What is STEM in early childhood and why is it important?
If you are an educator, STEM in childhood education is probably something that you hear about constantly. Politicians refer to it as of great importance to the national agenda, as a way of ‘getting ahead’ of other countries. Chances are that you probably even know what those letters stand for- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics- but what does it really mean? And how do we bring STEM experiences into the early years.
Read to the end to get your free STEM resources checklist.
In this article we will discuss the following points-
What is STEM?
As I have previously mentioned, STEM is an acronym which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics. It is a way of integrating the learning and teaching of these concepts. So, let’s take a deeper dive to see how we can look at these topics in early childhood.
S is for Science - STEM in childhood
Science is everywhere!
Science in early childhood can be broken into down into 5 categories, earth science, physical science, chemical science, biological science and environment and sustainability.
Let’s break them down further, and you’ll be able to see how you already incorporate these into your daily life.
Earth Science:
- Weather and seasons
- Gravity
- Our position in space
- Non-living earth materials
- Change- day and night; light & dark
Physical Science:
- Movement and force
- Temperature- hot and cold
- Floating and sinking
Biological Science:
- Living things including plants, insects and humans
- Growth and life cycles
- Living vs non-living
- The needs of living things
- Animal investigations including extinct animals
Environment & Sustainability:
- Recycling
- Using recycled materials
- Composting/ worm farms
- Gardening
Chemical Science:
- Chemical changes
- Kitchen chemistry- baking
T is for Technology - STEM in childhood
This is the part where things get a bit controversial, isn’t it? If you are a parent, like me, things like ‘screen time’ can raise all kinds of issues in parents’ circles. It seems like there are only two options
- Either ‘absolutely no technology allowed’ because it rots the brain and all that…
- Or ‘absolutely no limiting of technology allowed’ because why would you regulate your child’s way of learning?
In summary, any of the ways we talk about technology use with children, what we really mean is ‘screen time’.
What if I told you that ‘technology’ does not just mean ‘screen time’? Yes, technology can be digital, but technology also refers to the analogue as well as what we think of as very primitive instruments. What technology really is, is anything created by humans that is primarily used by humans as a tool. Much like book handling skills, technology skills should be explicitly taught.
So yes, an iPad and a television is technology, but so is a pencil, a hammer, and a spade.
Here are some guilt-free ways that you can (and I’m sure already are!) incorporate technology use into early childhood activities.
- Cooking with kitchen utensils
- Gardening, watering, and playing in the sandpit with outdoor tools
- Writing and doing artwork with paints, brushes, pens, glue, scissors, and crayons
- Using magnifying glasses and binoculars to explore the properties of objects
- Using tongs, tweezers, forks, and toothpicks to help share and serve food
- Using construction tools like hammers, saws, spirit levels to work with wood
- Using scales, rulers, and cups to measure things
E is for Engineering - STEM in childhood
Children are natural engineers, just put out a box of blocks and you will see this for yourself. Young kids love figuring out how things work. Playing with blocks and exploring how things works are civil, and mechanical & electrical engineering respectively.
You see civil engineering every day in early childhood. It sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? But I’d also point to the importance of using this kind of rich language with young children. Yes, they are builders, architects & engineers. But back to the civil engineering- when you see children working in the sandpit, making constructions, using blocks, they are engineering. To clarify, they are investigating structure and using the design process.
Exploration through tinkering and play is the basis of electrical and mechanical engineering. Didn’t we all want a robot as a best friend when we were little? Discover what that could really mean. Robots and simple machines are so much fun. Take the ‘incline plane’ (a flat board propped on some bricks), perhaps the very simplest machine, and a toy car (or any toy with wheels) and watch the hours of entertainment that will be had.
M is for Mathematics - STEM in childhood
Mathematics is probably one of the easiest letters in the acronym to know what to do with. It is one of those second nature types of things that you do with young children, like counting the numbers of steps or pointing out shapes when you are going for a walk.
Math in early childhood can be separated into four main areas, number and operations, measurement, geometry and algebra, and data. These four areas can be divided into further topics.
Number & Operations
- Counting
- Making collections
- Using and ordering numerals
Measurement
- Position
- Direct comparison
- Informal measurement
Geometry & Algebra
- Patterns
- Sequence
- Shapes
Data
- Gathering, documenting, quantifying and representing mathematical ideas
- Answering questions on this data
But...What is STEAM?
Well… according to Dictionary.com it is ‘water in the form of invisible vapour or gas’.
Just kidding! Well, it is, but that’s not the type of STEAM that I am talking about!
You will often hear me talk about STEM, but not so often STEAM. STEAM is the same acronym as STEM, (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) just with an A added in there for Art. I usually don’t focus on the ‘art’ side of things because I feel that is already an area that many early childhood educators really excel at, but I thought that I’d take the opportunity to have a chat about it. So, what STEAM does is uses the arts in STEM learning to help children communicate STEM ideas.
Now, as I said before, I think early childhood educators are really great at the arts already but are perhaps not as confident in engaging in STEM learning with children. So, integrating the arts into the STEM curriculum may help educators feel more able to teach these less familiar concepts.
Wrapping Up
Dr. Sherri Killins, Commissioner of Early Education and Care for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, said, “What STEM does is give a label to what you are already doing… helping children to explore, observe, ask questions, predict, integrate their learning…” And I don’t think it could be put any more perfectly. STEM learning is absolutely natural in early childhood, you can’t escape it. It is not something to ‘DO’, it is not a separate part of a curriculum, it is integral TO the curriculum.
When we think about the world around us, it makes perfect sense to integrate all these ideas. For too long we have taken the silo approach to learning and separated children into groups, ‘the sporty kids’, ‘the arty kids’, ‘the book worms’, but that really isn’t the way the world works. If we look at history’s greatest thinkers, they are also extremely creative (Leonardo Da Vinci, anyone?), and giving children experiences in many different things gives them a really strong foundation, or skills rope, to build upon.
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