Budget Friendly, Creative Play Ideas Targeting STEM Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom

Editor's note:  This text is an edited transcript of the webinar, Budget Friendly, Creative Play Ideas Targeting STEM Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom, presented by Amber Tankersley, PhD.

Learning Outcomes

As a result of this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify basic STEM skills, concepts and/or goals that are appropriate for an early childhood classroom.
• Identify and explain how to evaluate inexpensive materials to target STEM standards in an early childhood classroom.
• Explain how to implement creative play experiences that target STEM standards for young children.

Introduction

What does STEM look like in an early childhood (EC) classroom? In the past, we didn't think about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in relation to early childhood classrooms. The terms intimidated some people working in early childhood who felt that they didn't have the necessary background knowledge or the skills required to teach such concepts. We start addressing STEM concepts in early childhood classrooms in a very basic manner. We help children learn and build the foundations for all future STEM learning through their play experience. Teachers of young children learn more about STEM standards when they see children interacting with materials and beginning to build an understanding of the world around.

EC Math and Science Goals

Figure 1 shows basic skills and goals to support math and science standards. For early childhood math and science, these are basic ideas that would be incorporated in a classroom. 

Figure 1. Early childhood math and science goals.

For math, tasks include counting items in a set and subtracting items from a set of things that we're counting. Sorting and classifying activities include matching games and putting items in order from longest to shortest. Math skills also include exploring shapes and space; shapes meaning geometric shapes and space referring to the area around things or the space that the shapes occupy (not outer space). Another early childhood math skill would be measuring. Very early measuring skills that we work on with young children are measuring length, time, and learning about measuring tools.

With science, we are looking at very basic, beginning skills to build a foundation for children's future science learning. Some examples are building skills to explore and observe. We want children to get into materials and use their hands to explore things, rather than provide them with single use objects. If materials are very simple and straightforward, then children don't have as much opportunity to explore them.

We want children to discover what things do. We also want them to discover the tools for exploration. These tools might include a container to catch a bug in so that they can look at it more closely, or magnifying glasses that we teach them how to use to look at that bug. 

Through these tools and exploration, our goal is for children to learn more about the world around them. Another easy simple science concept that we often incorporate with young children is the idea of changes and reactions. One example is children noticing that the ice melts faster when the sun is out. They might notice that there are worms on the sidewalk after it stops raining. We can simply call attention to the fact that something has changed and they can look at that. Problem solving is another scientific skill that children need to have experiences with early on. We provide vocabulary for children in the area of science so that they have the words to talk about the world around them. Sometimes we think that children can't handle technical words, but often if they hear a word they will use it correctly. I can think of many examples of children using words such as "paleontologist" and "entomologist" correctly and impressing their parents who didn't think children would know such words. It is also important that we help children to apply the information that they're learning. If they get a little information about something that's happening on the playground, we want to help them see how it applies to other aspects of their life. If it's happening on the playground, maybe it's happening in their backyard as well. Being able to apply the information that they are gathering through their exploration and observation is key.

Another basic science skill that we can work on with children is having them report data. This also is a math skill. We want children to be able to give information based on their observations. One example of how I approached this skill in my classroom was with a hamster we named Mr. Critter. The children loved to watch him and I put a checklist next to his cage. They could check whether he had eaten his food, whether he needed water, and whether his cage needed changing, etc. They could report different things about what he was doing and they would tell the classroom about what they observed. It is important that children are able to give information to other people because that skill is needed in many aspects of life. In an early childhood classroom, we touch on different areas of science. My science background is limited but I can teach preschool and early childhood science. We can expose children to biological and life sciences through things like watching animals in the classroom or on the playground. We can explore chemistry and physics concepts - not in a laboratory per se, but through play - to help children learn about the world around them. Through play activities involving weather patterns, clouds, and learning about the stars and the planets, children can learn about basic concepts in geology and meteorology.  

EC Engineering and Technology Goals

EC engineering and technology goals are listed in Figure 2.

Figure 2. EC engineering and technology goals.

