“LOOK!” screams a four-year-old with such joy that we know this isn’t a garden-variety “I want to share something with you” moment.

As the gang rushes to her side, they come to a complete standstill, frozen in awe.

Oh happy day! Some kind souls have shared a fort with the community! There before us stands the most wonderful teepee-shaped fort that we have ever seen. Forts have been popping up all over town this year—and I couldn’t be happier about this trend.

This 14-foot high monument has sparked wonder and curiosity in all of us. We have stumbled upon a STEM adventure! This is math, science and engineering play that allows the learning to come naturally and at each child’s developmental level. This is also sharing. It teaches children that our community creates beautiful spaces to be enjoyed by all.

“Who lives here?” asks Liam as he bravely ventures closer.

“Can we go in?” questions three-year-old Madison, not sure that she really wants to.

We do go in, and the investigation into fort building sets us in motion for the day. Do you remember building forts when you were a kid? Did the memory of that fort just resurface? If it did, you retained that memory and are likely able to build another.

These are the moments that we like to create for our early learners. Hands-on learning enables children to take their understanding to a deeper level so that they can analyze the information that they have collected and then apply this knowledge when they create their own forts.

After giving everyone a turn to observe and discuss the masterpiece in front of us, we take a good hard look at the fort and investigate how it was constructed so that we can build a fort of our own.

We discovered this fort (above) while hiking in our neighborhood.

“I think this fort was started from that fallen branch!” Harper hypothesizes.

This leads to closer observation as we determine that this fort has sides that were built with sticks ranging in size from large to small. By leaning them against the main branch, the architects made the fort longer and wider. We begin to get a better sense of measurement as we visually estimate the length and width of the fort.

We always add a few sticks or branches to any fort that we discover, and today is no different. The older children quickly begin to add branches—an activity that reinforces our perception of the fort as a communal structure. When our younger learners hesitate, we reassure them that they really can’t go wrong by adding a stick or two.

“It looks like a triangle!” shouts Elizabeth. This declaration leads to an animated discussion about shapes and ways to incorporate doors, windows and other shapes into our fort.

We have a geometry class happening before our very eyes! We are looking at two- and three-dimensional shapes and using visualization, spatial reasoning and geometric modeling to solve problems.

These are opportunities that are rich in learning, creativity and team building. We share theories and develop hypotheses about the number of people it might have taken to build the fort, how they got the biggest branches up so high and how they created a base to stabilize the entire structure. We also examine the bottoms of the branches and hypothesize that they were probably broken off during a storm, rather than cut cleanly with a saw.

We know that our forts won’t look like the ones that we’ve encountered. We’ll have to use whatever materials we can find in our own play spaces. But our observations give us a better understanding of the fundamentals of fort and teepee construction. These found structures are the spark of inspiration that we need to design a fort of our own!

It’s time to bring out the assessment chart because this gang is on fire! This playful experience in engineering involves concepts such as angles, inclines, balance and elevation. When we let children learn through play, movement and trial and error, we lay the groundwork for the kind of deep learning that builds new neural connections.

Once the seeds are planted, the children often continue to develop their fort-building skills in our program or in their own backyards.

When the Midwest experienced a rare derecho in August 2020—and every house in our area suddenly had a backyard full of branches—our students immediately began collecting the fallen branches to build forts in their neighborhoods.

They had joined the community-wide fort-building movement!

Notice the similarities? By giving our children long periods of uninterrupted time to play and investigate, we empower them to build their own forts and develop new STEM skills and insights that they will be able to transfer to worksheets when the time is right.

When our students returned to our program this fall, we began napping outdoors on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, when a parent suggested a weekend nap to their child, the child insisted on napping outdoors—in her fort. When children build structures, the joy comes not only from the building but from returning to this place that they have created by themselves, for themselves.

These are the moments when I thank our anonymous community of fort builders for “planting the seeds” of fort building with our young learners. These industrious fort architects may be 12 years old or 90 years old. They may be building these impromptu structures to offer protection from the weather, bring joy to others or simply provide a peaceful place for fellow community members to commune with the natural world.

These lovely forts are gifts of time, hard work and beautiful design that bring science, math and engineering into the lives of our youngest citizens.

Thank you for making so many moments of STEM learning possible through play with the children of our community! You inspire all of us! Thank you! You are truly changing our world!

“I found an empty nest! Can we keep it?” Owen’s joyful discovery captures everyone’s attention.

Three-year-old Avery comes running. “Are there eggs?” she asks her older and wiser five-year-old friend. “Can I see?” she begs. “Please let me see?”

“There are no eggs, just an old nest. Can we please keep it?” pleads Owen.

After a quick glance to confirm that the nest cradled in Owen’s hands is not harboring a feathered inhabitant, I grant my permission.

Owen handles the nest gingerly before realizing that it is sturdier than it looks. After a few tugs and a few moments of studying the nest, he very gently hands it over to the others.

We have a collection of nests. We love to study the materials used to build each nest, as well as the nest construction methods used by different local bird species.

We also try to guess the type of bird that built each nest and how many eggs might have been laid in these cozy homes crafted from sticks, grass, leaves, string, mud and other found objects.

