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Small Hands, Big Ideas: Exploring STEM Through Tinkering, Making and Engineering

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Small Hands, Big Ideas: Exploring STEM Through Tinkering, Making and Engineering

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Small Hands, Big Ideas: Exploring STEM Through Tinkering, Making, and Engineering

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Practical insights and strategies to enhance STEM teaching practices.

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Early Childhood Math: Dedicate and Integrate Daily Math Instruction (REL Central)

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Teaching Math to Young Children Recommendation 5

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Mathematical Practices in Early Childhood Education: We can do this!

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Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

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Carol Dweck On How Growth Mindset Can Bare Fruit in the Classroom

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Carol Dweck On How Growth Mindset Can Bare Fruit in the Classroom

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Association for Psychological Science - APS

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Several summers ago, a colleague sent Carol S. Dweck, a professor at Stanford University whose research has defined the field of mindset psychology, a photo of her 5-month-old nephew beaming with joy as he turned on a computer for the first time.

"It struck me: That's what we were all like. We were all once that excited about learning something new," Dweck said during her APS-David Myers Distinguished Lecture on the Science and Craft of Teaching Psychological Science at the 2019 APS Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.

However, when they are older, she continued, an alarming number of students report being overwhelmed by anxiety and depression to the point that it makes it difficult to function, much less achieve their academic potential. This can lead students to seek desperate solutions, but mindset science can play a role in helping to spark students' love of learning again, said Dweck, a recipient of the APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award, the William James Fellow Award, and the APS Mentor Award.

There are two theories of intelligence, referred to simply as mindsets, that students can have about their intellectual abilities, although no one has purely one or the other, she said. Individuals with more of a fixed mindset believe that their intellectual abilities are simply fixed. They tend to approach learning with the goal of looking smart, and they often shy away from challenges because they believe that having to work hard at something or making mistakes means they don't have high ability. Those with more of a growth mindset, on the other hand, believe that abilities can be developed-they are more likely to see effort as something that propels learning and to see setbacks as opportunities to build new skills.

These divergent mindsets are also reflected in how individuals process mistakes on a neurological level. In a study of 25 undergraduate students, Jason S. Moser (Michigan State University) and colleagues tasked participants with rapidly identifying the center letter in a string of similar text (e.g. "M" vs. "N") while monitoring activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and related brain areas associated with cognitive control of behavior, via electroencephalography. The students also completed a scale designed to measure fixed and growth mindsets.

Over the course of 480 trials, participants with growth mindsets demonstrated greater error positivity and greater electrical activity in the ACC and related brain regions associated with attending to mistakes compared with those with fixed mindsets. This boost in Pe was also associated with greater posterror accuracy, suggesting that these participants were processing errors more deeply, allowing them to make corrections immediately.

"A growth mind-set leads to an increased likelihood of learning from mistakes," Moser and colleagues wrote in Psychological Science.
Changing Students' Point of View
Even mindsets themselves aren't fixed - multisession, in-person interventions have been found to help those who are struggling academically, Dweck said. However, the time and resources required by this "boutique remedy" can make it difficult to scale, creating a gap that Dweck and colleagues aimed to fill by moving the intervention online during their National Study of Learning Mindsets.

The study followed a nationally representative sample of 12,000 ninth-grade students from 65 US schools as they made the transition to high school. Those in the intervention condition participated in a 45-minute online session designed to counter the belief that intelligence is fixed and that effort or mistakes indicate lack of ability. The students then summarized what they had read in their own words and advised a hypothetical student on how to apply these findings to his or her own education. The session in the control condition focused more generally on brain function during learning.

Students who received the intervention reported a reduction in fixed mindset beliefs compared with those in the control group. This was also accompanied by an increase in GPA for lower achieving students and an increase in advanced math course enrollment in the following year across achievement levels.

Even when students engaged with the intervention, however, a growth mindset was far more likely to take root when their school's institutional culture, and their teachers and peers in particular, were supportive of challenge seeking as well, Dweck said.
Mindset in Context
Mindset isn't just about what students bring to the table: Teachers' mindsets make a difference, too.

In a longitudinal study of 150 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professors and their 15,000 students, Elizabeth A. Canning (Washington State University), APS Fellow Mary C. Murphy (Indiana University), and colleagues found that classrooms led by professors who believed ability is a fixed attribute had racial achievement gaps up to twice as large as courses taught by faculty with a growth mindset. On the flip side, racial minority students in classes taught by growth-mindset professors significantly outperformed minority students in fixed-mindset classrooms.

These same students reported being less motivated in fixed-mindset classrooms and thought these professors were less likely to emphasize learning and development. Students did not find fixed-mindset classrooms to be more difficult or time-consuming, however.

It's possible that fixed-mindset beliefs may cause cultural stereotypes - including the idea that White and Asian students are more "naturally gifted" in STEM than Black, Latino, and Native American students - to become more salient, hindering student performance, Canning and colleagues write in Science Advances. Because older White men are stereotypically depicted as "gatekeepers of science," fixed-mindset beliefs may be more threatening coming from them, the authors write. However, fixed-mindset beliefs were found to be just as damaging regardless of professor identity. Educators' race, gender, teaching experience, and tenure status had little to no relationship with a classroom's racial achievement gap when taking mindset beliefs into account.

"Faculty mindset beliefs predicted student achievement and motivation above and beyond any other faculty characteristic," Canning and colleagues wrote.

The question, then, Dweck continued, is how to create environments that emphasize this kind of growth and improvement, a guiding principle of her freshman seminar course at Stanford.
Student Contributions
Dweck said she begins her freshman seminar at Stanford by acknowledging how daunting the beginning of college can be. At the same time, she tries to give students a new orientation toward school.

"I say 'today you're quitting your old job and you're starting your new job," Dweck recounts.

Their old job was getting as many As as possible and acing the achievement test to get into college, she continues. Now, their job is to use the university's resources to become the people they want to be-the people who will make their contributions to the world.

The rest of the course's readings, critiques, and research projects are designed to help them develop a growth mindset that they can use in service of this contribution - a more outwardly directed goal than individual "purpose" or "passion," Dweck said. The assignments ask students to examine what triggers them to revert to a fixed mindset, to go outside their comfort zone in their academic and personal lives, and to use what they've learned about growth mindsets to mentor an important person in their life that they think is being held back by a fixed mindset.

Every few weeks, Dweck also sets aside class time for a discussion about what students are struggling with, an activity that often expands to fill the entire class session. At first, she was concerned this meant she wasn't teaching the material enough, but the students - in line with researchers' findings about student social norms - said they were learning an incredible amount by listening to one another.
Recommended Reading
Canning, E. A., Muenks, K., Green, D. J., & Murphy, M. C. (2019). STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes. Science Advances, 5(2), Article eaau4734

Moser, J. S., Schroder, H. S., Heeter, C., Moran, T. P., & Lee, Y.-H. (2011). Mind your errors: Evidence for a neural mechanism linking growth mind-set to adaptive posterror adjustments. Psychological Science, 22, 1484-1489.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611419520

Paunesku, D., Walton, G. M., Romero, C., Smith, E. N., Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2015). Mind-set interventions are a scalable treatment for academic underachievement. Psychological Science, 26, 784-793.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615571017

Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., ... Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573, 364-369.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y

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Carol Dweck on How Growth Mindsets Can Bear Fruit in the Classroom

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Several summers ago, a colleague sent Carol S. Dweck, a professor at Stanford University whose research has defined the field of mindset psychology, a photo of her 5-month-old nephew beaming with joy as he turned on a computer for the first time. "It struck me: That's what we were all like.