Incorporating engineering and technology concepts in an early childhood classroom involves exploration and exposure. We give children different experiences so they can build upon those experiences and make sense of new things that come their way. Within the area of engineering, we have children explore how things are put together, such as how the playground structure is put together, or how they can build a block structure. We want them to problem solve. We can have them figure out how to make something work, or how to get something that they can't reach without doing something that is unsafe. We help children to learn about the tools for inquiry and the tools for creating things or building things. By using simple machines, children can learn about engineering and technology. Children are pretty ingenious and they learn how to adapt and make things work for them. They may create a ramp, or create a pulley, or find an easier way to accomplish a task; that is the idea of simple machines. Construction, and putting things together, is part of engineering. Technology does not only refer to use of a computer or tablet in the classroom. Technology is about function. We want children to be able to use technological type tools to make other things make more sense. In other words, we use tools to make things more simple. We want children to become technologically literate. It doesn't mean that we have to incorporate so much technology that we are no longer playing or exploring. Children have become accustomed to swiping through things and pushing buttons, and we need to take them back to very basic aspects of technology. Technology should meet children's needs. There are many adaptive technologies that are great for helping children who need additional assistance within our classroom, such as for assistance with listening, hearing or speaking. We should provide those tools for children as they need them and keep in mind that technology should not be isolating. It should help promote social development. I would cringe if I walked in a classroom where early childhood age children were on tablets and computers and not interacting with one another. Technology should still promote social development.

Incorporating STEM in the EC Classroom through Play

STEM should be incorporated in an EC classroom in playful manner. We can do that in two ways: we can intentionally plan activities and we can use things that accidentally or spontaneously happen.

Planned experiences. Planned experiences may be lessons that you create, such as a small group lesson related to a STEM-type concept. An example may be using a book at circle time that targets something about the weather or about animals hibernating. Planned experiences are a great way to ensure that you are incorporating specific concepts for young children that they might not otherwise accidentally encounter. Our classroom environment is also something that we plan and that is very intentional. Set up the classroom with learning centers with materials that promote learning of certain concepts. We have certain expectations for the materials that we put out for young children; we want children to engage with the materials in a way that will lead them to understand more about a particular concept. Part of that preparation of a classroom environment involves making sure that kids have an adequate amount of time to explore. Fifteen minutes for centers is not very long for children to explore. I've seen classrooms where children just pick out a center and want to play, and then it's time to clean up or switch to a different center. Ensuring that you plan enough time for the children to engage and explore within the environment is crucial. Within the classroom environment, plan the social atmosphere. If the atmosphere is conducive to children exploring, they will explore. If you have things that are out and people who are there who help guide children, they will explore them. If children are allowed to interact and question things, they are going to do that.

Spontaneous experiences. Another way that children can learn STEM concepts is through spontaneous experiences. These are things that you didn't plan. If you are aware that something is happening that would be a good experience for the children, you roll with it. You're flexible enough to make some adaptations in order to take advantage of the situation. Natural experiences happen that you don't want the kids to miss. In my classroom, many times it started snowing or something really interesting happened outside, and we stopped whatever we were doing in the classroom to go outside or look out the window. For example, we had a skunk that took up residence on our playground. The skunk was taken away in a trap (no harm was done to the skunk) and a few days later one of the children said, "Come see the skunk!" I thought about it for a minute. A little skunk had died on the playground. Instead of yelling at the children to move away, don't touch it, shield your eyes, etc., I put on gloves and we examined the skunk. We talked about what might have happened and we figured out that it was the mother skunk that had been taken away. She had babies on our playground. That was an opportunity that I hadn't planned. I never would've planned that but I couldn't pass up an opportunity for children to see a skunk that close up. We ended up learning much more about skunks as a result - we looked up more things about skunks, and we read books about skunks because of that spontaneous experience. Take advantage of those teachable moments. A moment like that may not be in the schedule but you have to stop and take advantage of it when it does occur.