I watch Ave silently investigating and collecting data as she turns the nest in one direction and then another. You can almost see the wheels turning.

“I think the bird used some litter [drinking straws, food wrappers and other debris] to build this nest.” Ave giggles. “And there are like a million sticks in here!”

“A million?” I echo.

“Maybe more!” Ave theorizes.

This moment gives me a valuable insight into Ave’s nascent number sense. Connecting numbers to quantities is a skill that will continue to emerge and evolve with age and brain development.

“The bird added string—and look at this piece of wire she wove in!” shares Maya. “It’s lightweight but very strong. How long does it take her to make this nest? I think this nest is smaller than the others we have.”

This is how we set our curriculum for the day—by following the interests of the children. When we return to our indoor classroom, we will dig out our books to learn more about the various engineering practices that local birds use to build their homes and compare this newest nest to the others in our collection.

Living along the Mississippi River as we do, we are blessed with the return of our beloved bald eagles each winter and spring. From December to March, these magnificent birds migrate south from Canada and often make our area their winter home. Some even like it so much that they make it their permanent home.

In the fall and winter, the eagles rebuild their nests to prepare for the hatching of the eaglets. Eagles nesting in our area typically lay their eggs in mid-to-late February, and the eggs hatch by mid-to-late March.

Once the eggs have hatched, the female stays with the eaglets while the male leaves to find food for the female and her hatchlings.

The eaglets grow quickly and are ready to fly—or “fledge”—by late May or early June. A number of webcams have been set up by organizations in the area so that we can watch the life cycle of the eagles playing out before our eyes.

This is where I struggle. We are a screen-free environment. I know that we can link to so much learning with technology. I know that I need to stop being so stubborn. I am that old-school playground leader who hasn’t embraced the many educational benefits of 21st-century technologies.

We weren’t always screen-free—and I have fond memories of the year when we observed a wee bit of eagle life via webcam.

I hated the screen, but I loved learning about our local eagles. When an eagle brought a large fish to the nest, we were spellbound. But the fact that we’d been sucked into spending time staring at a screen contradicted everything that I believed in regarding early education—and I was overcome with guilt.

So when the first warm day of spring arrived, we created our own eagle’s nest in the center’s outdoor play area.

“Declan, how big is an eagle’s nest?” I asked, measuring tape in hand.

“Seven feet wide,” he responded. “What are you doing?”

I quickly measured out seven feet and put a heavy rock from the rain garden on the spot. The children began adding rocks until we had a circle that was seven feet in diameter.

For a few minutes, the children pretended to be eagles living in a happy little rock nest—until one perspicacious preschooler called me out.

“Wait! This isn’t a nest!” Asa declared. “We need to add sticks and leaves and yarn. We need more!”

“We do need branches and sticks!” agreed four-year-old Joshua.

“Over here!” directed two-year-old Gabe.

Game on! Now we were learning, creating and analyzing. We’d taken what we’d learned during our screen time and translated it into real-life, hands-on learning that met so many of the math and science standards that they would struggled to achieve on a worksheet!

This was when we grabbed our books and discovered that an eagle has a wingspan of 6-8 feet. We also learned that a mature eagle has 7,000 feathers, weighs 8-11 pounds and has vision so keen that it can see the print on a newspaper at a distance equal to the length of a football field. These are the details that young children are likely to absorb.

Because bald eagles are most active from sunrise to 11 a.m. as they feed along the open water of our locks and dams, this coincides quite well with our outdoor times. Lucky for us, they return to their roosting areas in the afternoon hours.

After lunch, some time spent browsing through eagle books and a nap, the boys made their way back out to their new eagle’s nest. If they build it, they will play in it. They had been playing there for a good long time when, sure enough, up in the sky, an eagle appeared!

Yes, a  real live eagle! Would she think this was HER nest? Could she see the boys in HER nest?

As the boys contemplated the possibility of the eagle swooping down and landing amongst them, they scrambled out of their nest in pure terror.

The eagle did not land in our nest. But, sadly, our frightened little learners never returned. I left the nest in place for over a week, and some of the younger children played in it, but the boys who built it kept their distance!

I often find that most of the fun is in the building phase of the project. The collaborating, creating, adding, subtracting, analyzing and evaluating with friends is actually the play for building kids. This is the good stuff that happens with play; enough time to engage in deep, investigative learning; and, sometimes, just the right amount of technology.

Take time to follow the lead of your students and see where their interests and curiosity take you. Then match their learning up with your early learning standards.

This link will take you to the Arconic Eagle Cam.

Full disclosure: The male eagle will bring food back to the nest. This could be a raccoon, a fish or a mouse. It is nature. It is graphic. It can be addicting or terribly uneventful at any given moment!

When we build nests of our own, we often use this Scientific American site as a reference. But if you’ve lingered too long on the Arconic Eagle Cam link provided above and feel guilty about overdoing the screen time, you can just WING it—pun intended!

Ha! Let’s get outside and play.

“Vera, Vera!  Come see how bright the colors are in my rainbow!” Four-year-old Owen is ecstatic about his discovery of a colorful collection of wet chalk after a summer shower in our outdoor classroom. This happy accident has paved the way for a sensory adventure as we meet our math and science early learning standards through play.