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Carol Dweck A Summary of Growth and Fixed Mindsets

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Carol Dweck A Summary of Growth and Fixed Mindsets

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Carol Dweck: A Summary of The Two Mindsets

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A summary of Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, which explores our two mindsets (fixed and growth) and how they impact not only our attitudes and learning but also our outcomes.

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What are mental models and how do your students use them?

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The Power and Pitfalls of the Mind | Nayab Rafiq | TEDxRITDubai

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A Mindset is to a Mental Model What a Filter is to a Camera

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A Mindset is to a Mental Model What a Filter is to a Camera

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A Mindsets Is to a Mental Model What a Filter Is to a Camera Lens - Farther to Go!

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A mindset is a set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which you approach situations or people—or through which you view them. Mindsets determine how you interpret events and respond to them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means they are largely unconscious. A type of mental shortcut, […]

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Mental Models: How to Train Your Brain in New Ways

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Mental Models: How to Train Your Brain in New Ways

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You can train your brain to think better. One of the best ways to do this is to expand the set of mental models you use to think. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story about a world-class thinker.

I first discovered what a mental model was and how useful the right one could be while I was reading a story about Richard Feynman, the famous physicist. Feynman received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from Princeton. During that time, he developed a reputation for waltzing into the math department and solving problems that the brilliant Ph.D. students couldn't solve.

When people asked how he did it, Feynman claimed that his secret weapon was not his intelligence, but rather a strategy he learned in high school. According to Feynman, his high school physics teacher asked him to stay after class one day and gave him a challenge.

"Feynman," the teacher said, "you talk too much and you make too much noise. I know why. You're bored. So I'm going to give you a book. You go up there in the back, in the corner, and study this book, and when you know everything that's in this book, you can talk again." 1

So each day, Feynman would hide in the back of the classroom and study the book-Advanced Calculus by Woods-while the rest of the class continued with their regular lessons. And it was while studying this old calculus textbook that Feynman began to develop his own set of mental models.

"That book showed how to differentiate parameters under the integral sign," Feynman wrote. "It turns out that's not taught very much in the universities; they don't emphasize it. But I caught on how to use that method, and I used that one damn tool again and again. So because I was self-taught using that book, I had peculiar methods of doing integrals."

"The result was, when the guys at MIT or Princeton had trouble doing a certain integral, it was because they couldn't do it with the standard methods they had learned in school. If it was a contour integration, they would have found it; if it was a simple series expansion, they would have found it. Then I come along and try differentiating under the integral sign, and often it worked. So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else's, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me." 2

Every Ph.D. student at Princeton and MIT is brilliant. What separated Feynman from his peers wasn't necessarily raw intelligence. It was the way he saw the problem. He had a broader set of mental models.

What is a Mental Model?

A mental model is an explanation of how something works. It is a concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind to help you interpret the world and understand the relationship between things. Mental models are deeply held beliefs about how the world works.

For example, supply and demand is a mental model that helps you understand how the economy works. Game theory is a mental model that helps you understand how relationships and trust work. Entropy is a mental model that helps you understand how disorder and decay work.

Mental models guide your perception and behavior. They are the thinking tools that you use to understand life, make decisions, and solve problems. Learning a new mental model gives you a new way to see the world-like Richard Feynman learning a new math technique.

Mental models are imperfect, but useful. There is no single mental model from physics or engineering, for example, that provides a flawless explanation of the entire universe, but the best mental models from those disciplines have allowed us to build bridges and roads, develop new technologies, and even travel to outer space. As historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it, "Scientists generally agree that no theory is 100 percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility."

The best mental models are the ideas with the most utility. They are broadly useful in daily life. Understanding these concepts will help you make wiser choices and take better actions. This is why developing a broad base of mental models is critical for anyone interested in thinking clearly, rationally, and effectively.

The Secret to Great Thinking and Decision Making

Expanding your set of mental models is something experts need to work on just as much as novices. We all have our favorite mental models, the ones we naturally default to as an explanation for how or why something happened. As you grow older and develop expertise in a certain area, you tend to favor the mental models that are most familiar to you.

Here's the problem: when a certain worldview dominates your thinking, you'll try to explain every problem you face through that worldview. This pitfall is particularly easy to slip into when you're smart or talented in a given area.

The more you master a single mental model, the more likely it becomes that this mental model will be your downfall because you'll start applying it indiscriminately to every problem. What looks like expertise is often a limitation. As the common proverb says, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." 3

When a certain worldview dominates your thinking, you'll try to explain every problem you face through that worldview.

Consider this example from biologist Robert Sapolsky. He asks, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Then, he provides answers from different experts.

If you ask an evolutionary biologist, they might say, "The chicken crossed the road because they saw a potential mate on the other side."

If you ask a kinesiologist, they might say, "The chicken crossed the road because the muscles in the leg contracted and pulled the leg bone forward during each step."

If you ask a neuroscientist, they might say, "The chicken crossed the road because the neurons in the chicken's brain fired and triggered the movement."

Technically speaking, none of these experts are wrong. But nobody is seeing the entire picture either. Each individual mental model is just one view of reality. The challenges and situations we face in life cannot be entirely explained by one field or industry.

All perspectives hold some truth. None of them contain the complete truth.

Relying on a narrow set of thinking tools is like wearing a mental straitjacket. Your cognitive range of motion is limited. When your set of mental models is limited, so is your potential for finding a solution. In order to unleash your full potential, you have to collect a range of mental models. You have to build out your decision making toolbox. Thus, the secret to great thinking is to learn and employ a variety of mental models.

Expanding Your Set of Mental Models

The process of accumulating mental models is somewhat like improving your vision. Each eye can see something on its own. But if you cover one of them, you lose part of the scene. It's impossible to see the full picture when you're only looking through one eye.

Similarly, mental models provide an internal picture of how the world works. We should continuously upgrade and improve the quality of this picture. This means reading widely from the best books, studying the fundamentals of seemingly unrelated fields, and learning from people with wildly different life experiences. 4

The mind's eye needs a variety of mental models to piece together a complete picture of how the world works. The more sources you have to draw upon, the clearer your thinking becomes. As the philosopher Alain de Botton notes, "The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem."

The Pursuit of Liquid Knowledge

In school, we tend to separate knowledge into different silos-biology, economics, history, physics, philosophy. In the real world, information is rarely divided into neatly defined categories. In the words of Charlie Munger, "All the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department." 5

World-class thinkers are often silo-free thinkers. They avoid looking at life through the lens of one subject. Instead, they develop "liquid knowledge" that flows easily from one topic to the next.

This is why it is important to not only learn new mental models, but to consider how they connect with one another. Creativity and innovation often arise at the intersection of ideas. By spotting the links between various mental models, you can identify solutions that most people overlook.

Tools for Thinking Better

Here's the good news:

You don't need to master every detail of every subject to become a world-class thinker. Of all the mental models humankind has generated throughout history, there are just a few dozen that you need to learn to have a firm grasp of how the world works.

