What is “hands-on science”?

In Camilla Barry’s own words:
“I teach teachers how to use locally available materials that are free or inexpensive for their science lessons instead of using a laboratory – which is usually unavailable anyway. For example, making ice cream can involve a lesson about heat transfer and freezing point depression.

"I explain to them that learning how the world works will give them more personal power because once they learn how things work, they can change things in their lives for the better. I teach them to question why or why not.

"I take a subject matter, build a lesson around it, connect that single lesson to other subject matters (math, history, geography, etc.), but I always try to connect the lesson to their daily lives.

"Since I have had an opportunity to live with Afghan families in the cities as well as in rural areas, I can truly connect the lessons to things they see on a daily basis.”

Examples of “hands-on science”

• A lever experiment  connected to children teeter-tottering in local parks
• Pollination lessons connected to actual insects and crops grown locally
• Electric circuit lesson when students figured out how to connect a circuit correctly to make the light bulb light
• Using purple cabbage from the street stalls to make an acid-base indicator
• Combining beeswax, olive oil and local plants to make a salve
• Teaching geometry by using honey bee frames to show how volume is calculated – why honey bees make hexagons instead of circles
• Using a pie tin with water in it and a candle stub sticking upright, lighting the candle, then putting a glass over it – why did the candle go out?
• Although the obvious answer is that there was no oxygen left, there is another answer and they discover how one can jump to a wrong conclusion but use science to prove or disprove a conclusion
• Why are arches in Islamic architecture so strong? Explain it by using egg shells and scrap wooden block to build an eggshell “house”
• Develop a cloud in a jar (plastic bottle, moisture and match)
• Using a carrot and salt in a plastic bottle to study density
• Understanding the role of yeast in making nan

A fantastic story about one hands-on science lesson
Camilla had been unsuccessful in talking teachers from another country who had built a new school in Afghanistan into letting her demonstrate her hands-on science principles. Their teaching methods were based on rote teaching, no experiments.

Finally, one morning she was told that she could teach a class at noon. She hurried back to her lodging, boiled some sugar into crystals, then went out and picked up pieces of glass along the side of the road as she ran back to the school.

When it was her turn to teach, she walked to the front of the room, showed the students the glass and crystals and asked them what it was. They responded that it was glass, clearly bored by the whole thing.  She asked if they could eat glass to which they responded, “Of course not.”

To their immense surprise, she took the crystals, put them into her mouth and started chewing. She now had the attention of the class! They subsequently had a discussion about how glass is formed.