What is STEM education and why is it important and STEM Education Definition
STEM Education, a term initiated by the National Science Foundation, is an educational approach which focuses on one or more of the four disciplines of
Science, technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
– Science
-Technology
– Engineering, and
– Math
In an era when technical and scientific skills are increasingly important in the workforce, exposing us to STEM learning in the early years is key. It is important to ensure that girls as well as boys are exposed to and encouraged in the area of STEM.
We are naturally curious about our world, so we need plenty of opportunities to explore and to learn through play by having interesting toys or tools to examine.
With close supervision, also offer real objects to study and learn about. Often real objects, like an apple or a squash, a shiny water bottle or textured paper, are much more interesting to the littlest learners than plastic toys and materials.
What is STEM for kids
Through innovative play, we can start STEM Education at home.
We can try working through some of the steps together :
– Sometimes we can ask ourselves questions like,
“Which is faster, my toy race car or this toy truck?”
We can talk with our friends or in our group about how we can try to solve the problem together. We can invent new things by the idea of STEM for our society, for our nation and for ourselves.
– We should think about how scientists, after making observations, come up with their best guess or hypothesis. We can try testing the two vehicles. After testing, we can observe which is faster.
– We can take selected materials and space where we can test our hypothesis. We can test our hypothesis by comparing speeds in different settings such as the sidewalk, on a rug, etc.
-We should learn the importance of our recordings and findings. Teacher’s encouragement can make us better by showing what happened in our experiments.
– Dedication, preservation, enthusiasm, punctuality and most importantly reflection – these are the most important part of learning.
We should understand that experiments don’t always work out the way we expect, but we may learn new ways to problem solve or create something even better than we planned.
– We need to understand that not all activities have to be that formal. We can also use language like, “let’s solve that problem” or “what I think will happen?”
Conclusion :
During STEM programming, students are creating their own research questions and following a process that helps them learn to investigate multiple perspectives and connect ideas to solve a problem.
Whether it’s the Engineering Design Process, the Design-Thinking Process, or the Scientific Method, kids are going to be collaborating with others; asking important questions; taking leadership in their roles; and testing many ideas to reach a solution.