Owen is our engineer of playful learning. “This chalk feels different and it is so smooth to write on the sidewalk. Hurry, Vera!”

Owen is our full-of-life friend who loves to explore and discover and test out new ideas. He will extend the play until it’s time to leave or his stomach begins to rumble with hunger. He is also great at retaining the lessons he has learned for future exploration and discovery. Owen is our poster child for scientific investigation and math foundation!

“Owen, you can blend all of the colors! Do it with your feet!” Vera shouts back.

Vera is Owen’s partner in crime. There is nothing that beats the joy of childhood summers and outdoor learning. We don’t need worksheets to meet our early learning standards. We just need time to investigate, explore and experiment with a little bit of water, a bucket of chalk and our favorite friends. Water turns sidewalk chalk into an entirely different medium—transforming a dry and dusty classroom staple into a creamy and vibrant tool of creative expression. Trust me: Wet chalk will open up new avenues of imagination, exploration and learning in the preschool brain!

“Parker! Can you draw a person using shapes?” asks Avery, prompting her creative collaborator to tackle a new challenge. Here come our math standards, sneaking their way back into our play. Math vocabulary is exploding in our outdoor classroom. We are suddenly discussing lines and patterns and shapes and sizes. Blending is a form of addition, grouping, sets and prediction.

“I think the chalk will dry lighter,” Owen predicts as Vera nods in agreement.

“Why?” asks three-year-old Avery.

“Because the color of the dry chalk in the basket is lighter than the wet chalk on the sidewalk,” Owen answers. “Let’s try it!”

At Owen’s prompting, the children run off to conduct their latest experiment.

Ah, yes. The wet chalk has presented us with a priceless teaching-and-learning moment initiated and carried out by the children in our program. We have science as we observe, ask questions, problem-solve and draw conclusions. We have cause and effect, data analysis and design as the group tests out its theory. The mathematical and scientific inquiry has begun—and a whole new chapter of learning has become our curriculum for the day. This is why early childhood educators create their lesson plans at the end of the day—to build on the day’s explorations and extend them into the following day’s lessons. This is child-led learning!

Today, we have chalk investigative play happening. Our children discuss textures and exchange observations as they collaborate on their art in progress. Through their play with wet chalk, the children are describing and comparing physical properties. They are exploring concepts of force and motion as they draw with different amounts of pressure or drop dry pieces of chalk onto the sidewalk to create chalk bombs that explode on impact.

We spend a lot of time discussing math and science early learning standards here. But our day of chalk play also played an important role in preparing the children in our program for a successful transition to kindergarten.

Following are a few insights into the hidden benefits of chalk play—insights that can be shared with parents who may question the value of outdoor play and its role in advancing their children’s kindergarten readiness:

Kindergarten, sadly,  involves a lot of sitting time. Children need strength throughout their bodies—including strong core muscles to sit all day. When children get down on their hands and knees and support their upper-body weight with their arms and hands, this strengthens their core muscles, as well as their shoulder muscles, which are so important for fine-motor dexterity. Small pieces of chalk promote the development of the tripod grasp needed for pencil gripping. Drawing big chalk rainbow arches requires children to cross the midline. Why is this so important? Kindergarteners need midline-crossing skills so that the dominant hand can efficiently move from left to right across the page.

These are all bonuses for kindergarten readiness—above and beyond the early learning standards. This is the foundation that we talk about when we play our way into academic life. These small steps will enable our children to succeed when it’s time to sit at a desk.

“My chalk is shrinking really fast!” giggles Rowan.

Oh, how I love shrinking chalk! Yes, we are definitely collecting data, making observations and noticing cause and effect. But there’s more happening here than meets the eye. We know that the transition to smaller writing utensils helps promote the development of better gripping skills. As the children continue to draw and their pieces of sidewalk chalk get shorter and smaller, they are effectively transitioning to smaller writing tools and strengthening their gripping skills. We try not to rush writing in our young learners. But when it happens spontaneously, we try to promote the use of smaller pieces of chalk, crayons or pencils to help them develop age-appropriate gripping skills.

You never know where play will lead your little learners. But trust that there will be learning happening as the children share insights and ideas while building strong and trusting friendships. So let the children play in their outdoor classroom—and join in the “alfresco fun” as you meet your early learning standards!

“If the squirrel comes down from this direction, we can trap him under here!” yells Elliot.

The playground equipment sits empty as Elliott, Harper and their fellow “squirrel trappers” congregate at the base of a towering oak tree in our neighborhood park. 

The children have long been captivated by this venerable old oak, which has served as a stimulating “natural laboratory” for many mathematical and scientific inquiries disguised as play.

Today’s outdoor learning adventure may look like a simple game of make-believe, but complex learning is taking place as the children use their creativity, observation, planning and problem-solving skills—along with their emerging knowledge of math and science—to construct a squirrel trap at the base of their beloved tree.           

“Wait! Wait! Are you trapping…Miss Suzy?”

Five-year-old Maya sounds slightly panicked as she blurts out the question. The urgency in her voice catches the squirrel trappers’ attention.

