I want to describe my teaching in the course ´Physics and chemistry from a child perspective´.
It is in Gävle a compulsory course for teacher-students towards pre-school. At University of Gävle we have this education with a lot of science, technology and mathematics in it.
My part is their only pure physics part and it is half of a five weeks course (stretched out in time though and the students practice in pre-school for three weeks is added to the five weeks).
Most of my teaching is laboratory work with simple materiel. The content is mainly :
density, the atom, temperature and heat, air, water, electricity, sound, light, astronomy and environmental physics.
In pairs the students work out a teaching sequence about a science theme. Example of titles are: Air, Cooking, Water, Recycling, Fire, Floats or sink ?, Space, The Solar system, etc.
During their practice in pre-school they do a part (or whole) of their suggested science theme with the children, including a few experiments if possible. Back at the university we meet in class and they report in a seminar about their experiences.
I will describe some funny experiments and also discuss the explanations. In some of the common experiments I have found some improvements. In some explanations I try to stress pure physics, like Newton´s third law on force and reaction-force.
Issues for open discussion is: which topics do the teachers need and what can be done in pre-school (kindergarten) ? As an example I have concluded that the teachers do not need to know Ohms law, but they must know how to make a bulb light with a battery and one cord.