I am so excited about this year’s plan because we are starting out with STEAM the center of our minds! At our co-op, I’m teaching an upper elementary-level STEAM Challenge class. Besides that, I’m super excited about the ideas in the book STEAM Kids, a fantastic book full of gorgeous and creative ways to implement science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics into your homeschool, home, or classroom days. For a limited time, we also have the related STEAM BUNDLE full of amazing goodies for our class. Our homeschool year and our co-op class is sure to be a blast with all these resources to explore and enjoy.
Since I teach at a co-op, I only meet with my little STE(A)M-ers once a week. for that reason, my class is going to focus on activities in the STEAM categories. Kids can do more creative projects and writing at home and bring it in for extra STEM Bucks (our classroom monetary system) too!
I knew the class was starting soon, so I’ve been saving up supplies throughout the summer! I also hit the dollar store for more supplies. Here’s what is in my crazy bag. I’m probably forgetting something, but here was our starting list!
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For one of our classes last year, we made parachutes (more about this in a second). We just went right into it. In future weeks, we’ll learn some vocabulary and science concepts that may help us in our designs, but for yesterday, it was simply create and have fun day!
Other past year activities include some of the following:
I have not written posts on all of these, and I can’t wait to share some of these successes with all of you!
I can always use more STEAM ideas. I mentioned before on this blog that science makes me nervous. Putting things in terms of STEM or STEAM, though, eases my mind. There are no right or wrong answers, for the most part, when we are experimenting and creating. I am so excited that I can be a part of the celebration.
Besides being just what I needed as I start off a co-op STEM Class, STEAM Kids is absolutely stunning. Full color, gorgeous photographs keep our attention. Note: I am an affiliate of STEAM Kids.
Like any good STEAM book, STEAM Kids lists the supplies needed. They show in words and picture how to do the projects. But as the images prove, there are many successful ways to do all of these projects. This is just the stepping stone to a successful STEAM program at home or at school.
The STEAM Kids tagline is as follows:
STEAM Kids was created to help you inspire your children to:
question like a scientist
design like a technologist
build like an engineer
create like an artist
deduce like a mathematician
– and –
play like a kid.
I’m so excited because that is just what we’ll be doing this year in our homeschool class! We started with the parachute challenge (page 19) and we’re definitely doing the diaper science soon (page 92).
With STEAM, there is not a wrong way to do things! It’s about trying, retrying, learning, rebuilding, improving, and creating. I love how STEAM Kids helps us do so.
I’ve written about STEAM themes so many times before. See some of the posts below.
If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I love incorporating learning moments into familiar parts of our lives, especially reading favorite picture books. Here are some of our favorite preschool picture book lessons. Some of these book-inspired preschool lessons I’ve blogged about. To see the picture book preschool activities
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