Some Stuff About Labs.

Teaching science, one thing I always wrestle with approximately 3 bajillion times a year is the science teacher version of the "chicken or the egg" conundrum:
Science stuff before lab, or lab before science stuff?
I used to be a firm believer in the stuff before lab side of the above issue.  How can they do the lab not knowing any of the stuff behind it?  Labs are supposed to reinforce the learning of said stuff!  They are ways for students to apply the stuff to actual lab-type happenings!
So I would teach the stuff, the kids would dutifully copy down all the stuff, we would do some fun manipulative or reading activities with the stuff, I would hand out the lab directions in my sciencey way, students would perform all the tasks on the lab directions, and then students would act like they had never seen the stuff before in their lives when it came to applying the stuff to the lab-type happenings, looking at me with faces that asked, "When did we ever learn this stuff?!?" 
I should have listened to their faces sooner, because the key word I should have heard in that question is "learn."  I had to ask myself what that really meant, what that really looked like.  And I decided that me shoveling stuff at them before the lab was just not working.  It wasn't learning.
So last year I got this wacky idea that they should do the lab first, and hook the stuff on to the lab.  I tried it out on my 9th graders, and liked what I saw.  I did it again 3 times this year.  Every time students were asked what stuff they needed to know to explain the lab happenings after they did them, and we generated lists of stuff as a class.  Then they went in search for it, hooking it back to the lab happenings they witnessed.  It wasn't perfect (them being used to copying stuff), but their brains were and are the better for it.  They had a reason to find the stuff; a reason to learn the stuff.
I didn't do it for this last lab because I was talked out of it by a colleague.  I don't dig it, not one bit.  Students have been going through the stuff without any reason for it; the stuff has no meaning.  No context.  Nowhere to hang it that says, "HERE is where I go, THIS is what I explain."  The only reason they're going through it is because I told them to.  How relevant is that? 
My nice compliant little stuff soldiers, slogging their way through my stuff.  And it is my stuff--because I haven't provided a good way to truly make it theirs.  
When we get to the lab I fear I will be seeing a familiar question in their faces.  I'm really going to have to know my stuff to help them make connections between the lab and all that stuff.