One of the hot teaching buzz words now is STEAM learning: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math, and incorporating skills for them throughout our curriculum. Are they important? Yes! Can you do it without thinking about it? Probably not. Is it going to be hard to include them? NO!
In this blog series, I want to take a look at some STEAM skills, and show you some of the ways I like to incorporate them. I hope you find a few new ideas! Today I want to write about two of the very first, most basic skills:
Observing and Recording
If you've ever spent time around a child, you know children need to observe and explore everything. They want to dig in the dirt, find small critters, see what is inside a tomato, feel how bumpy a pumpkin is, taste the honeysuckle, and roll themselves down a hill. This is science - exploring, investigating and observing everything.
Recording data can be challenging with young children, especially in preschool, before they learn to write. Photographs are one of my favorite ways to record young children's learning! Every one of the photos in the collage above went into my students' school photo albums - and provided opportunities to revisit and discuss the hands on experiences we enjoyed.
As children develop their fine motor skills, and begin to write and draw, more options for recording data become available. They can draw...
They can color in spaces to create graphs...
They can imagine, create, and write about what they see.
Chances are good that you are already doing many of these things in your classroom! What are your class' favorite activities for observing and recording data? I'm always looking for new ideas, so please share your tips in the comments! Finally, please stop back again next week, when I'll write about the skills of sorting, classifying and comparing!
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