A booklover with a fertile imagination, Maya is worried about the beloved squirrel featured in our favorite fall book, Miss Suzy, by Miriam Young. This captivating story about a gray squirrel whose cozy home is invaded by a group of six red squirrels has been in our library since day one. If you haven’t read this classic, see if you can find it in your library. It’s an oldie, but a goodie. We have been reading this book to the children in our program for more than 30 years. Every autumn, without fail, I will hear a child say, “Hello Miss Suzy” to every squirrel we see. This charming literary tradition has been passed down through decades and generations in our Under the Gingko Tree Nature Classroom program!

“We aren’t trapping her, we are trapping the red squirrels,” the boys reassure Maya.

Relieved and intrigued, Maya joins the squirrel-trap design team. Soon, colorful leaves, acorns and other small seeds make their way into the trapping area. The older boys are shouting out orders to the younger trappers. “We need some sticks—about this long!” Elliott declares, using his hands to indicate the length of the sticks that will be needed. “And bark! We need some bark!”

The younger girls wander over to other tree trunks and begin to use their collections to create cozy squirrel homes like Miss Suzy’s. They seem content to leave the squirrel trapping to the boys. Three-year-old Lauren makes a squirrel nest by arranging pine cones in a circle on a bed of pine needles. From observing the upper branches of the tall trees that surround our school, Lauren knows that squirrel nests are round and full of leaves, acorns and possibly pine cones. These hands-on investigations are authentic learning experiences that the girls will remember and build on as they continue to hone their problem-solving skills.

Four-year-old Ava, our loose-parts aficionado, creates a home design all her own, using bark for the beds and acorns to represent the squirrels’ heads. She repurposes the acorn caps as bedside water bowls. Another acorn cap filled with tiny seeds and nuts becomes a food bowl for late-night snacking next to a “crackling campfire” consisting of a red leaf topped with stacked twigs. A green leaf becomes a staircase that the squirrels will use to exit their comfy abode.

We could knock out early learning standards galore just by studying the photo below! We find these delightful little creations all over our school grounds.

This fall, open the door to the possibility of using nature to create authentic, engaging and accessible science and math experiences through outdoor play. Throw away your “curriculum” stopwatch. If it’s snack time, hand out the snacks. Let them eat like pirates for the day. No one will die. No one will call the teacher police. If they do, I want you to whip out your school’s list of early learning standards and state your case. You hold the key! Let’s take play back for this generation of early learners! The fresh air will do us all good this fall. Stay safe, friends—and don’t forget to make time for learning through play!

“Look! The snow packs!  Let’s make a snowman!”

Today’s sunshine and rising temperatures have transformed yesterday’s powdery snow into packable fun—ushering in an afternoon of playful math and science learning.

These are the times when I love to pull out my camera to document the many foundation-building moments that find their way into our play. This documentation allows us to reflect on the learning, conversations and collaborations that take place—and the theories that the children develop—as they explore and investigate their environment.

So grab a mug of hot cider and join us as we unpack all of the early learning opportunities that can be checked off of your list of assessment standards during a snowy afternoon of outdoor play.

“We need three balls!” yells Hudson. “One for his head, one for the middle and one for the bottom!” Hudson has stepped up to serve as the lead architect during this day of snowman construction.

 “We need three sizes,” Jameson pipes in. “Big, bigger and even bigger!”

  “Yes, and the biggest is at the bottom,” adds Noah.

“You start out like this,” Noah explains as she packs together a small pile of snow. ”You push it and roll it and it gets bigger and bigger. Then you have to pack it down. But not too hard. If you pack too hard, it falls apart.”

As I listen in, I seize various opportunities to introduce some STEM vocabulary into our play. We discuss cause and effect, friction and experiments. I don’t expect these words to start flowing off of the children’s lips any time soon, but I never miss an opportunity to plant the seeds of knowledge in their developing brains.

“Mine looks like a square,” Jameson complains to no one in particular.

“If you rub it here just a little and chop this side a little bit, you will make a circle,” advises Avery, who is a wee bit older and more experienced in the intricacies of snowman construction.

I watch as the children form the snow into balls of different shapes and sizes. I hear vocabulary words such as “bigger,” “taller” and “heavier” as the older children compare the different snowball sizes and help me stack them one on top of the other to form snow people.  

“We need two eyes and a carrot nose and buttons for the mouth,” the children shout. “We need a hat to put on top and two branches for his arms! He needs a hat and a scarf!”

For years, the needs of my little “snow sculptors” left me scrambling for the items needed to complete their snow people. After three decades of coming up short, I discovered this snowman decorating kit on Amazon.

What a game changer! This affordable kit provides ample opportunities for STEM (and STEAM) learning. Whenever I pull this kit out, the excitement increases and the design process becomes more focused and deliberate. We have patterns and sequence and spatial reasoning. We have order and math vocabulary and collaboration. These are the moments that lead to teamwork, which is such a gift in any learning endeavor. When children work together on a project, it fosters the development of confidence and camaraderie—and culminates in a sense of accomplishment for all.

I keep my snowman kit in a plastic bin so that I know where all of the pieces are and keep the bin handy during the winter months. Every time I pull the kit out and the children scream with delight, I feel like a rock star! If you want to simplify your teaching and incorporate more STEM learning opportunities into your snow days, do yourself a favor and get a snowman kit.

