Explore what collaboration looks like at these Sciencenter exhibits:

• The Big Blue Blocks
• The Whisper Dish on the Science Playground
• Colored Shadows 

• Can you discover a way to move something without touching it?
• Can you find an activity that only works with two or more people?

Did you know that children begin processing the actions of the people around them as soon as they are born? In fact, there is no other time in life when the brain develops more rapidly than during the first 5 years.  Young children learn a lot on their own, but when it comes to significant developmental stages, collaboration with the adults in their lives helps to build stronger foundations of understanding the world around them. Starting at birth, children observe their world to learn faces and language, and to advance their overall cognition through relationships with the important people around them. Explore ways in which you can collaborate with your toddlers with Alison Gopnik and her TED Talk,  "What do babies think?"

Try this at home!
Vroom supports collaborative interactions with your youngest children to promote learning. You can c ustomize activities for the ages of the children you spend the most time with in your life and get daily ideas to promote brain building. 

Each year at the Sciencenter, we offer every second-grade student in the Tompkins County public school system the opportunity to engage in a collaborative engineering challenge through the Kids Discover the Trail! program. The students work together to complete their challenge of creating a working wind turbine that will spin when they hold it in front of a fan. Over the course of this challenge, the students organically discover the value of diverse ideas, mutual respect, and perseverance in adversity. At Ithaca City School District KDT! trips, students are paired with a buddy from a different school. One local parent said, "The buddy system, in particular, broadens their tiny elementary school experience to include other kids from all over the community -- suddenly they become common citizens of a much larger world."  Check out the full article,  'Buddies' Are Brought Together by KDT!

Try this at home!

Put your engineering skills to the test while working with your friends to create the fastest, most efficient  Puff-mobile . Which design crossed the finish line first? What about that design made it work the best?

The Collaborative for Early Science Learning (CESL) is a partnership between six museums across the country with the goal of developing a series of tools for the museum field that will fill a critical gap in Head Start teacher science training. Funded by a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, this Sciencenter-led collaborative brings museums together to work on professional development for Head Start teachers, to seek to learn what works best, and then to share these best practices throughout the museum field. The goal of the collaborative is to strengthen existing programs and provide the tools necessary for more museums to create the types of programs and partnerships that will improve early science learning for underserved audiences.

According to Karen Worth, Senior Research Scientist at Education Development Center, Inc., due to increased numbers of children living in poverty or with parents who must work multiple jobs, "experiences that provide direct manipulation of and experience with objects, materials, and phenomena -- such as playing in the sink, raising a pet, or going to the playground -- are becoming less likely to occur in the home."  Read the full study here.   

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.