Australia bound

Next week I, will travel to Australia through Real World Learning, a group that specializes in STEM professional development.  I will be doing a number of sessions around Australia emphasizing STEM at the sensory table.  For me, the sand and water table has always been a science table in which the children created their own experiments as they played and explored the various apparatus and materials.  They were masters of scientific inquiry and often taught me something new about the apparatus and/or the materials.

There will be a couple of sessions in Australia, however, that will be relatively new for me.  I will be holding a few sessions on children's STEM explorations around invitations that allow for loud/boisterous/adventurous play in other parts of an early childhood classroom.  Let me give you a couple of examples.

For the Science in STEM, two children pursued a spontaneous line of scientific inquiry of their own choosing.  They appropriated scarves from the housekeeping area to see what would happen when they put them over the room's blower.  To reach the blower, they climbed a set of steps and balanced on the top step as they directed their scarves over the blower.


Blower fun 2 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.


In fact, they each did their own experiment.  The child with the yellow/green scarf pressed his scarf over the blower while the child with the orange scarf launched his over the blower.  In one way the results were the same: squeals of delight.

For the Technology in STEM, a child draped a large scarf over the slide.  The scarf reduced the friction while sliding down, so she could go barreling down the slide to crash into the mat at the bottom.


Superslide from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.


The scarf could be considered a form of technology because it was basically an instrument used to increase the child's speed down the slide.

For the Engineering in STEM, a group of children attempted to build a fort with a bunch of loose mats that were in the room.  

Were they able to build their fort?  Not quite, but they had a great time developing their nascent engineering skills.

For the Math in STEM, two children used loose mats to cover the top holes of the cubes.  They invented their own game of sinking into the cube.  To sink, they slowly shifted their weight into the middle until they and the mats dropped into the hole.

Sinking from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

There was certainly a lot of physics in this episode, but there was also a lot of math.  Math is not just numbers, but also all the positions that define the space---in/out, up/down, over/under and around/through---that both of the children experienced concretely.

STEM may sound intimidating, but when one steps back to observe, it is everywhere in the early childhood classroom.  Children do not "do" science.  Children "live" science.

If you are in Australia and curious about any of the sessions, please check out the events section of Real World Learning.