The winter months offer endless opportunities to introduce children to the science behind the season as you explore and discuss environmental changes, physical properties, weather and temperature. You can pack a lot of STEM curriculum and vocabulary into your day by simply allowing your students to spend some time in the elements.

If the thought of getting all of your young snow explorers dressed and out the door feels daunting, check out our blog post, Incorporating Math into Your Cold-Weather Routines. You’ll learn how to set up separate “stations” where the children can don their own snow pants, coats, boots, hats, scarves and mittens. It’s a great system that teaches children about sequencing while encouraging them to become more independent as they gear up for their winter adventures.

It’s going to be a long winter, so bundle up and get some fresh air.  It’s good for the body, the brain and the spirit.

Stay safe my friends!

After months of sequestering and social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19, we could all use some fresh winter air! Nature is just what the doctor ordered to stimulate our senses while we meet our early learning standards.

The winter months offer an abundance of STEM learning opportunities, so don’t let the falling temperatures and snow chase you inside. The changing seasons lead to so many discoveries that incorporate STEM language and learning. Let’s take a quick look at just a few of the STEM learning adventures that we can provide for our early learners as we explore the winter landscape.

SNOW MOLDS

When the forecast predicts the first snow of the season, be sure to grab the toys out of the sandbox before they freeze in the sand. Then repurpose your sand molds as snow molds. It’s a great way to introduce shape and dimension into winter play.

This cold-weather activity introduces early learners to engineering design and the scientific practice of modeling as they work through their ideas in this new medium. By actively investigating, exploring and communicating with their friends, our young snow sculptors are laying the foundation for a future understanding of core scientific concepts.

When children have access to simple sandbox tools, they can explore and reimagine activities that work with sand, but may or may not work with wet or powdery snow. This leads to more investigation and more opportunities for learning. Muffin and cake pans of all shapes and sizes will also work—and open doors to endless hours of creative outdoor play. 

ICE AND ICICLES

There’s a lot of science and math in those icicles! Every winter, I grab the longest icicle that I can find and let it melt into an empty glass. This enables the children to observe the melting process while we discuss the difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures. We can also discuss why our body temperature is warmer than the outdoor temperature and why we can see our breath in the cold winter air. When the icicle has completely melted, I point out the dirt and gunk that was frozen into this seemingly pristine piece of ice. But that won’t deter our experiential learners from sucking on “nature’s popsicles.” Children learn through their senses—and I gave up the battle of trying to stop them from sucking on icicles and eating snow years ago. It’s all part of the magic of winter STEM learning.

IGLOOS

Building an igloo is easy—and there are so many learning opportunities in engineering and physics that come into play. We use large plastic bins to mold the snow into big blocks, and the igloo-building process proceeds more quickly than you might imagine.

If you’re lucky enough to get packable snow early in the season, there is a good chance that your igloo could last for a month or more. One word of caution: This lovely source of wind protection also takes a while to melt, so build it in a location where it won’t interfere with other activities. Because igloos become softer in the afternoon sun, we often redesign our igloo during the day, adding colors and water before leaving it to refreeze overnight. An igloo is well worth the investment of time and energy.

HIKING

Take a hike! Even in familiar places like your neighborhood or a local schoolyard, life looks different during the winter months. When we head out for these winter walking adventures, I introduce new vocabulary words such as “hike” or “adventure” or “excursion.”

Research shows that vocabulary building at an early age fosters future success in reading and narrows the achievement gap. As you hike with your early learners, your efforts to introduce concepts such as patterns, reflections, black ice, hibernation and wind-chill factors will lead to later learning opportunities back in the classroom.

  

SLEDDING

Oh boy! What a bonanza of science vocabulary we have here, with “speed” and “force” and “distance“! For younger children, we introduce simple vocabulary words such as “up” and “down” the hill.  Who went the “farthest“? Who wiped out the “fastest“?  We gather and analyze data as they try new routes, techniques and combinations of sled buddies. We don’t always have access to real hills—and there have been years when my class just couldn’t handle a walk to the park and sledding!  But don’t rule out that large pile of snow that the plow has pushed up at the end of the school parking lot.  It may be man-made and it may be small, but it’s a hill nonetheless! Kids just love taking small risks such as climbing up and sliding down. Last winter, I watched a three-year-old and a four-year-old spend 20 minutes trying to stay upright while sliding on their boots down an 18-inch “hill.” It doesn’t take much of an incline to open doors to STEM learning!

ANIMAL-TRACK INVESTIGATIONS

We often discover animal tracks in the snow during our outdoor investigations. We occasionally find paw prints from a raccoon or hoof prints from a deer, but most of the tracks that we find are made by neighborhood cats and dogs, as well as squirrels and birds. This tracking activity never gets old. We can try to follow their routes while making observations and forming theories. Curiosity, persistence, questioning and problem-solving are the traits of a true scientist. These real-life adventures that put science in context represent age-appropriate learning at its finest.