Many of the most important mental models are the big ideas from disciplines like biology, chemistry, physics, economics, mathematics, psychology, philosophy. Each field has a few mental models that form the backbone of the topic. For example, some of the pillar mental models from economics include ideas like Incentives, Scarcity, and Economies of Scale.

If you can master the fundamentals of each discipline, then you can develop a remarkably accurate and useful picture of life. To quote Charlie Munger again, "80 or 90 important models will carry about 90 percent of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight." 6

I've made it a personal mission to uncover the big models that carry the heavy freight in life. After researching more than 1,000 different mental models, I gradually narrowed it down to a few dozen that matter most. I've written about some of them previously, like entropy and inversion, and I'll be covering more of them in the future. If you're interested, you can browse my slowly expanding list of mental models.

My hope is to create a list of the most important mental models from a wide range of disciplines and explain them in a way that is not only easy to understand, but also meaningful and practical to the daily life of the average person. With any luck, we can all learn how to think just a little bit better.

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How to Train Your Brain to Think in New Ways

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You can train your brain to think better. One of the best ways to do this is to expand the set of mental models you use to think. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story about a world-class thinker.

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The Habits of Mind - The Institute for Habits of Mind

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What are Habits of Mind? This framework for thinking is as essential now as when it was first introduced over 30 years ago. When we commit to growing the habits both individually and as a community, we become more thoughtful, responsive, and innovative. Over the years during many social, political, scientific, and economic changes, the [...]

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DEY's #TeachersSpeakOut mini-documentary with early childhood educator Kisha Reid - English

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Bubbles! We all know how fascinating they are, evoking happy memories of blowing and chasing the mystical orbs with our friends. A bubble's fragile nature, beautiful rainbow colors, and ability to soar through the sky make them universally fascinating among kids.

What's the science behind (or inside) a bubble? Bubbles provide the opportunity to study science concepts such as elasticity, surface tension, chemistry, light, and even geometry. Your students can engage in processes such as observation, experimentation, investigation, and discovery, simply by studying bubbles.

For starters, here is a fun demonstration that you can perform as you explain some of the science of bubbles for kids. Follow the recipe at the end of this article to make some super strong bubbles for your act. Wearing a clown suit is optional.
Blow a bubble, get a few laughs. Then talk about what makes a bubble.
A bubble is just air wrapped in soap film. Soap film is made from soap and water (or other liquid). The outside and inside surfaces of a bubble consist of soap molecules. A thin layer of water lies between the two layers of soap molecules, sort of like a water sandwich with soap molecules for bread. They work together to hold air inside.
Create a bubble that stretches out using a large wand (that you can make from a piece of wire). Whoosh it through the air so that the bubble follows and grows behind it. Then, with great drama, let the bubble go. Give the students a chance to note what happens to it before it pops.
Why is a bubble round? Bubbles can stretch and become all kinds of crazy looking shapes. But if you seal a bubble by flipping it off your wand, the tension in the bubble skin shrinks to the smallest possible shape for the volume of air it contains. That's why even if it had a goofy shape before you sealed it, once sealed shut, the bubble will shrink into a sphere shape. Compared to any other shape, a sphere has the smallest surface area for the amount of volume.
Blow several bubbles and have the students blow and fan them to keep them from landing. The object here is to watch them pop without obvious interference. And it's a bit of fun for everyone.
Why do bubbles pop? Other than being poked or landing on something sharp, bubbles pop when the water between the soap film surfaces evaporates. To note, when it's cold, those molecules take longer to leave. If you blow a bubble on a calm winter day, a bubble can even freeze and last for several minutes before it wisps away.

Also, the colder the outside temperature is, the higher a bubble might fly. That's because the warm air from your breath is lighter than cold air.
Blow more bubbles and ask a few students to study them close-up. What do they see? Is a bubble really transparent, or do bubbles have colors? Can they see their faces in the bubbles?
A bubble gets its color from light waves reflecting between the soap film's outer and inner surfaces. The distance between the layers gets smaller as the water evaporates, making the colors change. Bubbles can also reflect what's around them, like the faces peering at them.
Blow several bubbles with a straw so that you have a three of them stuck together - this might take practice!
Why do bubbles stick together? Since a bubble tends to minimize its surface area, bubbles will join together to share one common wall. Three bubbles will meet at the center, always at an angle of 120 degrees.
This is not as easy to set up, but not that difficult and a very cool experiment: use two sheets of clear plastic that are about a half inch apart. You could put one sheet on a table and prop up the second with thin blocks. Soak the sheets in a bubble solution, place them, and then blow bubbles between them.
When bubbles are about the same size, they form perfect hexagons. Bees do the same thing when they build a beehive. Bees, like bubbles, are also very efficient with their spaces. They use the minimum amount of wax to create their spaces.
Your Grand Finale: Set the lid of the bubble container on a table and fill it with bubble solution. Dip a straw into the container so it is moistened by the solution, and blow a bubble on the lid. Then draw out the straw. Magic! Next, dip the pointed ends of a pair of scissors in the solution. Poke them through the wall of your bubble. Let the kids try poking other stuff that has been moistened in the solution, even their fingers. You can then poke your straw back inside the bubble and blow another bubble. By now, you should be super awesome in their minds.
Why didn't the bubble pop? The bubble just wraps itself around anything that is wet, filling in the hole that would have been made.

There is a lot more to know about bubbles. Hopefully your amazing demonstration will get your students interested in learning more about the science of bubbles!
The formula for awesome bubbles:
1 cup liquid dish soap like Joy or Dawn (not "ultra")

6 cups distilled water inside a clean container that has a lid

1 tablespoon glycerin OR 1/4 cup light corn syrup

Pour the dish soap into the water and mix it without letting bubbles form (that's for later!). Put the glycerin or corn syrup into the mix and stir. You can use it right away, but some bubble-lovers recommend covering and letting the bubble mix sit overnight.

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The Science Behind Bubbles - Kids Discover

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Education blogger Robin Koontz talks about the science behind bubbles and offers up some fun activities involving bubbles for kids.

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Participate in live polls, quizzes, and surveys - no login required. Enter the join code to vote and submit responses in real-time.

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What is Bloom's Taxonomy?

In 2001, a group of psychology, education, and assessment experts revised "Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" (Complete edition). The new version focuses on dynamic classification using verbs to describe cognitive processes. This revised taxonomy provides a common language for discussing learning goals and assessment methods. It is valuable for creating effective instruction, planning curricula, and developing authentic assessments.

Why Use Bloom's Taxonomy?

Bloom's Taxonomy can be useful for course (re)design because the levels can help you move students through the learning process. It starts with the foundational learning tasks of remembering and understanding and moves to more complex tasks, such as evaluating and creating.

The taxonomy can also help develop assessments by aligning course objectives with different levels of mastery. For lower-division courses, objectives can be assessed at the lower levels of the taxonomy, while for upper-division courses, students' abilities can be assessed at the higher levels.

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In 2001, a group of psychology, education, and assessment experts revised "Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" (Complete edition). The new version focuses on dynamic classification using verbs to describe cognitive processes. This revised taxonomy provides a common language for discussing learning goals and assessment methods.

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Mathematical Practices Activity Worksheet (1)

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NAEYC and Fred Rogers Position Statement on Tech

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Examples of effective classroom practices for tech tools and interactive media

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Your Ultimate Guide for Elementary Unplugged Coding Activities includes 20+ projects that teach real coding concepts while emphasizing computer science mindsets - all with minimal prep and zero tech devices required.

