Cardboard and Tape: The Science Practices That Start Before Kindergarten

The block tower falls and your three-year-old says “again.” It falls again. They move the wide block to the bottom without being told and it stands. You call that playing. The people who wrote the national science standards call it planning and carrying out an investigation, and they would like it to keep happening for the next thirteen years.

The Next Generation Science Standards, NGSS, name eight science and engineering practices, the NGSS practices, and begin them in kindergarten. California’s preschool science foundations say the same practices are already running in a three-year-old, in rough form. One picture book we recommend shows the whole loop with the materials that were in the recycling bin.

What the NGSS practices are

The Next Generation Science Standards, adopted by California and many other states, rest on a framework that names eight science and engineering practices: asking questions and defining problems, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, using mathematics and computational thinking, constructing explanations and designing solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. Appendix F explains why the word is practices and not skills:

“We use the term “practices” instead of a term such as “skills” to emphasize that engaging in scientific investigation requires not only skill but also knowledge that is specific to each practice.”

NGSS Lead States, Appendix F: Science and Engineering Practices in the NGSS, 2013, p. 1

The standards are for kindergarten through grade twelve, and the appendix is explicit that each practice “has its own progression, from kindergarten to grade 12” (NGSS Lead States, 2013, p. 2). The kindergarten end is not abstract. “The practice of ‘planning and carrying out investigations’ begins at the kindergarten level with guided situations in which students have assistance in identifying phenomena to be investigated, and how to observe, measure, and record outcomes” (p. 2), and asking questions “in K-2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple descriptive questions that can be tested” (p. 4). Prior experiences. That is the preschool years.

What California says about the years before

California’s 2024 Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Science foundations pick up the same practices below kindergarten. “Young children have a sense of wonder and natural curiosity about objects and events in their environment” (California Department of Education, 2024, p. 4), and “as children explore their environment, they use tools, digital devices, and mathematics skills to measure, document, and make sense of their observations” (p. 4). The document even carries the framework’s language: “throughout the foundations there are connections to how children explore and learn about crosscutting concepts through their science and engineering experiences” (p. 6). A preschool that says NGSS does not apply to it is reading the grade band and missing the progression.

A book that meets the goal

Bolt hands Kit cardboard. Bolt hands Kit tape. Bolt hands Kit more tape. That is most of Book 6. The result is lumpy and the tape shows everywhere, and Sparks says the line the book exists for: “It’s not perfect. It’s REAL. That’s even better.” The four books of the Making phase are the practices in order. In Book 5 Marco has one rule, don’t worry if it’s squiggly, just draw, and a scribble becomes a model. In Book 6 the model becomes a thing to test. In Book 7 it collapses, Kit’s lip wobbles, and the twins Sam and Suki turn every crash into “OOPS! ALMOST!” while Suki finds the one thing to fix. In Book 8 Devi fixes one thing at a time until the same cardboard works well.

How the book meets what the standard asks for. Appendix F says investigations begin with guided situations where a child has help identifying what to investigate and how to observe and record what happens. Book 6 is that guided situation with a friend instead of a worksheet: a model on paper, materials in hand, a build, a result. “It fell apart” is data. “It works but the tape comes loose” is more refined data, and Books 7 and 8 are the analyzing and interpreting step, with the feeling given its own beat first. Nobody in the four books is taught a fact. A child draws, builds, breaks and fixes, and an adult says “perfect” at the wobbly stage instead of the finished one. That is the progression of the NGSS practices, started two years early.

Chris Kuczynski mapped all eight practices to the series for families on the Little Sparks site in How NGSS Science and Engineering Practices Show Up in 20 Toddler STEM Books. This post is the classroom side of that conversation, and a good preschool STEM curriculum is built on the same eight verbs.

What you can do

Each of the four books has a free educator guide with a classroom version of the build. The Book 6 one is mostly tape. Start the bin this weekend. The NGSS practices begin with tape.

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