SNOW SCULPTURES

I’d love to tell you that we were the designers of the impressive Snow Dino below, but the truth is that we found this expressive fellow while sledding at the neighborhood park. We have some very creative college students in our neighborhood and we often observe their winter snow sculptures to get our own creative juices flowing and learn new sculpting techniques. The smiles on the faces of the children below show that they didn’t need to build the Snow Dino to enjoy the end result! If you missed our own STEM Snowman adventures earlier in the month, you can find the blog post here.

After the cold-weather fun, finish up with a comforting cup of hot cocoa, apple cider or mint tea. When the weather is warm enough to stay outside for long periods, a hearty cup of soup after you head indoors will chase away the winter chill and refuel your STEM explorers.

Thank you for sharing a year of STEM learning adventures with me and stay tuned for more in 2021!

“Do our shadows look like the monsters in the book?” asks James.

I glance over and see James and Noa connecting their shadows by overlapping their arms. When we engage children in outdoor shadow play to support active exploration and discovery, their creativity is endless!

James and Noa are playing out their version of the book, The Dark, Dark Night by M. Christina Butler. This charming children’s tale follows a frog heading home to his pond after a long winter’s sleep. Along the way, he stops to frolic with his friends Badger, Hedgehog, Rabbit and Mouse. As darkness falls, Frog borrows a lantern from his friend, Mouse, to light the way home.

But, as Frog approaches the reeds at the edge of the pond, he finds himself face to face with a HUGE pond monster with enormous claws. Terrified, Frog hightails it back to his friends. Each friend returns to the pond with Frog—only to flee when the monster reappears. But the friends ultimately realize that the fearsome “pond monster” is not a monster at all—just some scary shadows created by light from the lantern.

Our four- and five-year-old students love this tale. But we had to read The Dark, Dark Night many times before the shadow storyline finally sank in for the younger children in the group. It also took a bit of time and investigation for these younger learners to observe that, when we move, our shadows move too!

When we’re outside, we often engage in body-shadow play with the sun as our light source. Exploring the ways that shadows change as we move our bodies is a great way to get kids engaged and excited about learning. Our road is often closed to traffic during the winter months, and we always take the opportunity to grab tape measures to see how long our shadows are.

I often challenge our friends to see if they can disconnect from their shadows. After a few minutes of contorting our bodies to see if we can separate from our shadows, we decide that we can’t, but that never stops the fun and silliness of trying!

We create math shadow games by calling out different shapes and encouraging the children to do their best to create shadows in these shapes. Movements like standing on one foot, reaching up high to touch the sky and walking on all fours all help children develop body awareness.

Here’s a great way to practice fine-motor skills during shadow play: Use the sun, a projector light or a flashlight to create shadows of tiny hands on a wall. The children can work on finger isolation (e.g. pointing with the index finger, counting out the fingers on their hands and wiggling all of the fingers individually); thumb opposition (e.g. touching the thumb to each finger); and other hand positions to create different types of shadows, an activity that helps build dexterity while laying the foundation for later STEM learning. We also play “Follow the Shadow Leader” and encourage the children to recreate the leader’s shadow by duplicating his or her movements.

Shadow play also helps children develop a rudimentary understanding of cause and effect as they observe what makes a shadow and where the light needs to be to cast a shadow. By moving their shadows around, they can investigate different shapes and sizes.

“Look how dark my shadow is today! Yesterday, we could not see it very well.” Owen is the first to recognize that sunnier days and brighter lights create darker shadows. Observations like Owen’s are often followed by other STEM activities such as creating hypotheses, developing theories and collecting data as the children continue their investigations and deepen their understanding of the nature of light and shadow.

Your students may also notice that their shadows are different sizes at different times of the day. Depending on the amount of sunlight that illuminates our play space, their shadows can be longer, shorter or nonexistent.

You can also show the children how to change the size of a shadow. Move an object closer to a light source and the shadow becomes bigger. Move it away from the light source and the shadow becomes smaller.

Light and shadow play is an amazing way for children to explore their world. If the sun is shining, why not meet your Illinois Early Learning Standards for math and science while playing with shadows. Have fun!

“AAAAUUUUGHHHHHHH! Worms! Look, look! They are everywhere!” Eleanor is jumping up and down hysterically. Nothing will bring our crew running faster than a good worm sighting!

Let the earthworm exploration begin. We love worms!

Last spring, we witnessed an unusual natural phenomenon as a mass of earthworms wiggled out of their subterranean homes in the soil and squirmed onto our sidewalk.

This weird worm event elicited great joy and excitement from our early learners as they raced over to investigate.

There are a number of names for a large group of earthworms, including a bed, a bunch, a clat or a clew. So if you casually refer to a squirming mass of earthworms as a bunch, you are technically correct!

Why are there so many?  Why are they tangled?  Will they bite me? Where is the worm’s mouth?

The curiosity is flowing faster than the answers. When you see excitement at this level, embrace the moment! Grab a camera and start documenting the Illinois Early Learning Standards that you’ll be meeting today!

Worms can be used to teach length—and we sometimes measure them with tape measures. But this is just one of the ways that worms spark investigation, inquiry and analysis in our outdoor curriculum.

Our love of worms has afforded us days and days of study. In the photo above, you can see collaboration, hypothesizing, theorizing and prediction in action.

