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When I teach Truman College’s Science and Math for Young Children course, I have the students break into groups, do research about, and then debate the benefits and risks of children’s interactions with nature and technology. Typically both the students on the nature side and on the tech side begin the debate arguing that theirs is the more important subject to teach young children. Through the process of research and debate, we almost always come to the conclusion that young children need both. I want to share some of my ideas about ways to meaningfully integrate the use of technology into outdoor and nature experiences for young children.

It is also my experience that many parents and early childhood professionals are often afraid of using technology with young children. We are in the midst of a wave of media accusations that technology both delays children’s development; is as addictive as heroin and a panic that our children are not graduating from high school with technological skills that they need for future success. My approach is to think critically about why and with whom the technology is being used and what it might be replacing. Is it being used to support the child or distract them, is it being used to support a relationship, and is it taking the place of something they need for development? I also like to remind people that any object made by humans to make their lives easier is a technology. I love the anecdote that Socrates was against writing because he believed it would prevent people from learning by memorization. See the Erikson TEC Center for reports on the use of media and technology with young children along with other excellent resources.

I love bringing technology and nature together because that is often how technology is used in the real world by engineers, scientists, naturalists, and other professionals. It also allows adults to relax a little about the technology as it is not being used passively or preventing kids from going outside. One of my favorite ideas is to disable the internet and apps on an old, donated phone so that children may use it only for photos and videos. Empower children to document what is interesting to them when they are in nature and to share it with their friends and families. They can make a photo journal or video essay of their experiences outside.

There are also amazing apps that allow you to use the camera on your phone to identify and classify plants and animals. Your phone or tablet becomes a real world research tool that children can use instantly. This is especially enjoyable for children who have a special interest in a particular type of plant, animal, or insect. You can also use technology outside to have your classroom engage in citizen science projects. You can count birds, monitor the stars, and show your children natural images from climates that are both similar to and different than their own. Monkey Bar Collective modifies the idea of GeoCaching to keep children engaged in scavenger hunt activities in zoos, museums, outdoors, and other locations. You can use voice recorder apps to record animal noises, children’s musings, and other outdoor sounds.

It’s also important to remember all of the “low tech” options you have for interacting in nature. Try keeping writing materials outside so that children can keep a nature journal or press their favorite flowers and leaves. Take maps and compasses with you on walks and use them to find your location and get to your destination. Bring clay outside and try to recreate a play structure or sculpt and animal that you see.

I often hear that parents and professionals are worried that if technology is around, children will not interact with each other or play. I believe this is a very valid concern. I think it is important that devices are available only when they are enhancing an experience, and that they are always to be shared, so that using the technology requires a social interaction. I also believe it is important not to use technology as a reward or a punishment, giving it more emotional value than it deserves. The other gentle reminder that I have for adults is to model the behavior that you would like children to use. If you do not want children to use a phone or tablet on the playground as a distraction, than you also may not use them in that way.

Technology can be a powerful tool for increasing interactions with and appreciation of nature when used socially, purposefully, and with moderation.

When it comes to communicating with families about STEAM a picture is worth more than a thousand words. I can’t begin to tell you how many times a parent has emailed me or reached out asking questions like “my daughter mentioned something about building a city on an iPad” or “my son says you are playing with bees?!”

Children are not the best at communicating details. I consider myself lucky that they are even talking about what happens in my classroom at all by the time they head home. But something always gets lost in translation. To help with some of this, I started documenting whatever students were doing in my classroom each day. Then compiling the photos and sharing with classroom teachers. They send weekly newsletters that highlight the different activities students did that week. I put photos by class into a Google Drive folder that classroom teachers can then link to in their newsletter. I also include a couple bullet points with what to give a bit of context to the photos.

First grade students using Bee-Bots to practice giving directions in a sequence as part of an introduction to robotics unit.

Another way I’ve connected with families about what is happening with STEAM has been requesting material donations. I have a simple list of materials that families often recycle or throw out that are extremely useful materials to have on hand for a variety of projects. At parent night at the beginning of the year I send this list out then have a collection bin in the front of the school. So they can easily bring in and drop off on their way in each morning. The items I request include:

• toilet paper tubes
• paper towel tubes
• shoe boxes
• cereal boxes
• wine corks
• newspaper

Wine corks are always the most commented on item I ask for, but I always joke that no judgements are made by how many people bring in. Families are consistently amazed by the different ways students use the corks, and other materials in projects they work on.

