STEM for Preschoolers

A few weeks ago (has it really been that long?) I talked a bit about my experience at this year's WLA conference.  Some colleagues and I were able to give a presentation at this conference all about ways to incorporate science into our library programming for preschoolers.  Oftentimes we librarians get so caught up on incorporating early literacy skills into our storytimes that we forget that there are lots of other things that preschoolers could be learning at the same time.  Our goal with this presentation was to share a few ways that we had incorporated STEM concepts (science, technology, engineering, and math) into our own programs and to prove that it really isn't as daunting of a task as you might think.

You don't need to have an impressive science background to teach basic STEM concepts to preschoolers.  At this age children really benefit from being allowed to explore the world around them, make observations and predictions, and ask questions.  In fact, STEM for small ones often looks an awful lot like play!

We can lay a good STEM foundation by working a few basic concepts into our storytimes.  In fact, many of you librarians are probably already doing this without even realizing it!  Have you ever done a storytime that was focused on colors or shapes?  What about the weather, or a certain season?  Have you ever sang a song or done a flannelboard that involved "five little somethings?"  When you do animal storytimes, do you ever talk about the animal (what it eats, where it lives, how big it is, etc.)?  Do you have puzzles or blocks available for kids to play with?  If you answered "yes" to any of these questions then you are already well on your way.

During our presentation we also mentioned a few other activities that we had tried in the hopes of expanding the audience's repertoire a bit.  The first activity, which my supervisor and I use quite often in our storytimes, is a matching game.

The idea is actually pretty simple.  First, we cut lots of like or related shapes, usually using our Ellison Die machine.  Next, we do something to distinguish different "types" of each shape.  In the first example above you can see that we had trucks of several different colors, simply reinforced by writing the appropriate color word on each truck.  In the second example we added a certain number of dots to each heart.  Usually we have four, sometimes five different types or categories for each game.  Magnets are added to the back of each shape.  When it is time for our matching game at storytime, we go around the room and hand each child a shape.  We ask parents to look at the shape with their child and talk about it.  For example, parents might talk to their children about what color truck they have, or they may count how many dots their heart has together.  After everyone has a moment to observe and discuss their shapes, we begin the matching.  We will place one shape on our magnet board and ask the group, "Who has a [shape] (truck, heart, etc.) that looks like this?"  Children who are holding a matching shape are invited to come up to our magnet board and stick their shape up with the others.  We'll count how many of that type of shape there are, make a big deal out of what makes it special (color, number, etc.), and then move on to the next "type" of shape.  This continues until everyone's shapes are on the board.  This activity is great because it incorporates lots of observation and a basic STEM concept like color or number, plus it gives the kids to get up and move around a bit.

Another fun thing to try is using a parachute:

The parachute is great because it gets kids to exercise their gross motor skills.  You can also work some basic math into your parachute use pretty easily!  If you bounce balls/wads of paper/plastic frogs on your parachute you can, of course, count the items as you add them to the mix.  You can also talk about more and less, fast and slow, up and down, and other similar broad concepts that kids need to understand before moving on to what we picture as the math and physics learned in school.

If a librarian is interested in going the extra mile in their programming, I highly recommend looking at this blog, maintained a librarian friend of mine at the Madison Public Library.  MPL is really getting into the idea of creating makerspaces at libraries, and my librarian friend has begun a related program for preschoolers called WonderWorks.  The WonderWorks program delivers a different STEM concept each week and a hands-on activity for the kids to try.

Want to know more about STEM and how to incorporate it into your library's programs?  There's plenty of good information to be found out there, but I recommend starting with this article from last month's School Library Journal.