Tag Archives: early childhood education

I fell in love the moment my dad brought our first clunky computer home. Like many other children who grew up in the 1990s, I grew up using computers to write stories and explore the Internet. The term “computer science” conjured a dark cloak of mystery, with a hoodie, or a pair of dungarees.  Yet I fell in love with computers and the possibilities that I began to see. Today, I write picture books about technology to make the world…

If you follow the news or have a child in school, it’s easy to believe that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts are more prominent than ever before. And certainly, the importance of STEM learning and STEM experiences are enjoying a renaissance of media coverage. The reality is, however, that our children have always been capable of STEM learning, yet we are just now learning more about how and when to encourage this type of thinking in a way…

Opening minds to new ways of thinking about STEM for young children Researchers who study children often point out that teaching science and math in the early years is also a great way to support children’s literacy skills. But teachers and administrators lament that it is not so easy to integrate these subjects in day-to-day classrooms. It doesn’t help that the very concepts of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can get short shrift in pre-K, kindergarten, and the early…

What if there was a better way to introduce math to young kids? For a parent, one of the first math concepts they teach their child is to count to 10. In this exercise, repetition is the name of the game: “Let’s count to 10!…Good! Now, let’s do it again!” While rote learning of the first 10 numbers is important, it is not sufficient for a child to grasp the deeper meaning behind these numbers, and why they are important to…

This post originally appeared on Common Sense Education and appears here with permission.   Watch a group of preschoolers working in a garden. It’s cute, right? But it turns out they’re learning more than you’d think. According to our new NSF-funded report, STEM Starts Early, co-published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and New America, there’s growing evidence that very young children from all backgrounds — even children from birth to age 8 — learn important science, technology, engineering, and math…

On March 29, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, New America, and the Erikson Institute presented a webinar on integrating STEM into early childhood education to the STEM Ecosystems group at TIES, The Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM. TIES focuses on STEM school design, STEM curriculum, and instructional support for schools. As our country’s leading STEM innovator, TIES brings STEM design services to districts, states, private philanthropies, corporations, federal agencies and many more. The STEM Ecosystems Initiative is made up of nearly 40 communities of…

Watch a group of young children in a community garden. They’ll dig in the soil, find and play with earthworms and insects, plant seeds in patches of sunlight, and come back to watch them sprout, grow, and bear fruit. With a little help, these kids can be doing more than simply playing in the dirt. They can be learning the beginnings of environmental science and plant biology and practicing critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Working alongside teachers trained in early STEM…

Picture this: You enter a preschool classroom and hear the splashes and giggles of children around a water table. You approach an elementary school and see a small group of children on a guided nature walk, investigating the blossoms on a flowering tree, while another group is measuring the dimensions of a jungle gym and creating drawings of how it is constructed. All around you, early learners are engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) — subjects that were…

On May 31-June 1, 2016, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and New America co-hosted an early STEM convening in Washington, D.C. funded by the National Science Foundation. Read on for highlights from the event. Day One The event kicked off with a warm welcome from Lisa Guernsey, Deputy Director of the Education Policy Program and Director of the Learning Technologies Project at New America and Michael Levine, Founder and Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.…

The NAEYC Annual Conference & Expo invites teachers, researchers, administrators and anyone involved in early childhood education for a unique professional development opportunity. The conference exposes attendees to the latest research and best practices in early childhood education and offers a comprehensive networking experience. This year’s conference will focus on Developmentally Appropriate Practices in the 21st century. For more information please visit http://www.naeyc.org/conference/.