monkeys if human evolved from monkeys?"

Thanks to Arvind Cee, Vihart's beautiful rhapsody that explains basic math paradoxes like 0.999999... = 1 and pi = 4.
I personally like the SingingBanana channel as well.

Arvind Cee also suggested Mythbusters which explain some common observations. I like sound and the effect of medium and diet coke and menthos in particular.

I now know of MinutePhysics, a brilliant physics channel similar to Vihart's math videos. I thank Aamil Syed Naeem for pointing it out.

I want to introduce the idea of scientific method and critical thinking to kids in the camp. I found this video simple and interesting.

Some interesting puzzles like Guess the order, How to defy gravity [Thanks to Lalit and Kam Ran] can help pique the interests of young minds.
I would be really grateful if I could get more links on such interesting, mind boggling puzzles and experiments.

I will update this thread with new videos whenever I can.

Thanks,
Why.

P.S.: I hope my plan of teaching them to be skeptical, performing experiments and enjoying the process works out. I am doing it for the first time, so I am quite nervous about it.

[arvindiyer]

(12-Apr-2012, 08:21 PM)Why Wrote: P.S.: I hope my plan of teaching them to be skeptical, performing experiments and enjoying the process works out. I am doing it for the first time, so I am quite nervous about it.

For many of us, our interest in science is owed to one such person who kindled it in us during schooldays. Even if one child overcomes inhibition in asking one more question, your venture will count as a grand success in its own right. Good luck in this venture, which we hope is the first of many more to come! Do keep us posted of how this goes and do share tips for the wider community, especially for those who may have plans of replicating this exercise.