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STEM – Technologies
Interactions
- Encourage sharing of ideas between children to develop tasks which they are interested in. Supporting turn taking, listening, explaining and cooperative skills linked to Literacy and Health and Wellbeing skills.
- Encourage children to experiment and when something fails, encourage the child to think around the problem and what they could do to amend/change/improve to find success. Encourage children to draw plans of their “creation” or take photographs of different stages of development of a piece of work to make a sequence e.g making a cake, building a tower for a toy to sit on, or a bridge which a toy dinosaur can “walk” under.
Experiences
- Woodwork areas with real tools and tool use outdoors and beyond the gates for hammering, drilling, whittling.
- The outdoors and beyond the gate environments such as local woodland can be used for den building, promoting cooperation and problem-solving.
- Exploring foods and creating their own foods and recipes (real and in the mud kitchen).
Spaces
- Provide a variety of sizes and styles of paper in the mark making and creation areas to promote “planning” of designs/ideas from the children, an easel could be added into the construction area. Encourage all children to access at their own stage of fine motor/mark-making development. Making links with Literacy/pre-writing skills.
- Provide a wide range of materials for children to select and plan with in creation areas, including:
- Strings, tapes (masking and double sided), treasury tags and pipe cleaners to encourage joining in a variety of ways; fabrics of different designs and textures to encourage imagination and creativity.
- A range of different shaped and sized boxes, cotton reels, plastic recycled pots and cardboard tubes to encourage problem solving and design skills.
- A selection of scissors appropriate for individual children’s fine motor skill levels.
- Glue (PVA and or glue sticks), holepunch and staplers.
- A selection of collage materials.
- Pens, crayons, pencils, chalks, paintbrushes of different sizes for differing levels of abilities or creative needs.
- Construction areas inside and outdoors offering small and large construction opportunities with small world enhancements and loose parts as appropriate and images of local and or significant building supporting children’s interests.
