Children are born curious about the natural world. Early childhood settings are the perfect environments to harness this curiosity by encouraging questioning and problem solving using principles of engineering. By supporting children as they navigate the principals of engineering, we are priming the pipeline for STEM success. Despite prior research that shows a STEM curriculum that integrates the engineering design process (EDP) encourages cognitive development and child curiosity, there is very little organized STEM or engineering instruction within early childhood classrooms. Some reasons for this include lack of preschool teacher preparation in STEM and a shortage of available early childhood STEM and engineering curricula. This presentation will offer participants the opportunity to understand how to infuse dynamic STEM opportunities into their own preschool programs by learning about Worcester Head Start’s STEAM initiative and STEAM kits. Participants will also learn about Head Start’s partnership with Worcester Polytechnic Institute on a federal grant to develop a problem-based preschool STEM curriculum, Seeds of STEM, which exposes preschoolers to engineering vocabulary and an adapted engineering design process.