When and Where to Incorporate STEM Concepts

Consider when and where you're going to incorporate STEM concepts within your program. There are many times a day that it makes sense to incorporate learning. We can start in the morning and make a graph of how we arrived - who came in a car, who came in a truck, whose parents walked with them, etc. There are ways to incorporate math skills when children arrive. There is an abundance of opportunity to observe things outside. We can count or include patterning tasks at snack time, by making sure that everyone has a plate, a cup, and so many crackers. STEM concepts can be included at any time so don't feel that you're limited to teaching "math on math day" or that you can only do science activities in the science center. At our preschool, we start our day outside. One of the things that we usually always have available are magnifying glasses and bug jars so that kids can catch things and look at things more closely. We want to give them those intentional opportunities. What can I put in the library corner that would stimulate some STEM thinking? What can I put in the art area? What type of snack should I have? What could I talk about at snack time that may spark conversation about STEM-type topics? Think about what fits your program, what your strengths are, and what resources are available; that will help you do the best work in incorporating STEM skills and concepts with young children.

Does STEM and Early Childhood mean you have to spend a lot of money? STEM sounds very sophisticated; it sounds expensive and impressive. It doesn't have to be. Parents are usually pretty impressed when you mention that you're targeting some STEM standards with their children. I once worked at a school where we wanted to incorporate more science and so we purchased a lot of science toys. We found that they were very limiting and, in fact, as teachers we really didn't know what to do with them. The new science toys ended up in a box in a resource room and we didn't use them. So, while there are specialized catalogs and specialized vendors, there is a lot that you can do with what you already have readily available to target STEM concepts with young children. There are many great materials out there but keep in mind that sometimes those materials are limiting. If they only can do one thing, I would much rather invest in materials that can be used for many different purposes. It doesn't have to be very expensive. There are a lot of things that you may already have sitting in a junk drawer or a closet that can be used for teaching STEM concepts with young children so you don't have to break the bank. You may not have to put in those requests for funding for your classroom. You may have to be a little creative in how you obtain some items and in the types of items that you want to incorporate in your classroom. I love the creativity involved.  I work with a lot of college students who don't have a lot of money but come up with interesting ways to get materials and find inexpensive ways to make great learning happen for young children.

Locating Resources to Teach STEM Concepts

Repurposed Resources

To determine what types of materials or resources you have available for teaching STEM concepts, I recommend first taking an inventory of what you have. Go through cabinets, cupboards, and storage rooms in your program and see what is already available. You may find things that were not originally intended for math and science that can be repurposed to teach STEM concepts. Commonplace items such as extra paperclips, a rubberband ball, missing game pieces, and caps collected from dried up markers can be used in new ways. 

Free and Found Resources

Free and found resources include things you find outside such as pine cones, rocks, and sticks. It also includes things that say "Free, take one." Early childhood people tend to take more than one because we know that we will have a use for them. Take advantage of giveaways from local trade shows, picking up yardsticks when you are in the home improvement store, and when you're looking at paint samples save the paint strips that have different shades and colors. Sometimes I will say, "I'm a teacher - is it okay if I take a handful of these?" and most of the time they will say yes. Another great way of getting some resources is to go directly to the source. If you need tongue depressors, go to a doctor and see if they'll give you tongue depressors. If you need toothbrushes, ask a dentist if they will donate some toothbrushes to you. It doesn't hurt to ask. People can tell you no, however,  if you tell them that you are a teacher working with young children on a limited budget and explain how this would benefit your children, many people are happy to donate things to you. You can also ask people to save things like toilet paper tube rolls, butter tubs, or other household items. 

Inexpensive Resources

Inexpensive resources are those that you pay for but that do not cost very much money. You can find inexpensive resources in the dollar stores and in clearance bins. Some of the best resources I found have been in clearance bins at a grocery store. I don't pass a clearance bin without taking a look, and my husband knows that if I find something useful he will need to help me go through the bin to find 10 more for my classroom. Thrift shops and garage sales are great places to also get some inexpensive materials. Keep your eyes open when you are out shopping and it almost becomes a game to find great, inexpensive resources. When you tell your colleagues in early childhood what you found, they will understand your excitement and share their experiences in collecting items; working together makes it easier to acquire great resources. 

