Engineering – Every Child Wins With Engineering
Why should children study engineering from an early age? Engineering calls for children to actively apply their knowledge of science and math. At the same time, engineering activities are based on real-world technologies and problems, so developing their skills in this area can help children see how disciplines like math and science are relevant to their everyday lives. From watching children play, parents can see that their kids are fascinated with building things and taking things apart to see just how they work; this behavior shows that children have a natural propensity for engineering. Research suggests that when children practice engineering activities within a school setting, there are vast benefits and positive outcomes.
Studies also suggest that engineering activities help establish classroom equity, where the stigma from failure disappears because there is often no one “right” answer to a problem. What’s more, failure is viewed as an important part of the problem-solving process as well as a positive way to learn, and children are encouraged to come up with new and original ideas by challenging the status quo. Because of this, all scholars can see themselves as successful when it comes to engineering in the classroom. Furthermore, research has shown that when engineering is a part of elementary and preschool curriculums, scholars become more aware of engineering, science, and technical careers; this finding is significant because we have reached a time when the number of American college scholars pursuing engineering education is declining (yet the number of jobs in the field of engineering is at an all-time high). Through early introductions to engineering in childhood education, many capable scholars (especially girls and minorities) begin to consider engineering as a career path and take the prerequisite science and math courses in higher education. And engineering activities often require scholars to work together in a team setting, allowing them to develop the effective collaboration and communication skills that are critical to success in any career or field.
At STEM Child Care, we encourage our scholars from an early age to engage with their environments, indulge their natural curiosity by asking questions, and find ways to solve problems in a creative and inclusive manner. By formally incorporating engineering concepts to our preschool curriculums, we introduce young children to the design process, wherein design is the “study of aesthetics and the utility of items in our daily lives” (Bequette & Bequette 2012, 40). We believe that engineering should be an essential component of early childhood education since it combines educational content and in-depth inquiries within the real-world context of children’s lives. To create engaging and exciting engineering activities for our scholars, we support their exploration by helping them find or identify a problem, plan or imagine solutions, and collaborate to create a solution to the problem. In this way, we can effectively inspire our scholars to see real-world applications of engineering through fun, play-based activities.
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