Explain ideas from this week’s reading regarding how to create a laboratory and how to effectively use classroom space for a safe environment for exploration. Add ideas of how you could use these ideas in your own classroom.  powerpoints are attached.

Setting up a Lab

Environments

Laboratory for Inquiry
How well does the room reflect the values we have identified as important.
What overall message will the room convey to children, parents, and others.
How will the environment mirror an image of the child that is rich, powerful, and competent?

Organized Storage

Outdoor Environments: A Laboratory of Exploration
The purpose of the outdoor play space is to expend energy, run, climb, and ride, all of which cannot be done to the same degree indoors.
Climbing
Sand Area
Smooth surfaced area- for wheeled toys and physical movement of children’s bodies.
Outdoor Garden
Butterfly Garden

Nature Areas
Even a small playground can have the presence of plants and flowers.

Planning a Butterfly Garden
First you need some sun. Butterflies can feed in shade, but they must have sun to charge their energy batteries. On cool mornings, have you noticed how butterflies stand around, slowly opening and closing their wings? This inactivity is called basking, and it’s how cold-blooded butterflies gather solar energy. For this you can put some flat, dark colored stones in a spot that gets morning sun and watch the butterflies use the sun- warmed stones an their warm up room.

Materials for Inquiry Outdoors
For looking closely at plants, animals, and earth have an assortment of bug catchers-some have a magnifying glass built in additional magnifying glasses, dirt sifters or a colander to sift dirt and sand, small Ziploc bags, and plastic containers to store leaves.
Earth Science- have on hand a rain gauge, prisms, mirrors, color paddles, and small containers for collect rain, snow, and ice.
For discoveries and sand paper can be used with close supervision.

Safety in and out of the classroom
Teach yourself to recognize and label harmful plants
Teach children how to use materials safely. This does not take the place of supervision
Try out handling new materials yourself before bringing these items into the project so you can anticipate unsafe use.
Supervise

What is STEM
“What STEM does is give a label to what you are already doing… helping children to explore, observe, ask questions, predict, integrate their learning…  its what we’ve always done in early childhood education.”

How to Apply Stem in your Preschool Classroom
Our experts give the following advice…
“Become more intentional about what you are doing.  If you start by reflecting on what you are doing already, you will find you that you are already doing things in STEM and with an increase in your language and your ability to support children to predict what might happen next or explore or question, you will already be advancing those ideas of science, technology, engineering, and math.” (Dr. Killins on Bam Radio)
Remember that “The basic dispositions of science are asking questions then predicting what the outcome might be and then saying, ‘well, what data do I need to find out which is the right answer?’ and that is what children do in project work starting at age 3.”  (Dr. Katz on Bam Radio)
“Do with things that are available that are in front of you. What isn’t in the best interest of advancing this knowledge is to imagine an ocean if you don’t live near an ocean or imagining a pirate that doesn’t exist. Use what is in front of you to create this learning and explore so you can test and try.” (Dr. Killins on Bam Radio)

The Importance of Play
“There are no greater natural scientists and engineers then young children. Inquisitive learners who learn STEM concepts through play. High quality early learning environments provide children with the structure in which to build upon their natural inclination to explore, to build, and to question.”  Once again it comes down to letting the children play!

Motivation
Take a walk around a great neighborhood and you will find America’s youngest children learning through discovery. Enter a preschool classroom, where children are splashing each other and giggling around a water table, learning about volume and displacement. At the elementary school, a small group is taking a nature walk, investigating the blossoms on a flowering tree, while another group is measuring the dimensions of a jungle gym and creating drawings of its construction. These early learners are engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), subjects that were once seen as too “hard” to teach young children but which are now recognized as critical to weave into their growing understanding of the world. Unfortunately, their experiences are not yet the norm for millions of young children in the United States.