How can you teach coding without computers? The key is to provide hands-on, engaging learning experiences that encourage children to think like a coder. This means projects that foster resilience, critical thinking, logical reasoning, and creative problem solving skills for students- the same skills used by computer scientists every day!

Printable coding worksheets for elementary students

Perfect for when you need a ready-to-go mini-lesson! These unplugged coding activities worksheets were inspired by Kodable. Click here to learn more about Kodable.

Activities ranging from 5 - 30 minutes long and can be completed without any tech device

Sequence Unplugged Coding Activities

Definition: Sequence is an order of events

Activity 1: Code a Friend
Partners | Materials: None

1. One partner is the "coder" and one partner is the "robot".

2. The coder decides on a simple task for their partner "robot" to do; the simpler the task, the better, like "walk across the room."

3. Next, the coder gives their partner "robot" step-by-step instructions, also known as an algorithm, to complete the task. "Robots" need to remember that they can only do exactly what their coder tells them to do.

4. If one of the steps is incorrect or not specific enough, this will result in a bug in their algorithm and it will need to be redone.

5. Switch places when finished.

Coding Connection: Computers need an explicit sequence of instructions to do anything! As a result, there will be bugs and the program won't work correctly if instruction (code) is not clear enough.

Activity 2: Origami Without Instructions
Individual | Materials: Square paper (origami paper preferred)

1. Take a square piece of paper and fold it into the shape of a fish - no cutting, gluing, or looking at references!

2. When done, reflect on the process - How did it go? What was easy? What was difficult? How long did it take?

3. Then, take another piece of paper and fold it into a fish again, but this time, refer to these step-by-step instructions.

4. Reflect again - How do the two fish compare? Which process was easier or faster? Which process would you choose if you had to do it again?

Coding Connection: When creating paper animals, a clear sequence of instructions will help save time and minimize mistakes. This is also true for computer code, because a computer needs step-by-step instructions written in code to perform tasks.
Pairs or Group | Materials: Treasure, paper and pencil

1. One person hides a piece of "treasure" (this could be anything!) in an indoor or outdoor space.

2. Next, the treasure hider writes out instructions explaining how to find the hidden object. The instructions need to be very clear so the finder knows exactly what to do - otherwise, they won't get to the treasure! Example:

3. Take 10 steps STRAIGHT

4. Turn RIGHT and take 5 big hops

5. Turn LEFT and crawl 8 times

6. Dig 2 inches down to find the treasure!

7. Once the instructions are written, the finder follows them exactly.

8. If instructions aren't clear enough, the hider may need to find the bug and fix it so the finder can successfully reach the treasure.

9. Switch places when finished.

Activity 3: Treasure Obstacle Course

Coding Connection: The treasure finder needs very clear instructions for how to find the treasure, just like computers need very clear and concrete algorithms to execute their tasks.

Hold

Conditions Unplugged Coding Activities

Definition: A condition is and exception to a rule. A conditional statement is an "if... then...." statement that changes how code is executed. d
Pairs or Group | Materials: None

"If I jump once, then you jump once!"

1. One partner is the leader and one is the follower.

2. The leader starts by giving simple instructions in the format of an If...Then...statement. For example: "If I touch my nose, then you touch your nose" or "If I jump once, then you jump once" etc. Try out a few actions.

3. To increase difficulty, the leader can specify outcomes that are different than the condition. For example: "If I jump once, then you jump three times" or "If i spin in a circle, then you clap your hands".

4. Once the pair has come up with a few actions, the leader can perform them at random! See if the follower can keep up, without forgetting what action to perform with each direction from the leader.

5. Switch roles when finished.

Activity 1: Follow the Leader
Individual or Pairs | Materials: Paper, drawing supplies

1. Come up with a rule - something that always happens in the same way. For example, "I go to school on Mondays".

2. Then, come up with an exception, also known as a condition, to this rule. For example, "If it is a holiday, then I don't go to school on Monday." Write the conditional statement at the top of a piece of paper.

3. Use the rest of the paper space to illustrate the conditional statement. In this example, you could draw a picture of your favorite holiday.

4. Repeat this process 3 times so you have three conditional art pieces!

5. If working in pairs, one partner can come up with the rules, and the other can come up with the condition and draw the image. Then, switch roles.

Coding Connection: A new condition from the leader can change the action performed by the follower, just like a condition in code can change the path a computer program takes.
Pairs | Materials: None

1. Rock paper scissors is a hand game played between two people. At the same time, each player forms one of three shapes with an outstretched hand. These shapes are "rock" (make a fist), "paper" (flat hand), and "scissors" (make the number 2)

2. The winner is decided using a set of conditional statements:

First, If rock and scissors are played, then rock wins

Then, If scissors and paper are played, then scissors wins

Next, If paper and rock are played, then paper win

Finally, If the same object is played, then the round is a tie

1. Play three rounds. Using the conditional statements listed above, players will determine the winner of each round. TIP: Doing this activity in school? Have your students complete this handout to track the conditions!

2. As an extension, make up brand new actions (instead of rock, paper, and scissors) and decide what conditions result in a win!

Activity 2: If This, Then...Art!

Coding Connection: A condition is an exception to a rule. The way a program runs is based on rules and conditions, just like how real world events can change based on certain conditions too!

Activity 3: Rock, Paper, Scissors
Individual, Pairs, or Groups | Materials: Paper and pencil (optional)

"Spin 2 times, Clap 5 times, Wiggle one time!"

1. The learner decides if they want to create a fun workout routine or a dance routine.

2. Come up with three physical actions to perform. For a workout routine, this could be a jumping jack, pushup, and sit-up. For a dance routine, this could be a spin, clap, and wiggle.

3. Decide how many times each action should be repeated, or "looped". For example, "spin 2 times, clap 5 times, wiggle one time".

4. Perform the routine all together, looping each action the designated number of times. Then, try looping the entire routine at least twice!

5. As an extension, invite a partner to execute the same commands and perform the routine together!

Coding Connection: The outcome of the game is determined by the conditions set before it starts. The same is true in coding, where the outcome of a computer program is determined by the conditions outlined in the code.

Hold

Loops Unplugged Coding Activities

Definition: A loop is a command that repeats a part of code a certain number of times.
Individual | Materials: Paper and pencil, printer (optional)

1. Pick a simple song for which you know the tune and lyrics. For example, "Happy Birthday" or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

2. Look at the printed lyrics or sing the song, and try to find lines that are repeated multiple times. For example, in the "Happy Birthday" song, the line "Happy birthday to you" is repeated 3 times.

3. Next, sing the song again, but this time replace all the repeated lyrics with the word "Function". So the Happy Birthday song would go "Function, Function, Happy birthday dear _____, Function"

4. Count the number of times the word "Function" comes up!

5. For an extension, replace the word "Function" with some brand new lyrics that you invent, and come up with a remixed song!

Activity 1: A Loopy Routine

Coding Connection: A loop can be used to repeat a physical action, just like a loop in coding will repeat a portion of code a certain number of times.
Individual | Materials: Multi-colored beads, string

1. Cut a piece of string so it is just longer than wrist-size. Tie a knot at the end of a string.

2. Decide on a pattern of 3 beads that you want to repeat multiple times in your bracelet. For example, Pink-Blue-Pink. We can call this set of beads a "function".