This is a group of three-year-old scientific investigators—and their brains are on fire! This is STEM exploration at its most engaging as we measure, count, estimate and subtilize while learning about earth science and life science.

Our students are learning that living things grow and change. They are drawing conclusions from their investigations as they scrutinize the worms’ anatomy and behavior.

This fact-finding mission also fosters a respect for life in all its forms. We try really hard not to hurt our worms. When a two-year-old child engages in hands-on investigations with an earthworm, it doesn’t always end so well for the worm. To protect the worms from overzealous handling, we’ve taught the older children to monitor the well-being of the worms in the hands of their younger peers. This is hands-on learning, coupled with collaboration!

As your early learners explore the world of earthworms, encourage them to ask questions that will guide their investigations. By encouraging them to engage in deeper scientific inquiry, you’ll be setting them up for academic success in the years to come.

“Can I hold it? ” asks two-year-old Alex.

As an older friend passes a worm to Alex, she pulls her hand back a few times before she is ready to receive it.

We offer Alex a glove, but she wants to be like the “big kids” and go gloveless. After we reassure her that the worm has no teeth or pincers, she tries again. This is a good example of the importance of time and patience as we guide children through the investigative process.

People often ask how we “get” our kids to hold a worm. We read a lot of books about worms and I make sure that there are worm books on our shelves from March through October. We also observe worms for long periods of time. If our early learners have one brave friend who is willing to pick up a worm, that’s all it takes to persuade the others to persevere, despite their initial trepidation.

As the children engage in their hands-on worm investigations, we throw out facts, often in whispered voices: “Did you know that worms do not have teeth? Worms also do not have pincers or stingers. They have no eyes, legs or arms. They will never hurt us.”

These are the facts that I share with young learners who are anxious or experiencing worms for the first time. A child who investigated worms as a two-year-old last fall may not have retained that memory as a three-year-old—and we may need to reintroduce worms this spring.

Retention and problem-solving skills continue to evolve as students seek answers to their questions through active investigation. Last fall’s observer may be this spring’s hands-on investigator. Our students need long periods of time to observe and learn as this curriculum unfolds in front of their eyes.

By creating an environment that leads to discovery, you are setting your curriculum in motion. Add large rocks, tree cookies or even soil-filled planters that can serve as worm habitats. Some teachers add soil and worms to their sand and water tables to create worm farms in their classrooms. Our goal is to foster the development of inquisitive minds.

We extend our learning with songs and finger-play. We enjoy “Eat Like a Worm Day” as we snack on vegetables such as carrots, cucumbers, lettuce and apples. We make “worms” out of clay—some thick, some thin, some short and some very, very long.

Mr. Nicky (pictured above) has a wonderfully funny song titled “Earthworm,” that has taught our children so much about the vital role that worms play in keeping our soil healthy. There are many silly worm songs, but this has a great hook and gets our children moving as they learn new facts about worms while having fun. It’s one of our favorites.

We always try to return worms to their natural habitat when our observations are over. We thank the worms for doing their part to make our lawn healthy and beautiful as we release them back into the place where we found them. We send them home to their families, which resonates with our young learners.

We wish you many happy STEM adventures as you and your early learners study these champions of the soil.

Happy worm hunting!

“I see the daddy cardinal, do you know where the mama bird is?” Four-year-old Noah, binoculars in hand, is busy counting birds in our outdoor classroom.

Are you aware that the annual Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up later this week? This is a great opportunity to create a bird-watching station and knock out some STEM and early learning standards while encouraging family involvement.

Mark your calendars for Feb 12-15 and join us for this fun and educational week!

February and March are good months for bird watching and bird counting in our program. This is a great way to accelerate STEM learning on days when below-zero wind chills make outdoor play impossible.

We have bird feeders set up right outside of our windows so that we can set up indoor bird-watching stations to give the children close-up views of their feathered friends.

We provide clipboards, books, binoculars and our abacus to help with the bird count. We also use this opportunity to teach our students how to tally on a tally chart. We reference the eBird website, which shares local sightings of different bird species.

I take the top ten birds sighted in our area on the eBird website and add pictures of those birds to our abacus. To do the same thing, just add your location to the eBird website and you’ll see which birds are sighted most often in your area. It’s quite fabulous!

We also like The Cornell Lab and the Audubon Society. I have the Cornell Lab Merlin Bird ID app on my phone to help us identify birds by their songs.

Your local U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may also be able to provide free materials for bird identification. There is a big difference between bird identification books for children and those that were written for mature bird watchers. I would check some out at your local library or bookstore before purchasing.

This is a great opportunity to practice not only counting, but grouping by attributes or close observation of the differences between a downy woodpecker and a red-bellied woodpecker.

We try to keep a ruler nearby for our older children to use to determine whether they have spotted a six-inch downy woodpecker or a nine-inch hairy woodpecker. This offers the children an opportunity to use estimation and practice using real tools for observation.

This is also a great time to introduce Venn diagrams for clarification and documentation.

By creating a comfortable and inviting place for the children to birdwatch—complete with pillows, chairs and tables with baskets of binoculars—you can encourage them to slow down and observe more often.

