Creating an engaging learning environment is the key to ensuring that students of all ages will learn effectively. In fact, the "learning by doing" or "learning through play" approach, is proven to help students perform better in science concepts, when compared to just reading alone. You can learn more about "Why Hands-On Science Is A Growing Trend in Education" through this article. Additionally, taking the hands-on approach simply makes learning some of those tougher science concepts more fun, with an added bonus (and relief) for parents, by providing new activities for kids do at home with (and without) parent supervision.
In the past, we've had our Emerson We Love STEM Day in person with sometimes 150+ eager young minds in attendance. Keeping the idea of "Safety-First" in mind, we knew that an in-person We Love STEM Day was not going to be possible this year. So our innovative Emerson We Love STEM Day subcommittee put our heads together to invent the We Love STEM @ Home Edition.
Approximately, 70 STEM activity kits were provided to families in the Austin, Texas area. This year, children over the age of 10 were given supplies to build a hydraulic lift and also create art that spins with heat. Younger kids were given supplies to create an electrical circuit with salt.
Links to instructions for these at-home STEM activities are posted below:
Families were invited to share pictures and videos of their kids performing the activity. From these submissions, we can tell that we definitely have a creative, intelligent, and inquisitive generation of learners! We enjoyed seeing siblings, parents and even pets collaborating to create the best outcome for each activity.
While we hope to continue to provide accessible and safe STEM learning tools to homes in the future, we hope that next year we can get together again and in-person to continue to help children have fun learning scientific concepts and create a lifelong love and aptitude for STEM.
Interested in Emerson's We Love STEM? Follow this link: www.emerson.com/welovestem