3. Start stringing beads onto the yarn. After 5 beads, add your first "function". In this example, this means the pattern of Pink-Blue-Pink.

4. Add 5 more beads. Then, add your function again. Repeat this process until the string is full with beads.

5. Tie a knot on the other end and display your finished bracelet!

6. Observe - How many times were you able to repeat the function beads?

Hold

Functions Unplugged Coding Activities

Definition: A function is a defined set of steps that result in a single outcome and can be used more than once.

Activity 1: Lyrical Function Finder
Individual, Pairs, or Groups | Materials: Basket for collecting (optional)

Property = Color. Value = "Yellow"

1. Head outside into nature.

2. First, pick a specific property by which you want to categorize nature objects. Examples include color, shape, texture, smell, etc.

3. Then, choose a value that you will search for. For example, if the property is "color", then the value could be "yellow" or "purple".

4. Collect nature objects based the property and value selected

5. When finished, challenge a partner or family member to guess the property value you identified. Did they guess right?

6. As an extension, try instead to collect a wide range of nature objects. Bring them back to a work space, and categorize them by different properties. For example, first sort by color, then sort by shape, and by texture. How many categories can you identify?

Multi-day projects that integrate numerous coding concepts and mindsets

Coding Connection: Many songs have a hook or chorus that includes the exact same lyrics and repeats in multiple places throughout the song. Similarly, there are certain lines of code that a programmer might want to repeat throughout a program. To do this, they use a function!

Activity 2: Beaded Bracelets

Construct a board game using recycled materials like cardboard, plastic containers, bottles, foil, etc.

Create an accompanying instruction manual. Rules should include step-by-step instructions for how to play (sequence), define what causes things to happen in the game (conditions), and describe the physical game features (properties).

Coding Connection: Each bead represents a line of code. Programmers will often want to use certain lines of code again and again throughout a program, so they store that code in a function. The repeating bead pattern is one easy way to visualize this process!

Think of a storybook character and describe their characteristics (properties).

Write a fiction story about your character with a clear sequence of events from start to finish.

Choose an event in the middle of the story and think about what the ending of the story would be if that event changed.

Create a second ending based on this new condition. The path the story takes will depend on the condition the reader chooses!

Hold

Design a tool that helps solve a real-world problem.

Use recycled materials, nature objects, or craft supplies to physically build the tool.

As you build, identify certain actions that you need to repeat (loop) in order to build it correctly.

Write out or verbally describe the algorithm that someone else could follow to create the same tool (sequence).

Properties Unplugged Coding Activities

Definition: A property is a characteristic of an object.

Activity 1: Nature Scavenger Hunt

Coding Connection: In code, properties can determine the output of a program, or what a user sees. Similarly, an objects' properties in the real world can impact how we see and compare them.

Encourage learners to apply what they've learned with creative culminating unplugged coding activities - Still no tech required! (recommended for 3rd grade and above).

Activity 1: Build a Board Game

Activity 2: Write a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story

Activity 3: Invent a Useful Tool

Share your Unplugged Coding Activities

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Unplugged Coding Activities | The Ultimate Guide for Elementary | Kodable

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Your Ultimate Guide for Elementary Unplugged Coding Activities includes 20+ projects that teach real coding concepts while emphasizing computer science mindsets - all with minimal prep and zero tech devices required.

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Computational Thinking for Each and Every Child Presentation

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Media and Children Overview

Today's children are spending an average of seven hours a day on entertainment media, including televisions, computers, phones and other electronic devices. Meanwhile, advertising aimed at children is no longer confined to TV commercials and product placement in movies. Today, children are exposed to messages from social media influencers, hidden ads in video games, data collection across many platforms, virtual reality encounters with strangers in games and targeted social media advertisements that are intended to make children take action. It's no wonder that parents come to pediatricians with so many questions. It also underscores the importance of the need for continued research on the impact of media on children's health and useful resources that help improve a pediatrician's ability to counsel families on the healthy use of media in all forms.

Once such resource is the Family Media Plan . Designed to help families make wise media choices, the AAP recommends that parents and caregivers develop a plan that takes into account the health, education and entertainment needs of each individual child as well as the whole family; and then follow the family media plan together, revising it when necessary.

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Information to help pediatricians understand and communicate about the impact media has in our children's lives, while offering tips on managing time spent with various media.

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The Maker Movement: A Learning Revolution| ISTE

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Give your students access to hands-on technologies and permission to invent something that interests them. Then watch them transform from passive…

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STEMIE A Guide to Cross-Cutting Concepts

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Coding stories and coding games are playful, hands-on ways for children to explore and experiment with early coding. They offer opportunities for interactions and collaborative learning. If coding is new to you, you will find that it builds on many early math and literacy concepts you are familiar with.

What is coding?

Coding (or programming) is a basic language of the digital age. It involves the process of creating step-by-step instructions a computer understands and needs in order for its programs to work. Gaming systems, tablets, cars, cell phones-even washing machines!-all use coding to function properly.

Early coding, or precoding, offers children experiences that integrate communication, thinking, and problem solving. These are 21st century skills that are valuable for children's future success in our digital world.

There are many learning activities preschool children already engage in that relate to coding. I started to think about some aspects of precoding that would be meaningful to preschoolers, and I began to develop a series of activities where children create their own coding stories. Children learn about creating commands, or using directional language, when they make and use maps to locate a treasure during dramatic play and when they give each other instructions while playing with toy cars. Activities related to creating and following commands can be gamelike in nature, such as moving a gaming piece a specific number of spaces on a grid (think Candyland or Chutes and Ladders). Children are naturally drawn to adventurous experiences in which they can explore movement, direction, and location. Many of the same concepts supported in these activities, such as spatial reasoning and number sense, are a foundational part of coding that children can practice without a computer.

Early coding is fun and exciting. The earlier children explore the basics of coding, the more easily they will be able to learn, understand, and apply coding later in life. Many preschoolers are just the right age to begin learning!

What do children need to know?

Coding is more accessible to young children than you may think. To participate successfully in precoding activities, children should be introduced to directional language, like up and down, backward and forward, left and right. They need to become familiar with how to count using ordinals ( first, second, third) and understand one-to-one correspondence. Some children will have mastered these concepts and others will still be learning. If children are just beginning to understand and follow directional language and use ordinals, the precoding activities that follow will reinforce that learning.

Activities involving location and movement, such as playing board games and giving directions to peers in pretend play, offer some background knowledge and provide entry points for children into coding activities.

Why introduce coding to preschoolers?

Coding is like a game. It's very engaging for children who enjoy telling stories and using grids and maps. Children ages 3 to 5 are able to create drawings of maps that represent relationships between objects and places. When we incorporate programming into early learning settings, we immerse children in versatile activities that align with standards in multiple areas, like math, problem solving, communication, and literacy. Precoding activities offer children opportunities for interaction and collaborative learning, as well.

Coding stories and games use math

Coding involves spatial reasoning and logic. Helping children to think about direction, location, and movement strengthens their math skills. Children need to count the number of spaces they must move and indicate in which direction they are headed as they relate objects and locations to one another. Coding integrates a number of math skills into one meaningful experience.

Coding stories and games encourage problem solving

When activities like coding provide a challenge for the user or when there are several ways of solving the same problem, children can consider multiple paths for arriving at a solution and choose the most efficient strategy. In these activities, planning ahead is the key to success.

