Do you know a Martian?

It’s World Space Week- and did you know that NASA have said that the first people who will set foot on Mars are already alive, which means they are the children we are working with right now (NASA’s Next Giant Leap | NASA ) We know that our youngest children are creative, curious and ready to be inspired and Space Week gives us an opportunity to focus on providing the STEM activities that will inspire them to reach for the stars. In 2018 the European Journal of STEM Education published a special issue dedicated to STEM in early childhood education and the editorial highlighted the issue that often practitioners are wary of venturing into the field of STEM because ‘explorations quickly become messy and unpredictable, and children can ask questions that are difficult to answer’ (van Keulen, 2018, p. 2).  For some people not knowing the ‘right’ answer cuts across well-established ideas of what being an educator is,  but in early childhood education and care settings child-led learning approaches underpin all elements of best practice so we should embrace the opportunity to get all the children we work with seeing themselves as scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

If you are looking for ideas about how to develop more STEM activities in your work there are plenty of free resources available. Dr Joanna Barstow, Lecturer in Astronomy in the School of Physics Sciences at the Open University wrote and illustrated a story about an alien looking for the perfect planet which is available to watch here Alien story – YouTube and the free OU course ‘Living on the Moon’ has lots of experiments and activities to help children find out what they need to know in order to be that first Martian (OLCreate: PUB_3578_1.0 S.T.A.R.S Project Teacher CPD : Living on the Moon (open.edu) ). English LE Landing page | Early years STEM (stemintheearlyyears.com)  has a wide range of free resources that outline activities and show how they relate to different aspects of STEM and identifies children’s books that can help develop learning.

This Space Week why not take a moment to think about what STEM learning you are doing- talking about the weather, using building blocks, videoing activities, looking at autumn leaves and see how you could build on that to get your children closer to getting on that rocket. Let us know your ideas and share your tips and resources in the comments below.

References

Van Keulen, H. (2018) STEM in Early Childhood Education European Journal of STEM Education (PDF) STEM in Early Childhood Education (researchgate.net)