Tag Archives: early STEM learning

The following excerpt from “More Than a Foundation: Young Children Are Capable STEM Learners” by Elisabeth McClure was originally published in the November 2017 issue of Young Children. It appears here courtesy of NAEYC.     Two second-graders sit on their knees with quiet intensity, stacking unit blocks on a wide tower, higher and higher. A casual observer might think they’re simply enjoying the scale of their project and looking forward to knocking it down. Their teacher might see more,…

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…

Last month, the National STEM Video Game Challenge co-hosted a game design workshop with Black Girls CODE, a non-profit that leads coding and technology workshops for young women of color across the country. More than 50 girls  attended the workshop to learn the basics of game design, teaming up to create both physical and digital games over the course of the day. Check out highlights from the event in this brief video. In the growing push to ensure early and ongoing exposure to STEM education for…

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…