Coding stories and games strengthen communication

When a child codes, she needs to indicate directions to another person (or to a computer). Her communications need to be succinct-that is, they cannot be wordy. When two children play coding games, the child receiving the instructions needs to be an active listener in order to move the coding pieces in the correct way. Clear communication and turn taking are essential to coding.

Coding stories and games promote literacy

Coding games often tell a story-there is a path the programmer takes to move an object through different obstacles and settings, eventually arriving at a destination. Children's imaginative stories or favorite retellings can be used as the base for coding games. This helps children develop vocabulary and a greater comprehension of texts. Children can make connections between literature and their lives. They can even change the outcome of a favorite story by exploring different endings in the coding activity. Teachers can lead innovative read-alouds with a gaming board by changing the sequence of a story or reinventing the ending.

Getting started

First, make a grid

You can create a grid of squares using masking tape on the floor or on a tabletop. A grid can also be drawn on a large plastic tablecloth, making it easy to use, transport, and store. For children who want to explore coding further, make large grid paper by tracing black lines on graph paper. This way, a child can draw his own coding story and take it home to share with family members.

Choose your story and gather the corresponding props

Decide if the children are going to retell a favorite story ( The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks) or invent their own tale. For example, if the children choose to explore The Gingerbread Man, they will need a mini gingerbread figure, a wolf, and pictures to represent the places the gingerbread man travels to in the story.

Ensure that children understand the story line and the path they are coding

Determine the starting and ending points of the path the character is going to take. In The Gingerbread Man, the character starts in a cottage, then moves down a lane, through a field, and into the woods. He finally arrives at a stream, where he meets a wolf. If the children are retelling a favorite story, be sure their retelling is in the proper sequence and makes sense. If they are inventing their own story, children can place different settings or obstacles around the grid for a character to maneuver through.

How Children Play

Set up the grid. The teacher or children place the character at the starting point on the grid and put the settings or obstacles on the grid in the order they occur.

Establish the commands. As a group, the children determine the commands for moving the character along the grid. Directional arrows (which can point up, down, left, or right when placed on the grid) are visual symbols to represent the commands. Children can easily make and use lots of arrows on mini cards or sticky notes.

Choose a programmer and a gamer. The programmer-or programmers-gives the coding commands. The gamer is the child-or children-who follows the coding commands and moves the figure on the grid.

Code the story! The programmer is now responsible for giving commands-"Go up 1," "Go forward 2," "Go down 3,"-to the gamer so that the gamer can move the character along the grid, from start to finish. (The first few times a group codes, an adult might model the roles for the children.) As a new command is followed, the coder places a symbol card in each square the gaming piece travels through, representing the direction of the move on the grid. Code all the moves until the ending point is reached.

Encourage and support children so they can complete the entire path, giving and following correct directions without skipping squares on the grid. Ensure that the directional arrows are left in place during the game to represent the path the character has taken. When the character arrives at the final destination, the path is complete! Other children can change the story and have a turn.

Extending the Coding Play

Once children become confident with early coding, they can use it independently in many different ways. Coding naturally and easily complements other learning opportunities in the preschool classroom!

Children can . . .

Code outdoors by drawing grids on the pavement with chalk and retelling stories using corresponding props

Create their own coding stories using grid paper by establishing a story line, determining a starting and ending point, and drawing coding symbols directly on the grid

Create scavenger hunts for one another, placing treasures in the squares of a grid; children can direct one another using a coded message to reach a certain square and then claim the treasure

Incorporate elements of precoding into their dramatic play, both indoors and out, by drawing or placing grids on top of maps and directing each other using commands to move to different locations (going on an adventure, searching for treasure)

Invite family or community members to visit the classroom and share ways adults use coding in real life

Coding Terms

Code: A set of instructions for a computer

Coding: The process of creating step-by-step instructions a computer understand and needs in order for its programs to work.

Precoding activities: Developmentally appropriate games and activities in which children explore some of the concepts involve in coding in ways that are meaningful to them.

"Playful Learning in the Early Years"
mrsmclennan.blogspot.ca/search/label/coding

"Playing, Coding, and Higher Order Thinking: Experiences to Support
Children's Learning," by Tamara Kaldor
www.NAEYC.org/blogs/early-coding-higher-thinking

"Let's Make a Map: The Developmental Stages of Children's Mapmaking,"
by Eugene Geist. Young Children, May 2016, pp. 50-55.

"Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8"-NAEYC position statement
www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PS_technology_WEB2.pdf

Photos courtesy of the author

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Coding stories and coding games are playful, hands-on ways for children to explore and experiment with early coding.

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Principles of Child Development and Learning and Implications That Inform Practice

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NAEYC’s guidelines and recommendations for developmentally appropriate practice are based on the following nine principles and their implications for early childhood education professional practice.

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Easy Paper Toys: Paper Helicopter great S.T.E.M. craft

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Let’s Play! Making and Tinkering with Loose Parts, by Beth VanMeeteren, ED.D. and Dr. Allison Barness - Early Childhood Webinars

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Play is becoming increasingly valued for its role in how children to learn about, themselves, others, what is in the world, and how it works. Children have an intrinsic desire to play and is most powerful when they can make their own choices about what to play with, and how they will play with it. Young children often get lost in play with open-ended loose[...] Full Description

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We’ve built a fun science exploration tool, which we use in our Family Inventors’ Lab class. The Exploratorium shared a project idea for building a Wind Tube. (Also check out the Kodo w…

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Kim Burd and Laura De Luca
J. L. Hensey Elementary School
Washington, IL District #50
2014

The Worm Project took place in morning and afternoon sessions of two self-contained ECE classrooms in the J. L. Hensey Elementary School in Washington, Illinois, a community of about 15,000 near Peoria. Head teachers in the classrooms were Mrs. Kim Burd and Mrs. Laura De Luca. Each had a teaching assistant for morning and afternoon sessions. Between the two classrooms, 15 children ages 3 to 4 attended the morning session and another 15 children ages 4 to 6 participated in the afternoon. All children had individualized education plans (IEPs).

The curriculum for both sessions in both classrooms is generally play-based and experiential in nature and is guided by the children's interests and IEP goals. By the time the classes began the study of worms, the children had experience with several prior investigations and were familiar with discussing, making observations, sketching, and webbing. The investigation of worms lasted about three to four weeks.

Phase 1: Beginning the Project

During several days of spring rains, worms made their way to the school blacktop. One particular morning when the children arrived and got off the bus, they stopped in their tracks when they noticed the multitude of worms that had come out during the rains. The children were excited and full of comments about the worms throughout their breakfast routines. After breakfast, the class returned outside for more investigations.

Children participated in the initial exploration at varying levels. Some watched intently and made comments to their classmates and the teachers, while others began to pick up and gather worms. Some of them threw worms into puddles and dug in the dirt. Children who were reluctant to touch the worms used sticks to pick them up or touch them.

By the end of the first day, the teachers brought worms indoors to investigate at tables. The children remained engaged and curious, and the teachers recorded their comments and observations. Some children attempted to draw the worms (see Figure 1).

The teachers found many opportunities for vocabulary and language development throughout the worm project (see Figure 2).

The enthusiasm was "catching", and soon the principal, Mr. Sharp, came in to see what the children were learning (see Figure 3).