NanoBot prototype created using a wine cork as the base for the design. Students first brainstormed a problem they have that the NanoBot could help solve, then drew a plan for what the NanoBot would look like before building. This project was inspired by the book NanoBots by Chris Gall.

The final way I’ve brought families into the STEAM world is by connecting with parents who have experience in any of the STEAM fields. During the cardboard city project with second grade students I am able to have architect, engineer, and city planners come in to share with students what their job looks like day-to-day. They provide context for some of the bigger ideas I’m trying to explain to students, and lend their expertise.

In all my experience, I’ve found the more I can share and invite people in the better the project can be. So, don’t be shy! Ask for materials, snap pictures and videos to share, and get those parents into your classroom.

The essence of STEAM-based learning is integration. While I knew there were certain skills I wanted to teach students the content to teach those skills was wide open. I can still clearly remember the overwhelming feeling I had my first year teaching STEAM — so many options, what to cover. That first year I had students working on iPads way more then I would have liked. They became my crutch. So much so that the next year I challenged myself to limit iPad usage with students to 25% of my teaching time with them. But what to teach when I didn’t have any specific content?

When collaborating with colleagues my first instinct is to listen. Whenever I was able to attend a grade level meeting I just wanted to hear what they were doing. In doing all that listening I was able to find opportunities to assist with an activity that was either something they had always done and struggled with. For example, second grade students in social studies have a unit that looks at the the areas of our city and how our neighborhood has changed over the years. They learn about residential, commercial, industrial, recreational and services available in our city. In math they are doing some measurement and establishing a number line. What was the “Measuring for the Art Show” unit became Measuring for our Cardboard City. Measuring poster board of different sizes that would be the “land plot” students would build on. This project has grown into the main project of the year for students. But it all started with my helping make the connection between the math unit and the building project they had students do.

 Each student builds a building or space for the city. In the culminating activity they arrange their buildings/places to make up the Second Grade Cardboard City. This project connects to a social studies unit, a math unit, art skills and of course, STEAM.

Not only should you listen for things people are struggling with, but also keep an ear out for an idea they have but didn’t know where to start. Our school librarian does this big unit with first grade students that starts as an exploration between fact and opinion. The culminating project in the past was students reading a picture book biography about a famous person or animal. They find three facts and one opinion about the person or animal they read about and did a guessing activity. She wanted students to do something more but couldn’t figure out what. I stumbled upon the idea of turning a water bottle into what we call Biography Bottles. This idea continued with recycling theme (something first grade focuses on throughout the year). After reading their picture book biography students used a reference photo and a wealth of other materials to turn their bottle into a representation of their person or animal.

               Biography Bottles created by first grade students as part of a Library and STEAM project.

Besides listening there are three more tips I suggest in getting classroom teachers, and other school colleagues to join in on the STEAMy fun:

1. Attend any grade level and/or planning meetings you can. Focus on just listening to find those projects or ideas that you can help expand. After you start working on a project remember that collaborative work requires so much communication. Even if you are doing a project that you’ve done before, you never know what ways you might be able to innovate without hearing what else is going on.

1. Invite people to come see what you are doing. As a specialists teacher I’m often teaching solo. It can feel a little like being a salesperson, but if you want people to be involved or excited about what you are doing they need to see what is happening.

1. Give colleagues a chance to play with materials too. At least once a year I host a faculty meeting where I challenge colleagues to one of the design challenges I give to students or a new one that I’m trying to test out.  Just as students love having time in the day to create with their hands in an open-ended, problem-solving way, teachers too appreciate that time.

Good luck! And remember, communication and listening will be your best tools in getting colleagues to collaborate.

It all started with a question.

Our science teacher was discussing her unit on buoyancy. She wanted some help figuring out what other materials students could use to build small boats that would float in small kiddie pools in her classroom. She also just happened to witness a cardboard boat regatta in her hometown on Long Island, NY and had the sliver of an idea—“What if first graders made a boat that would be big enough to float one of them in our school’s pool?”

