1. Communicating the Reality, Excitement and Relevance of Science
2. Basic Conceptual Understanding of all the Five Broad Themes in Science
3. Learning Scientific Skills and the Process of Science
4. Encouraging scientific creativity, curiosity and discovery

Children need to understand that science is real. They need to realize that scientific concepts are actually talking about the real world around us. Realizing this is what gives meaning to science. Today, most children look at science as something that is learnt in textbooks – with no sense of reality. Scientific concepts are just vague words to be memorized and repeated in exams. This makes science an irrelevant subject - leading to a lack of excitement in science.

To communicate the reality of science, we need to get children to do experiments. But merely doing experiments is not enough. Many experiments done in school just do not excite children – they get children to observe measure, plot graphs and answer questions that never arise in their minds. All this seems to children as far removed from reality as the theory itself seemed to be. Questions arise naturally only when children are surprised and excited and want to know. We need experiments – but a different kind of experiment system. We need experiments that are easy to do but stunning and surprising. We need experiments that can be done with ordinary things that children usually see or use. Experiments that use day-to-day materials but give surprising results generate a lot of excitement.

But only doing such experiments does not make science real. It excites children. But still children think of these experiments as magic – not science. To give reality to science, we need to get children to explain these experiments. Again this does not mean merely saying “because of air pressure” or “because of Newton’s Law” – but rather being able to visualize the actual phenomenon behind. The child must develop an underlying mental visualization of the phenomenon which leads to the result.

One unconnected experiment cannot do this. A series of 5-10 connected experiments that all can be explained with the same mental visualization (the same science concept) is extremely useful in getting to this stage. The first few experiments are useful in getting children to develop the mental picture of what’s happening. Once the child gets the mental picture, the child should now be able explain what’s going on in the next new experiment.

This is what makes science real! Science is real only when you use scientific ideas to think about things around you and when you can use it to not only explain what is happening but also predict what will happen. It is not important whether the explanation or prediction is right or wrong – what is important is that the child thinks it is possible to explain or predict and thinks through ideas in his/her mind to do the explanation or prediction. This means the child sees science as real knowledge about the real world. The implication of this reality sense is much more than merely knowing a few experiments or a few concepts – it completely changes the way a child thinks and behaves.

To address this goal of communicating the reality, excitement and relevance of science, we suggest the Ariviyal Anandam Program.

The “Ariviyal Anandam” programme directly addresses this problem and at the same time also demonstrates to teachers what the alternative science education methodology would be like.