Through observation and discussions with the children during the first day, several questions began to emerge that would guide the beginning of the worm investigation.

Why did the worms come out?

Where did the worms come from?

Do they like water?

Do they like dirt?

Do they swim?

Do they bite?

Is that poop?

During the first week of exploration, the children in the older (afternoon) class met to chart a list of "What We Want to Learn about Worms" to post in the classroom (see Figure 4). The children revisited the chart several times during their investigation.

Phase 2: Developing the Project

The teachers provided a variety of experiences over the next few weeks that helped the children deepen their understanding and answer their questions about worms. Activities were designed to provide sensory interactions and exploration for children at all levels of ability. During this phase, the children were engaged in touching and feeling the worms, looking closely at them, watching their movement, and discussing what they observed.

Compost worm farm

The children wanted to save the worms in the classroom, so we used books and the Internet to see how to do that. Mrs. Burd brought in a large, clear bin to create a compost worm farm. Children were able to articulate that the "farm" needed dirt. From the books and online resources, the children learned that they needed to add things such as food scraps, egg shells, and moisture to the dirt to keep the worms alive. The worms also would need darkness. Children helped maintain the farm daily, and it was readily available for activities and experiments.

Worm Observation Bottles

One of the first Phase 2 activities provided the children a chance to see what worms do underground. The children helped to fill 2-liter bottles with earth and "goodies" from the compost farm and covered them with black paper sleeves to create darkness (see Figure 6). The bottles were placed in the classroom science centers for independent research during center time. The bottles were left covered at night, and the classes would check for tunnels the next day.

At the science centers, children were able to investigate the worms' movements, the tunnels they made, and other features of worm life (see Figure 7).

The children explored the worms and touched them when they were ready to do so (see Figure 8).

Many of the children who initially hesitated to touch the worms grew more confident about it as they became more familiar with the worms (see Figure 9).

Measuring and comparing worms

Kyle (age 5) asked one day to "measure them." (For more about Kyle's engagement with the project, see Teachers' Reflections below.) The teachers provided rulers and drawing utensils, and children took up the task of seeing how big and how small worms can be (see Figures 10-11). They discovered that a worm's length can change as it moves!

Wiggle Watching

The children had a variety of opportunities to observe worm movement. After watching them move on the ground and in the tunnels, some of the younger children explored worm movement on their bellies. They imitated the movement of worms by crawling through the classroom tunnel (see Figure 12).

Paper Towel Experiment

Some of the older children performed an experiment to learn about worms and water. Worms were placed in the middle of a paper towel that was dry on one half and wet on the other. The children made predictions about which half the worms would prefer, then observed the worms to see which way they would move (see Figures 13-14).

Wondering and Research

Throughout the project, the children were interested in finding more information about worms from the computer, books, pictures, and videos.

Sally (age 4.9), one of the project leaders in Mrs. De Luca's room, spent a great deal of time observing worms on her own during choice time. Figure 15 shows her at the computer, where she worked with the teacher to verbalize observations and look up answers to some questions about the worms she had been observing at the science table (seen on the mirrored tray in front of her).

The teachers brought in storybooks and informational books to share with the children, placing them in the science areas and in the regular "book time" library areas. Teachers modeled interest in and use of these books to find information, and they read aloud to the children from informational text as appropriate (see Figure 16).

The children also watched several videos related to worms, including Worm Farm by Kevin. The teachers also showed a variety of YouTube clips about worms.

For the illustrated "Words About Worms" vocabulary chart (see Figure 17), the teachers selected words from research they and the children had done, printed them digitally, and placed them in areas where children were doing worm investigations. The older children who attended in the afternoon were able to use the words during their regular journal/writing time.

Sensory play

The teachers provided a range of opportunities for children to investigate and play out their ideas in sensory play. These activities included mixing dirt and mud, making representations of worms and their tunnels with fingerpaint, and playing with a variety of toy worms in the sensory table.

Phase 3: Concluding the Project

As children gained more knowledge about worms, they began to make a variety of representations to share what they had learned. Some worked individually, making worms from playdough, drawing them, or painting them at the easel. Other children participated in ongoing group work on worm-related creations.

Building a Worm Environment

Several children decided to create a worm "home" for the rubber worms in one of the sensory tables. They dictated a list of things that would be found in a worm's world and, over several days, worked at building (and rebuilding) tunnels, making holes in the ground, creating grass and dirt and water areas, and adding trees complete with nests and birds, which, they learned, may eat worms (see Figures 21-22).

The Paper Worm

Several children collaborated to make a large worm from butcher paper to represent some of the things they had learned about worms (see Figure 23). The worm and the story of the project work were displayed in the hallway at school through the end of the school year.

Teacher Reflection

We share this project to show how children of all ages and stages of development can participate in project-based learning. The depth of investigation is somewhat different for each child, but understanding also deepened for each child through meaningful experiences during a project. We have found that all children feel like competent learners when their observations, ideas, and sense of wonder are valued and treated as important. This topic became a shared interest for almost everyone in the classes and made us close as a community of learners excited about the same thing.

Challenges

We encountered some challenges during the worm project related to time and scheduling, working with multiple classes, accommodating children's varying abilities, and helping them become close observers.

Time and Scheduling: Time is always a challenge in our classrooms. We must coordinate all classroom activities with children's therapy schedules and other unforeseen obstacles. During the project, we allowed time for children to continue activities over several days and had to "respark" children's engagement with the topic with new materials on occasion.

Multiple Classes: Attempting to carry out project work with multiple classes also presented a challenge. With four unique groups of children in two different classrooms, it could be difficult to share in all of the experiences. Again, we found that allowing more time for continued investigations enabled children to rotate to different activities and come back to the ones that most interested them. We used photos and videos to revisit favorite activities and help the children share with each other.

Children's Varying Abilities: For us as teachers, careful planning was important to allowing children at all levels of ability to participate in the worm project. Sensory activities such as mixing mud or fingerpainting worm tunnels were good for the younger children or those with more significant learning challenges, while other children were able to measure worms, help construct a worm model, or find answers to research questions on the computer.

Teaching Observation Skills: We try to practice project observation and investigation throughout our routines from the beginning of our time with the children. Especially with our younger children or those with significant learning challenges, we value "the teachable moment" and make a "big deal" of calling children's attention to the little things in our day, such as a spider on the wall or the clouds in the sky. As children are able, we teach them to ask each other survey questions and record the responses using yes/no T charts (see Figure 24).

We also encourage them to communicate through drawing. It is important for children who have little drawing experience or who have fine-motor challenges to gain confidence in their ability to represent what they have observed by drawing it. We have found that it is helpful if the teachers model what is involved in drawing and give children many opportunities to practice.

In support of project work, we integrate other skills and activities into our curriculum, such as representational play ("Let's be spiders!"), book and computer research ("Let's look it up!"), class webbing and charting, observation walks, journaling, and photo documentation.

We love to see the children "notice" the world around them, like little detectives. May they always keep this sense of wonder!

Worms Bring Out Kyle and Amy

We share the stories of two children as part of our reflection in a celebration of the benefits that we believe the Project Approach has had for our children with special needs and in the Worm Project for Kyle and Amy specifically.