By planting native plants in your outdoor classroom, you will also attract more birds to your bird-watching stations.

We remind our kids that outdoor birds are hard to spot but easy to hear. We ask them to close their eyes and point to where the song is coming from. I like to teach common mnemonics like the American Robin’s cheery up, cheerio, which can be picked up on almost any bird walk in the United States. Learn some mnemonics for common birdsongs here.

We have tried the inexpensive plastic binoculars from school-supply stores and toy aisles. They really didn’t work well and broke the same day that we brought them out. Smaller, child-sized binoculars are much easier for little hands to manage. Children enjoy using “real” tools and will treat them with much more respect than a pair of cheap plastic ones. I often teach them how to focus the binoculars to get a clear image. I place these binoculars in a basket, along with the identification books. We also stock our bookshelves with a wonderful collection of books about birds, nests and hatchlings.

We talk so much about STEM these days. This is one of the easiest and most magical ways to create a learning hub that can inspire young learners to engage in STEM exploration and discovery.

By participating in these learning adventures, you can learn right along with the children as you observe, ask questions, draw conclusions and discuss your findings with your early learners.

When we observe birds from our indoor birdwatching stations and then take those same observational skills outdoors, we have a deeper understanding of the birds we see and the birdsong we hear.

By adding the technology from the websites mentioned above and building bird feeders from oranges or peanut butter and seeds, we can include engineering in our learning adventures. We can include math as we count the number of birds arriving at the feeder and then subtract the birds that fly away. By grouping, measuring and comparing the birds, we can meet our early learning standards and benchmarks.

I hope you will join us in our Great Backyard Bird Count this year. Birds of a feather flock together. Come join the fun!

“Evie, come look! I’m a superhero! I have superpowers!” calls Jamie from the foyer.

Curiosity piqued, Evie leaves her blocks behind to see what her best friend is up to now.

“Rainbows!!!” Evie shrieks as she spies the colorful light pattern on Jamie’s wrist.

Everyone within earshot dashes over to see the rainbows. And, just like that, our morning activities morph into a joyous exploration of light and color.

Squeals are the soundtrack for this sudden spasm of joy as the children dance around the room “catching” rainbows.

The rainbows that have inspired this impromptu STEM investigation are coming from the leaded-glass windows on our old schoolhouse.

During the winter and early spring, the sun hits these windows at just the right angle and we find these refracted-light rainbows on our walls, the floor—and even on the faces of napping children.

“I know the colors of the rainbow!” Noah sings. “R is for Red, O is for Orange, Y is for Yellow…” 

A chorus of little voices joins in, along with requests for our favorite “ROY G. BIV” song from the children’s CD, Here Comes Science (see image below).

The song is used as a mnemonic aid to help children remember the colors of the visible light spectrum in order of increasing frequency: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.

Color recognition marks an important developmental milestone.

Color identification helps children strengthen the cognitive link between visual clues and words.

Noah is singing the ROY G. BIV song while pointing to each color. As I watch, I make a mental note to check off color recognition, vocabulary and sequential ordering on Noah’s upcoming learning assessment.

I attempt to explain that the rainbows in our classroom are created when the sunlight gets “split up” as it passes through a cut-glass window that bends the light.

“Red tends to bend the least, so it appears on the top of the rainbow, while violet bends the most and ends up on the bottom,” I state.

My jabbering is met with silence. The children are deep into their own investigations.

“The librarian told us that rainbows are actually circles, but they look like arches when we look at them from the ground,” says Owen.

Heads pop up. Owen’s comment is met with quizzical expressions as the children try to process this information.

“If we dig down into the ground would we see the rest of the rainbow?” Roberto asks. 

“I don’t know,” shrugs Owen, glancing around at the rainbows in the room.

“What’s an arch?” asks Thali.

“You know, that part of the circle that looks like this,” says Jamie as he creates a half-circle with his hands. “It’s like you cut a circle in half!”

Thali nods and the focus of the group returns to the rainbows in the room.

This interaction prompts us to bring out our prisms and inject a bit of STEM into our hands-on play. Throughout the day, we experiment with other materials and sources of light.

First, we add Magnatiles to the windows in our block area (above).

Then we grab our liquid tiles (below) and place them in the window frame. We love these tiles and play with them often, but this is the first time we’ve tried to place them in the window. The colorful liquid in the tile is reacting to the pressure of Sally’s fingers, stimulating her sensory, perceptual and spatial pathways.

I offer a large liquid floor tile to our younger learners. Some of the older children immediately join in the exploration, adding enough weight and pressure to move the liquid and stimulate the senses of our younger friends.

If you don’t have cut-glass windows, a simple window film can bring about the same results. We added this film to the window below, and we are greeted with rainbows whenever the sun shines!

When these spontaneous moments of learning land in our classroom, my goal is not for the children to completely comprehend or master a topic.

My goal is to learn with them, to pique their curiosity with investigative opportunities and to allow them to engage in scientific inquiry while playing with light.

The act of playing with light, reflection and color invariably evokes a sense of wonder.

So seize the moment for some impromptu STEM play when a rainbow spontaneously appears—and expand the options for color and light exploration with a few new prisms and props!