When she talked to me about this idea we quickly decided it wouldn’t work to put a student in a boat we weren’t sure would float, especially as they are still learning to swim. But how about a teacher? As someone who tends to say yes before fully thinking through things I agreed enthusiastically only to then worry what this actually meant. And so an idea was born.

In social studies, first grade students learn about waste and recycling. Through a variety of activities students develop a deep sense of why it’s so important to reduce our use and recycle. The science teacher already did some activities connected to this study, so it seemed like a natural connection to challenge our students (and ourselves) to building a boat using materials we would normally recycle.

The first year we did this project we had students build the boat using clear packing tape, and milk cartons. We asked families to bring in any cartons they had, which with three classes of students collecting (roughly 60 students) we had more than enough to build our first boat. For our students, the main goal was to challenge them to apply what they had learned about buoyancy and general boat design. For ourselves, the challenge was managing so many student ideas into one final design.

The first ever First Grade Boat created in 2014 using milk cartons, plastic juice bottles and attached with clear packing tapes. Students were able to design different “accessories” to bring their boat to life.

Success! That first year with the help of one last design addition–a trash can at the bottom of the boat to cover any holes–the boat stayed afloat. That was our first attempt at this project four years ago. What started as a idea between colleagues is now a tradition for first grade students.

Going forward we decided to challenge ourselves and students by building not one boat, but three so that each class would have their own boat to design and build. Our students also recognized that as a school the big cardboard boxes that snack came in each week was highly wasteful. And so we added another element to this project–could students figure out a way to make cardboard repel water? Tape to the rescue again.

If you’re considering a large STEAM study in your classroom, consider partnering with a science teacher if you school has one. If not, I found partnering with at least one other teacher to bounce ideas off of and also help manage a larger project is invaluable. Also be prepared to celebrate failures with students. I can’t even begin to tell you how many cardboard boat prototypes just completely sunk as students tried to figure out the best way to wrap the cardboard, and what tape would hold up best. If you show students that failing is part of the process by making a public display of your own failures, you will encourage them to take risks and deepen their own learning.

When I first jumped into a new role at my school as STEAM Integrator and Materials Librarian, the maker movement was in full swing. Makers are those who make, create, adapt and try to innovate in a variety of ways not limited to the more showy tech marvels so often highlighted on the pages of Make Magazine (https://makezine.com).

STEAM is an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math. It’s an evolution and in some cases an alternative to STEM, which doesn’t include art. I am most often asked why STEAM not STEM. For me, the addition of art doesn’t take away from the need or desire to highlight and encourage students to seek out the STEM fields. Rather the addition of art serves as an additional entry point for students who might not be inclined towards STEM topics. Moreover, I often encourage and challenge my students to see the many ways artists use principles of science, engineering, technology, and especially math in the things they create.

Although I don’t have dedicated class time with PreK and kindergarten students I do have time to collaborate with classroom teachers. What I have discovered is that by design most PreK units are innately STEAMy. For example, kindergarten students will be studying the Post Office in Social Studies which will spur the idea of creating a Postal Service for our school. From there dedicating time for students to create stamps, learn how to address envelopes and write letters, build post office boxes and then participate in picking up, sorting and delivering mail is what STEAM is all about.

First and second grade students have dedicated “STEAM” time as a special class once every six days in half groups for a 45-minute period (Note: Our school using a six-day cycle instead of a weekly calendar for classes.) In this class I focus on activities that introduce students to problem-solving in a hands-on way that most often connects to something they are studying in their classroom or in another special like science or art. Over the years we have developed a schoolwide design process that uses the language derived from our very own PreK classrooms: think, plan, do, review.

The Berkeley Carroll Design Process was developing with the goal to use language that would be familiar to students in PreK all the way to 12th grade.

In first grade students are first exposed to this through a problem I pose to them. My daughter loves bananas, so I often carry one with me in case she needs a quick snack. Bananas are great because you don’t need any utensils to eat them, and they are easy to carry because you don’t have to wash before you eat either. But the bad thing about bananas is that the can get bruised and mushy very quickly. From there I tell them about the first time I accidentally mushed a banana in my bag. I challenge them to help figure out a solution to my problem. From there they think about solutions and questions that they need more information about; draft a plan; build a prototype; and finally we test their creations.