How do you come up with new ideas for resources? The easiest and cheapest way of getting ideas is by going online to teacher webpages, Pinterest, and blogs. You may also have to spend a little money to purchase a book, magazine, or subscription for new ideas. Another fairly inexpensive way of getting new ideas is by visiting other classrooms and programs. This may, however, require time and/or travel. I love going to other classrooms because you can get so many creative ideas. You may be able to visit another program after hours in your community to get some ideas of new ways to incorporate learning activities in your own program. Finally, you can get new ideas at conferences and meetings. Attending conferences, such as the NAEYC conference, and meetings does take time and can be costly but you do get a lot of great ideas.

Suggested Materials

In this next section, I'll review many suggested materials. In addition, I've provided another handout with this course that includes further materials and items that are easy to come by and could be potentially used for teaching STEM concepts. 

Straws

Figure 3 includes a list of some of the ways that you can use straws to work on STEM concepts in your classroom.

Figure 3. Uses for straws.

Straws are easy to come by for your classroom. You can purchase a package of straws at a discount store or at a dollar store, or ask for a few extra straws at a coffee shop. You can save straws that you get as a part of your ordinary routines; if you go through a drive-through and they put too many straws in your bag, save them. There are many different kinds of straws available such as paper straws, plastic straws, and bendable straws. Straws have a lot of potential. For math, straws can be used as a counter for children to count them. You can put straws in order from largest to smallest. You can trim the straws to different lengths or use straws that you have found of different lengths to illustrate various STEM concepts. You can have children sort them by the diameter of the opening of the straw.

There are many possibilities for seriation activities with straws. We give children time to just play with the straws and figure out what to do with them, too. Then, they can start putting them in an order that makes sense to them. You can also use straws for measuring. It could be a nice standard measure for children - how many straws long is the table? They could use straws to measure their own height. By using straws in this way, children can see how long something is and that transfers over to eventually using standard measurements like rulers and yardsticks. Since there are a variety of straws available, they can be used for many sorting activities. Children can sort by color, by size, by length, and by function. You can use straws to help children create shapes, and have them experiment with how many sides a particular shape has.  They can get a better understanding of the properties of the shapes they create with straws. You can even explore angles with children, not the degree of the angles, but the size of the angle and how they can get bigger or smaller. For science concepts, you can simply put straws in the water table as props. Most children at one time or another will put their finger over the end of the straw, pull it up out of their drink, and then drop the liquid in their mouth. We certainly can have children exploring how that vaccum principle works without even telling them about it. We can just let them discover how  that works in the water table. They may be blowing bubbles in the water table. We obviously have to be careful with children put their mouths on things, so make sure that there's plenty of straws so that each child has her own. I like to create straw planes by creating two loops of paper and taping them to the straw.  I can then experiment with the aerodynamics of these loops on the straw. You can throw it like a paper airplane and it will fly a long way. You can explore and experiment with different sizes and shapes of the loops and their affect on the aerodynamics of the planes. If you search "straw plane" on Google you will find many ideas on how to use a straw plane to teach science concepts.  

Bubbles are fascinating for young children and straws can make great bubble blowers. A simple way to make a bubble wand from a straw is to snip the ends of a straw and open it up, like a flower (editor's note - see How to Cut a Straw for Blowing Bubbles on YouTube). Dip the straw into the bubble solution and use it as a bubble wand. We can explore chemistry with the bubbles, and add in some arts and crafts activities that also teach some STEM skills. We may not think of arts and crafts activities as a science lesson, but these activities do involve properties of science such as color mixing, changes and reactions, absorption, air pressure, etc.

"Pop art" is an art technique that involves putting soapy water and paint in a cup. Stir it, and then let children blow into a straw to create bubbles that will start to spill over the top of the cup. Lay a sheet of paper over the cup, and the bubbles will pop and deposit color on the paper. There are many different science concepts to explore with this activity: changes and reactions, as bubbles are transferred to the paper; breath control, which falls into biological science; absorption, as you determine what paper works best for the bubbles to pop on. Sometimes children do accidentally suck the paint up out of the water. Therefore, we always use non-toxic paint and non-toxic soap, and practice blowing before we actually do this activity.  

Figure 4 shows a photo of a girl using what we call a "super bubble blower".

