Name: STEM Projects: Infants
Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

STEM Projects: Infants

Description

Inspire and prepare today’s pupils to become tomorrow’s innovators with STEM Projects.

The STEM Projects series provides opportunities for pupils to creatively apply skills and knowledge in a wide range of cross-curricular learning contexts. Although science is the subject area upon which most of the projects are based, other curricular areas (geography, mathematics, SPHE and visual arts) along with design and technology skills come into play in a cross-curricular fashion, depending on the project.

Each box is divided into four colour-coded sections:

Living Things;
Energy and Forces;
Materials; and
Earth and the Environment.

The variety of projects contained within each section also allows them to be successfully incorporated into a cross-curricular approach to topic teaching.

The STEM Projects box for Infants contains:

two introductory cards explaining STEM education, including: time allocations for using the cards; tips for planning, differentiating, assessing and supporting teaching and learning; and classroom and resource management ideas;
one card with icons, explaining each step of the designing and creating process, in child-friendly language;
one teacher reference card in each colour-coded section, outlining the knowledge and skills that pupils will use in the projects in that section and providing an overview of each project and the suggested materials needed;
six short-term projects and one long-term project in each of the colour-coded sections; and
six copies of each project to allow for small-group use.

Some ‘stand out’ projects include:

design and create a miniature worm farm (Living Things)
design and create a pirate ship (Materials)

FREE Download - Explore how to use STEM Projects in your classroom

reviews

Despite it not being mentioned in any of the curriculum subjects, STEM is everywhere! STEM stands for Science, technology, engineering and maths and it is a way that primary school teachers can integrate the subjects of science and maths using the skills of ed technology and engineering. I think teachers are interested in STEM and how it might look in the primary classroom. With this in mind, Prim-Ed have made a dinky, colourful box of STEM activities for all classes to use. I received an Infants’ box to review. Each box is made up of 4 different colour-coded sections. These are living Things; Energy and Forces; materials; and Earth and the Environment. We can see how SESE and the Ethical Education curriculum (taught in Educate Together schools) can be focussed on with these sections. The cards contain explanation on what STEM education is with ideas for planning, differentiation, examples of children’s work and resource management within the classroom. Each card is designed to be child-friendly and to help to the learner design and create their own STEM projects. There are also cards for the teacher with an overview of the activities on each card. They also contain a range a of shorter-term projects and longer-term projects which will suit the teacher and child who want to extend project learning in their class and perhaps bring into their homework learning. Each activity is replicated onto six cards for six separate children/groups to use as well. The activities are simple to teach and also challenging enough to help the child think about their learning. They use a “design and create” emphasis their creative minds are put to work as well. Having said that, the Infants box might need to be adapted and explained whole-class for Junior or Senior Infants as I would guess that a lot of infants could not independently read the tasks and/or carry them by themselves. But, don’t let this put you off as I found myself using the ideas for the STEM activities easily in my class by discussing first and setting clear outcomes for the class. The STEM projects from Prim-Ed are available for all class levels from Infants to 6th Class and they will really help a school in looking at finding out how to implement a STEM based skills approach to maths and science using technology and engineering.
mash.ie
I recently got the new STEM cards from Prim-Ed and they are ideal for planning STEM challenges. They cover the different strands of the curriculum. There are lots of ideas to explore with your class which are outside of the topics covered in general text books. These cards are available from Infants to 6th class.
Aistear Múinteoir