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Overview: After reading The Button Box, children observe buttons, describe their properties, and classify them into groups.
Booklink: The Button Box by Margarette S. Reid, Puffin Unicorn Books, 1990. ISBN 0-14-055495-5
Science Activity Link: Children are given 8-10 different buttons. After observing and describing them, the buttons are classified into different groups based upon their properties; round or not-round, 4-hole or not 4-hole, bright colors or dull colors, smooth or rough, etc.
Objective: Children will observe, describe, and classify buttons based on their physical properties.
Science Processes and Content: Processes-observing, communicating, classifying, inferring, defining operationally, and collecting and displaying data. Content-physical properties of objects, form and function, and the history of buttons.
National Science Education Standards: Unifying Concepts and Processes, (1) Science as Inquiry, (2) Physical Science, (5) Science and Technology, (7) History and Nature of Science
Materials: Assorted buttons, the book The Button Box, paper, pencil
Procedure:
1. Ask children to find and describe buttons on their clothing. Have them draw each kind of button, then count and record their numbers.
2. Read The Button Box, pointing out button properties, e.g. metal shanks, plastic, wood, big and little. Ask children to infer when buttons were first used and share the end page information "Buttons, Buttons, Who Invented Buttons?"
3. Provide each child with 8 to 10 buttons. Ask them to pick their favorite one and describe its properties (rough or smooth, big or small, metal or plastic).
4. Ask the children to divide their group (set) of buttons into two groups based upon a single property, e.g. smoothness (rough and smooth), size (big or small), shape (round or not-round), holes (2-holes or not 2-holes).
5. Encourage the children to make their own secret classification system, dividing the buttons into 2 groups on the basis of a single observable property. They should not tell what the secret property is but have a neighboring child infer the classification property. If the neighbor child infers correctly, then it is their turn to see if the first child can infer their secret classification property.
6. Follow up the buttons with observations and classification of other objects by their physical properties, e.g. shoes, seeds, leaves, rocks, or matter (solids, liquids, gases).
Related Books:
Shoes by Elizabeth Winthrop, Harper Trophy, 1986. ISBN 0-06-443171-1
Look What I Did With a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi, Walker and Company, 1993. ISBN 0-8027-7440-7
What Is the World Made Of? by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, Harper Collins, 1998. ISBN 0-06-445163-1
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