Figure 4. Super bubble blower made from straws and yarn.

To make a super bubble blower, take two straws and put a length of yarn between them. Dip it into the bubble solution and make sure that the yarn is completely saturated.  Then, pick up the two straws like the little girl in the photo. The girl in the photo is blowing so hard to make a bubble; you can also swing the wand through the air and then shut the straws together to close off the bubble. You can make these super bubble blowers in a variety of different sizes and they make really big bubbles, as you can see in Figure 4. 

With these super bubble blowers, we concoct our own bubble solution. We start finding out what makes a good bubble solution. There are many reasons why bubbles last and one has to do with bubbles being resistant to the air. So, you want to have slick bubble solution. You can add glycerin to the solution for this. Our classroom experimented with creating different bubble solutions - we learned that sugar can make the bubble sticky. We let the children test out different things and we recorded what worked best. We learned a lot about changes and reactions, the force of air, and many other STEM concepts. This activity is an example of how you can use some found items and create an awesome experience for young children.

Figure 5. Super bubble blower in triangle shape.

Figure 5 shows a photo of a girl who made a super bubble blower in a triangle shape. She was frustrated that although her bubble wand was in a triangle shape, every time she blew a bubble it was round. She wanted the bubble to be the shape of of the wand, as we had read a children's book about bubbles that blew in crazy different shapes. That experience became a question for this child to explore and experiment with to find an explanation. Sometimes you may not be able to answer all the questions that arise from these activities. Allow children to explore and engage with the materials and try to come up with explanations.

Animal Figures

Another easily accessible material for teaching STEM concepts is animal figures. Many programs already have these, or they are readily available where toys or craft items are sold. They're great sorting and counting tools. For example, you can count how many legs the animals have, or count how many of a certain type of animal (e.g. horses) there are. You can have children sort them by type of animal, size, whether the animal has fur/feathers/scales, carnivore/herbivore/omnivore, or whether they might live in a zoo/forest/farm. There many ways to sort animals. We can also explore animals by guessing them by their sound.

You can play a feely game where children reach into a box to feel the shape of different animals without seeing the animal. This requires processing, problem solving, and reasoning. I've created a "feeding" game where you take an animal such as a pig, and then roll a die to see how many pieces of corn we will feed the pig. We keep the animals in the block area, and play a caging activity using berry baskets (Figure 6). We used zoo animals where children would count how many they had to add to their cages - they would add one animal to the cage that said "1," two animals to the cage with the number 2, and so forth.

Figure 6. Caging activity with animal figures.

I printed simple habitat scenes so that children could sort out the animals by where they would live. You could also get discounted calendars and use the pictures to sort sea life, farm life, etc. With this type of activity, children show you what they know about different types of animals, as well as their understanding of commonalities and differences. You can sort them by which animals fly, which ones swim, which ones walk on land - and then pick up the duck and talk about how the duck can do all three. 

You can play a bingo game with these animals, which is a classifying activity in area of mathematics. I make a colorful grid (Figure 7) and lay the animals on.

Figure 7. Bingo game with farm animals.

Then, I might say "blue horse" and then the child takes the horse off of the blue square, etc. It's a simple game that's easy to reuse and lends itself to a lot of possibilities for working on classifying and sorting. It also reinforces some concepts like mammals, or the name of an animal's young, for example. There are a lot of options to use these animal figures to explore many STEM concepts.

Sticky Notes

There are many uses for sticky notes, including:

• Graphing
• Voting
• Sequencing
• Patterning
• Seriation
• Measuring
  • Linear
  • Calendar
• Secret sticky note game
• Memory game
• Bingo markers
  • Traditional game
  • Items on notes

In terms of graph activities, we might graph how we arrived at school today or who brought lunch. We use sticky notes to vote on things like names for the class pet. Sticky notes can be used to represent and record data. We can use sticky notes for patterning activities within the sorting and classifying area of mathematics. We can make patterns using different sizes or different colors of sticky notes. I find that sticky notes are great for measuring because they come in standard sizes. I will take a 3" sticky note pad and lay the sticky notes side by side for adding and even multiplication tasks. For example, we will see how three, 3" sticky notes together make nine inches. It's fascinating to see children put this together very quickly. Since they're sticky and don't move around they are easy for children to use for measuring.  

