Week 3 – STEM is All Around – Evaluating Materials and Experiences for Infants and Toddlers
Instructions:
Many materials and experiences can be used to support inquiry and discovery. Some of the materials and experiences are more commonly used than others. So this assignment is intended to help us to grow our awareness and comfort with materials and experiences for infant and toddler STEM learning.
Our assignment is for you to
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Think about the infants and toddlers ans the focus of this assignment.
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Use the grid – it is attached
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Read through the STEAM Concepts Materials to Support Discovery and Exploration and the examples of how children can learn from those Materials.
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Reflect upon using these materials, paying particular attention to your comfort level with each of them.
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Using the grid answer the following questions for each of the materials:
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What is your comfort level in using the medium with children? Why?
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How would you use it with infants and toddlers??
Read and Review:
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Read Let’s Talk, Read and Sing About Stem: Tips for Infant/Toddler Teachers and Providers
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Read Let’s Talk, Read and Sing About Stem: Tips for Parents of Young Children
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Let’s Talk, Read and Sing About Stem: Tips for Parents of Young Children – Alternative Formats
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The Roots of STEM Success – Introduction – Alternative Formats
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P 7 – 11
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Review Lecture Material (click on the “Lecture” link below
Cyber-Connections (Recommended/Optional)
SPECIAL NOTE: This week’s Cyber-Connections might be particularly helpful for your assignment in planning your experiences for Infants and Toddlers.
Cyber-Connections are not required reading or watching but are included as an inspiration and an opportunity. These materials are recommended as they will give you added information that will be helpful during this class and for curriculum planning and inspiration after this class is over.
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Watch The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies (https://www.ted.com/talks/laura_schulz_the_surprisingly_logical_minds_of_babies)
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In a fun, experiment-filled talk, cognitive scientist Laura Schulz shows how our young ones make decisions with a surprisingly strong sense of logic, well before they can talk. Her TedTalk is called The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies.
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Watch What Do Babies Think? (https://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think)
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Dr. Alison Gopnik’s Ted Talk is called What Do Babies Think? What’s it really like to see through the eyes of a child? Are babies and young children just empty, irrational vessels to be formed into little adults, until they become the perfect images of ourselves? On the contrary, argues Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley.
The author of The Philosophical Baby, The Scientist in the Crib and other influential books on cognitive development, Gopnik presents evidence that babies and children are conscious of far more than we give them credit for, as they engage every sense and spend every waking moment discovering, filing away, analyzing and acting on information about how the world works. Gopnik’s work draws on psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical developments in child development research to understand how the human mind learns, how and why we love, our ability to innovate, as well as giving us a deeper appreciation for the role of parenthood.
She says: “What’s it like to be a baby? Being in love in Paris for the first time after you’ve had 3 double espressos.” -
The Linguistic Genius of Babies (https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies)
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Dr. Patricia Kuhl’s TedTalk, The Linguistic Genius of Babies, shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another — by listening to the humans around them and “taking statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.