First grade students working on their first prototype project. Students first learned about the problem, then brainstormed ideas and created a plan for their prototype. Materials they could use for their prototype include: toilet paper tubes, paper towel tubes, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, plastic cups and paper plates.

STEAM projects in early childhood can be as big as creating a schoolwide postal service to as small as giving students an opportunity to recreate something they learned about. What I have discovered is that the best projects are those that give students enough room to be creative, get messy, and connect to at least one concept they are learning in another subject.

My best memories of my elementary education are all the project-based activities that were embedded into the curriculum. Projects that were based on real-life situations that helped me learn in an innovative and creative fashion. In 4^th grade, I made a large-sized teepee (out of my mother’s good linens), decorated it with Sioux symbols and it sat in our school library for several months and served as a reading nook. I have no idea how I got or secured the lumber but I remember measuring the bed linens and painstakingly wrapping them around the 3 poles and then cutting a flap for the entrance way. I remember being the “authority” on teepee life and sharing my information with classmates who were studying other aspects of Sioux life. I moved to a different school in 6^th grade, a smaller school where there were 2 classes on each grade. When studying ancient civilizations, each class made up their own civilization complete with its own alphabet and culture and made artifacts to represent that culture. We then buried our artifacts in a volunteer’s backyard. (I grew up in a suburb of Chicago with plenty of room) After burying our created civilization, we became archeologists. We excavated the other class’s civilization, deciphered their artifacts and learned about their civilization. I just e-mailed with four of my 6^th grade classmates and they all remember the project fondly and had hilarious anecdotes to share.

STEAM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in five specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Our 1978 6^th grade civilizations projects included all of these disciplines. Science and Art are all around us, everyday. Technology is expanding into every aspect of our children’s education lives; my students have their own iPads, store work in Google Docs & Google Classroom and navigate the Internet for research and information purposes. Mathematics is in our everyday lives and Engineering is not only the construction of bridges and buildings but the repairing of broken objects and making environmentally conscious changes to our home.

“In the 21st century, scientific and technological innovations have become increasingly important as we face the benefits and challenges of both globalization and a knowledge-based economy. To succeed in this new information-based and highly technological society, students need to develop their capabilities in STEM to levels much beyond what was considered acceptable in the past.” (National Science Foundation)

I believe very strongly in a STEAM based, interdisciplinary curriculum and usually, given the nature of elementary curriculum, it is social studies based.

When I taught 3^rd grade, we studied Ellis Island Immigration. I loved this unit and living in New York City, there was never a shortage of what and who to study, places to visit, and immigration stories to be heard. We did an Ellis Island re-enactment and a push-cart sale to raise money for a refugee center (2 separate blogs!) But my favorite mini-unit was Tenement Life. We visit the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and learn all about turn-of-the-century immigrant life. My class was divided into countries or areas of study – the Eastern European Jews, the Irish, the Italians, and the Germans and each group studied the push-pull factors of each culture, timelines and immigrations numbers, and their life once they reached New York. I would then built a tenement building for the immigrants to move into. I would build it out of cardboard boxes and being the hoarder that I am, I once found a wooden dollhouse on the street that I ransacked for parts (stairs, windows, doors) to use specifically for this project. You are probably thinking, that’s not very STEAM to have the teacher build the tenement but 1. Time was always of the essence as this project was always at the end of our study and we didn’t have time for the building and 2. The building of the tenement wasn’t the take away I wanted for the students. The children decorated and added specific details according to their studies. For example, one group built a fire escape outside their window and hung laundry across it. Another group added an outhouse to the back of the tenement dollhouse. Each country had their own floor and it was their responsibility to decorated accordingly. For example, the Eastern European Jews made their apartment into a sweatshop and the Germans, who were on the bottom floor, made their apartment into a salon. I was the landlord so they had to make sure that the jobs they secured were enough to pay rent and buy food. The majority of their research was done at The Tenement Museum http://www.tenement.org/ as well as from websites and books. When the tenement was all finished, the children then served as tour guides to their parents and other children of other grades.