I've also used sticky notes on my calendar. We can record information about the temperature or weather and then look for patterns. There are many activities that use sticky notes and calendars. There's a secret sticky note game that can be used for many different concept areas within science and mathematics. You simply put something on a sticky note, for example a number, and stick it on a child's back. The children have to get the child to guess the number on his or her back. If the number is four, the children might give clues like, "This is how many legs a dog has," or "This is how many people in our group."  This activity is great for working on conversation and language skills, as well as problem solving. You can create memory games much like the bingo game with sticky notes by either adding items on the notes themselves or using the notes to hide the items you are matching. Sticky notes can be used as bingo markers with any type of traditional bingo game, which reinforce math skills like sorting and classifying.

Wooden Blocks

Wooden blocks are readily available and can be used for many activites to explore STEM standards (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Wooden block activities and props.

They lend themselves to sorting them by shape. Using blocks we can look at the different patterns that children make such as "triangle, square, triangle, square." Even without a structured A-B pattern sequencing activity, children will naturally play with blocks in this way. If you then give them more materials, they can continue exploring patterns. We need to capitalize on what they're already exploring and give them more opportunities to do so. Block props can be used to create other activities within the block area. I've used masking tape on the floor to create a big triangle or to create a big square and then ask the children to try to fill in the area using block shapes. It teaches how geometric shapes fit together, and about properties of the shapes. Children learn that if they put two triangles together, it makes a square. If they turn a square onto one of its corners, it's a diamond. There are many great opportunities for children to explore shapes with blocks. They also will look at blocks and realize that putting many blocks together will add up to another block, and then they're learning about fractions.

Adding props to blocks (such as those listed in Figure 8) is a simple way to expand their uses for exploring STEM standards. For example, cellophane can be used to explore properties of light; you can compare opacity and see how much light will shine through it. Small battery-powered lights or flashlights can be used to make shadows, that change based on where you hold the light. 

With blocks we play a game we call the Rainy Day game. Each child picks a block from the block area and adds it to a structure. We want to see how tall we can make the structure. If you are the one that added the block that made the blocks fell down, you are the one to help clean it up (and we all help clean it up). This game enables children to practice engineering concepts, problem-solving, and to explore properties of three-dimensional shapes. It also makes them move very carefully around the blocks. It was a great game that we played even on days when it wasn't raining. It's also interesting to see how children build, based upon their ages. If you're working with very young children, the building will stay flat on the ground. If you're building with older children it certainly gets taller because of the stages of block building. I've also added task cards to the block area. For example, I may use a picture of a famous bridge and ask the children to use blocks to try to create the structure in photo. They need to see what blocks they think they might need, and then I watch how they go about it. It's easy to make task cards either by tracing the blocks, or by finding shapes online and printing them, to have kids re-create some different pictures.

Figure 9. Structure created using blocks, marbles, molding, and tube.

Figure 9 shows an example of some great engineering done by preschool children simply by adding marbles to the block area and cove molding. We had extra cove molding that was very flexible. It was long and it held the marbles well. The kids were exploring creating a ramp and rolling it down. You also see a cardboard tube there by the boy in the red pants. It was almost like they were building a Rube Goldberg machine as they were rolling the marble down to see how far it would go. It was interesting to see how creative the children would get, what risks they would take with the materials, and how they would problem solve and try new things when it wouldn't work out the way they wanted. 

