The topic of my graduation thesis is about water mills. Because they do not spin on their own, I have explained their workings in more intricate detail. In this case water is the source of energy that powers the mills, so I described hydro energy means. Preparing activities for children was a part of my thesis, so it was important to me to present their processes of learning and developing understanding. For the children the concept of energy does not have a clear meaning, so I tried to design activities to help them understand the concept in a meaningful way and bring them to the conclusion that the mill must be powered by some kind of energy to turn, otherwise it would not be able to do anything. To come to these results, one has to ask many questions, make several experiments and provide multiple explanations.
I interviewed the children separately to find out what they already knew about mills and how they work. Based on their responses I prepared activities which showed the children what mills are and how they work. Once they completed the activities I interviewed the children again using the same questions as previously. The results were astonishing, as the children really learned and remembered many new things.
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