I want to take a moment to say that A LOT of planning goes into STEAM projects. Organizing groups, making sure that they have age-appropriate materials both for research and building, keeping the chaos manageable and productive, and managing expectations and classroom behavior are just some of the things you need to keep in mind before undertaking projects of this magnitude. I am very fortunate to have a STEAM Integrator and Materials Librarian at my school who can make time in her day to help out when we are working on a project and who has an endless supply of hot glue sticks, wine corks, and duct tape. I also am very lucky that I have wonderful colleagues who love to get involved and help out with their disciplines. After some research, we discovered that the later wave of immigrants had electricity in their apartments so together with our fabulous Science teacher, those groups hung working light bulbs in their apartments. The take away for this unit was how immigrants assimilated to life in the Lower East Side of New York City and what they had to endure to create a better life for themselves and their families.

When I moved to 4^th grade, I was very sad to leave to leave this project behind and quickly started thinking of another STEAM project. In 4^th grade, we study the Eastern Woodland Native Americans, primarily the Lenape and the Haudenosaunne/Iroquois and how they used natural resources to survive, pre contact. This screamed STEAM to me! Building an Eastern Woodland Native American village out of natural resources complete with longhouse and wigwam. I quickly set about designing a STEAM curriculum that included all the information that I wanted the children to learn about this topic. I am a teacher who thrives in controlled chaos and diving into a topic that I knew relatively nothing about, (Remember, I grew up outside of Chicago with the Sioux and the knowledge that the Blackhawks were a hockey team) I had to learn alongside of the children.

First, I want the children to know about the geography and topography of the land before colonization, before contact. We primarily looked at New York state and its rivers, mountains, the ocean, lakes, forests, and farmland. We looked at maps, websites, atlases, and books. Fascinating how little children know about where they live! Since we focus primarily on the Haudenosaunee & the Lenape, we identified where they settled and why and then taking that information, we created our own large-scale map to hang in our classroom for future reference. I gave each student a landmark to research (the Hudson River, the Finger Lakes, Niagara Falls) and it was their responsibility to add it to our classroom map. Once the map was complete, we talked about why we thought the different groups of Native Americans settled where they did. Once we set our scene, the children were ready to research about all aspects of Native American life. Through Internet research, field trips, videos, and books, the children collected the information needed to start creating our village. This time, I provided the land. I went to Lowes and bought 4ft by 8ft green foam insulation board and painted a river down the middle of it. And the children took over. They measured, built, came up with a scale consensus, decided on how to make people, and overlapped on various topics. For example, the 2 children working on the longhouse collaborated with the student working on gender roles and the students working on farming, ceremonies, and The Three Sisters. An added bonus of this project was the children realizing that they couldn’t work in isolation and that every aspect of Native American life was interdependent and the children needed to work together to and learn from one another in order to successfully plan and execute our village.

We had children building women out of clay and taking them over to the students studying clothing to cloth the women appropriately and then taking one of the women with a baby over to the student who was studying transportation to create a cradleboard for the baby and then over to the students studying farming who hung the baby and cradleboard from a tree while the woman was placed in the kitchen garden outside of the longhouse. Parents bought supplies at Michaels, we went to the park to collect bark, the art teacher suggested making rubbings of the bark on butcher paper as to make it easier to measure and place onto the longhouse, the maintenance men cut wood and wire for us and our STEAM integrator manned the hot glue gun and was forever on the lookout for more resources to deepen our knowledge. It took a village to create this village! And all the while, the children were engaged, independently problem-solving, motivated, and happy!

We had a festival day complete with traditional Native American food, storytelling, and the children acting as museum guides to parents and other students.

This project included all the elements of STEAM as well as a 5-paragraph essay about their topic of study and the children wrote their own creation stories based on Iroquois creation stories that we read in class. At the end of 4^th grade, when I asked the children to reflect upon their year, almost every student said that learning about Native Americans and building the our village was the highlight of their year.

STEAM projects, whether they are embedded into the curriculum or standing alone are an amazing way to allow the students to think critically, creatively, and independently while facilitating collaborative teamwork and communication. And isn’t that the type of leaner/real world problem-solvers we want our children to be?