Cardboard Tubes

Cardboard tubes of all kinds, not just toilet paper and paper towel rolls, are very useful for activities incorporating STEM standards. Activities involving cardboard tubes include:

• Sensory table
  • Sand
  • Boats
• Classroom pets
• Outside
  • Spyglasses
  • Bug observation
• Block area
• Ball courses 

Factuals from fax machines are great because they are hard and sturdy. Sometimes I will add those in the block area because there is a lot you can do with them. We've added tubes to our sensory tables to see how sand will flow through them, and to see how water will flow through them. Depending on the tubes you are using, you can also see how they degrade in the water. Children can create boats out of cardboard tubes. It's also fun for them to see how much rice they can pack in the tube, and then pick the tube up and watch the rice fall out. From there, they can see that if they used dampened sand, it might hold together.  These are just a few examples of some great explorations to be had with cardboard tubes. Earlier I referred to our hamster - he loved cardboard tubes. He ate them, he hid in them, and rolled around on them. It was very interesting for the children to observe what the hamster would do with something new like a cardboard tube. We've used cardboard tubes outside. If you give children a cardboard tube and tell them to go find something to look at (clouds, birds, etc.) and use it like binoculars, they act very "important." We have used cardboard tubes for bug observation. We've cut cardboard tubes down to make a very short ring, and then put that around a bug that's crawling on the sidewalk. That way, we can observe the bug without hurting it and we don't have to touch him.  It just corrals him in for a few minutes of observation, and then we can remove the ring and the bug is on its way. At one point, some of the children were trying to figure out how to make an obstacle course for some ladybugs and ants. It didn't quite work, but they did learn a little bit about the willingness of bugs to participate in their idea of the obstacle course.

One of our student teachers created a tinkering area with the cardboard tubes. We use a lot of masking tape in our preschool. You can see the masking tape rolls behind the little boy in the first picture but one of the things that we did was we just gave the kids a bunch of cardboard tubes and other tubes and gave them different balls such as ping-pong balls and golf balls. We had different weights of balls in different sizes and they used the back side of our cubbies and they created these awesome ramps and  drops that you would drop a ball in and then it would fall into the box below. We gave the children a step ladder. They had supervision but they needed to be taller. They needed it to be up higher. They knew they did and they were very careful and of course they had help when they needed it, but they loved this center and it was so easy for them to do and what great skills for them to learn from these cardboard tubes.

Lidded Containers

Lidded containers have many uses for targeting STEM standards, including:

• Counting containers
• “Banks”
• Show and share boxes
• Collections
• Musical shakers
• Mini science observatories
• Bug jars
• Guessing jars

They are easy to collect for your classroom, and they work well for counting items, almost like a piggy bank. You can have children count things into the lidded containers. They work great for children showing and sharing things. If they want to bring something in from home, you can give them a specific sized container in order to corral how big of an item they bring in. Containers are useful for children to gather things for collections. Children like to share things and this also provides opportunities for observation. Lidded containers are easy to use to create musical shakers. You can sort those by sound and seriate sounds. Containers can make little observatories for things like bugs or growing plants. Lidded containers can also be used for guessing jars, such as smelling jars.

There are many types of containers you can use, and you can ask people to save them for you.  A few examples are butter tubs, baby food jars, mint containers, disposable food containers, take out containers and film canisters. I very rarely throw a container away, especially if it has a good lid. 

Plastic Bottles

Plastic bottles are another item that most of us have at our disposal, and they have many uses in the classroom, including:

• Sensory bottles
  • Wave bottles
  • Color mixing
  • Bells
  • Magnets
  • Shakers
• "I Spy" bottles
• Terrariums and farms
• Bubble blower
• Caps

Plastic bottles can be used for observation of different materials that we might put in them. We may make a wave bottle, using them for color mixing, or add bells, magnets or shakers. You can fill a bottle with different trinkets, rice, and materials and play "I Spy" by asking children to find different items in the bottle. Children can use magnifying glasses to talk about the items that they found. Plastic bottles can be used for ant farms or worm farms. They make great bubble blowers. You can cut the end off of them, take the cap off, and blow through the top.  And there are many uses for the bottle caps as well.  

Summary

I hope this course helped you to see that teaching STEM concepts in early childhood is possible. Materials are essentially everywhere - from old and odd items, to new and inexpensive items. You can use children's natural instincts to play with everything. People will help by saving materials for you. Being creative is fun, although it can be challenging. You can save money on materials and recycle at the same time, which is another important concept to explore with children. I hope you find that you enjoy teaching STEM concepts to young children, and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.  Be sure to download the handout for further ideas, and it includes my contact information as well.