Kyle's Story

Kyle came to us at age 3. On his first day, he would not enter the classroom unless his mom was holding him, and he had his blanket in hand. He had a sweet smile for his classmates that day, but he would not interact with them. On Day 2 he walked in the side door of the school without his mom but cried at the separation. We encouraged him to investigate the toys and activities in the classroom at his own pace. On Day 3 he kissed his mom goodbye at the door and walked down the hall to our classroom. He mainly played behind the train table, but he did watch his classmates and later began to eat breakfast with us. By Day 10, Kyle was riding the bus and happily investigating the classroom, but he was not yet verbally communicating his wants and needs.

By age 4, Kyle was following the classroom schedules and routines; however, his understanding of language was progressing slowly. He needed a lot of support to understand directions and expectations.

The morning we discovered the worms on the playground was a happy day for Kyle. During our observations, he began to ask us questions about the worms. Kyle had not been asking or answering questions with meaning or purpose until this day. He even asked to measure the worms-bringing tears to his teacher's eyes! Before that, we did not think he knew what measuring meant.

Kyle began to ask for materials to use when investigating the worms without prompting or cueing. He invited his friends to "play" with the worms. He laughed and joked about things he thought were funny about worms. He wanted to take the worms home to "teach" his mom about them. The worms were meaningful to Kyle, and he made some good progress on his IEP goals during the worm project.

Amy's Story

Amy is a 3-year-old child with autism. She is mostly nonverbal and exhibits many behaviors that are associated with moderate autism. When the worm project began, she had been with us three months. We struggled to provide her with a secure, predictable schedule and help her communicate her needs. During choice making and play, Amy seemed to be "in her own world" most of the time. She had several favorite activities, such as lining up small animals, watching fish swim, and piling small toys. Teachers and peers would try to play near her, and the teachers intentionally tried to enter her play to help her build play skills, but she rarely engaged willingly with others.

During the worm investigation, Amy was focused on the actions of the worms. She picked them up, carried them, handed them to us, and mostly intently watched them (see Figure 27).

For days, she stopped on the way from the bus to look for worms and sometimes was angry if they were not out that day. She listened as we talked about how to touch, feel, and look at the worms. She could sit at the table (previously very hard for her) for long periods with peers, just observing the worms. During this time, Amy's vocalizations, initiation of interaction, and eye contact increased. She was an active learner with her peers. Her attention was lengthened and her world was widened a bit. It was as if, for this topic, for this time, we shared our worlds. Amy continued throughout the school year to build on these shared experiences as her trust and interest in her teachers and peers grew. We really felt that this project had an impact on that pivotal moment in Amy's learning.

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The Worm Project | Illinois Early Learning Project

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Kim Burd and Laura De Luca J. L. Hensey Elementary School Washington, IL District #50 2014 The Worm Project took place in morning and afternoon sessions of two self-contained ECE classrooms in the J.

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Young Mathematicians – Sharing fun math experiences with teachers and families

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Ramps & Pathways | Regents' Center for Early Developmental Education

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Regents' Center for Early Developmental Education

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Rosie Revere Engineer Storybook Conversation

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Rosie Revere Engineer Storybook Conversation

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Actual Size Kid and Handprint (final) PDF

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Thinking With A Line: Practice and Explore

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Thinking With A Line: Practice and Explore

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Practice and Explore Basic Lines

Lines are all around us if we take time to notice. Take a moment to look all around this space - at the walls, floors, windows, furniture, and one another's clothing, can you see any lines? This works outside too!

You might also have pictures (Where lines are clearly seen) available for discovering lines.

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Begin with the basic lines. Printing basic lines lays the groundwork for all of the activities in this program. Exploring vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines again and again in multiple ways, and inventing new lines wires the brain for learning. This basic printing process trains hands, bod ...

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Pattern Blocks

Use these pattern block activities to support your child's understanding of geometric shapes and their attributes. Children often enjoy using pattern blocks to explore symmetry and create designs.

Pattern blocks come in six shapes in six different colors: yellow hexagons, orange squares, blue parallelograms, red trapezoids, green triangles, and tan rhombuses.

Activities Involving Pattern Blocks:

​ Use this activity card to practice completion and creation of patterns.

Pattern Block Numbers

Use these templates to make numbers out of pattern blocks

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Pattern Blocks Use these pattern block activities to support your child's understanding of geometric shapes and their attributes. Children often enjoy using pattern blocks to explore symmetry and create designs. Pattern blocks come in six shapes in six different colors: yellow hexagons, orange squares, blue parallelograms, red trapezoids, green triangles, and tan rhombuses.

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Light and Shadow Play Interactive Exhibit Guide

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Community Mapping Ideas and Inspirations

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Community Mapping Ideas and Inspirations

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Engaging Students With/In Place Based Community Mapping

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Engaging Students With/In Place Based Community Mapping

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Play as Place A Safe Space for Young Chidlren to Learn About the World

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Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS)

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Math & STEM Activities | Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS)

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It's never too early to start building math skills. Find shapes in clouds and patterns in rugs. Clap out a rhythm. Count steps. Use these activity cards to discover math in your daily life. Pick a theme you like to get started.

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Building on existing inclusion frameworks to develop and validate a STEMIE model for high quality inclusion of young children with disabilities in STEM learning. Developing and validating learning trajectories for science, technology, and, engineering, while continuing to refine and validate existing trajectories for math.

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This is an example page. It's different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this: Hi there!

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Erikson Institute Early Math Collaborative

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Book

Our new book extends professional knowledge for mathematics teaching to educators who work with the very youngest learners. How do babies and toddlers understand the precursors of math?

Learn more

The Erikson Institute Early Math Collaborative is transforming the understanding, teaching and learning of early mathematics from the ground up.

Online Learning

Professional development modules

Our self-guided modules provide materials, strategies, and expert guidance for working with adult learners to explore foundational mathematics. Whether you are working with childcare providers, in-service teachers, or pre-service teachers, modules give you what you need to support professional learning in your local context.

Start a module

Children love to count. Counting helps them make sense of the world and to find out how many of something. With time and practice, children develop an understanding of the "rules" or principles of counting.

From an early age, children notice and appreciate patterns in the world around them. Patterns and sequences of different kinds begin to pop up all over the place, especially in the books that children love.

Teachers in four schools recently experimented with a "problem stem" protocol for helping their children understand the math going on in the word problems they face in class. This was part of our Big Shoulders...

In May of 2023, a diverse group of six kindergarten teachers from across the United States were selected from a national pool of talented and committed kindergarten teachers to participate in the RJEM Teaching Fellowship....

From a racial justice centered perspective, books can be powerful tools to engage children in mathematics learning. The worlds, stories, adventures, characters, and possibilities that are made available through books - explicitly math focused and...

RJEM at Work highlights the everyday efforts of caregivers, community organizations, teachers, researchers, and educational institutions to promote racial justice in the mathematical experiences of children. For the RJEM Local Planning Committee, there are multiple...

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Early math is big.

Learn why we are so passionate about giving every child a strong foundation in math.

Funding for this initiative is generously provided by:

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Early Math Collaborative at Erikson Institute

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The Early Math Collaborative works to improve math instruction for young children in three ways: professional development, research, dissemination.

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Like and Follow us to stay in touch and share our work.

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The Early Math Project develops and disseminates comprehensive early math resources for parents and educators of children birth - 8 years. We advocate for a growth mindset for families, especially in learning math.