Marbles Kids Museum will develop tools and strategies to train its staff, volunteers, and interns to engage infants, toddlers, and preschool children in activities and conversations that lay the foundation for critical early math skills. The staff capacity-building project will deepen the museum staff's understanding of early math skills, how to foster those skills, and why investment in early math is critical to long term success in school. With a content coach, the museum will research and develop early math resources, activities, and exhibit enhancements that engage children and their families. Additionally, the museum will seek to understand community needs related to early math learning, and create content for professional development video modules. The museum will modify the professional development modules to create caregiver workshops focused on fostering early math learning through everyday activities and play at home. Museum staff will share tools and lessons learned through a regional museum convening and at national conferences.
Children’s storybooks are a ubiquitous learning resource, and one with huge potential to support STEM learning. They also continue to be a primary way that children learn about the world and engage in conversations with family members, even as the use of other media and technology increases. Especially before children learn to read, storybooks create the context for in-depth learning conversations with parents and other adults, which are the central drivers of STEM learning and development more broadly at this age. Although there is a body of literature highlighting the benefits of storybooks
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. This project develops and researches the integration of Peg + Cat (an animated, math-based PBS television series for preschoolers), accompanying digital media, and early childhood educator professional development (PD). PD is designed to enhance educators’ abilities to support preschoolers’ social-emotional learning in the context of math activities, and in turn, their interest and engagement in math. The project also includes recommendations for engaging
Over a period of three weeks in October 2012, Marbles Kids Museum conducted focus groups to support the development of a new school readiness-focused exhibit space and programming. Focus groups included parents of children ages 3-5, preschool and early elementary school educators, and staff from community organizations involved in early childhood education in Wake County, NC. Focus groups addressed the following questions: (1) What does school readiness mean to you? (2) What do you envision or expect in a school readiness exhibit space? (3) What school readiness program possibilities can you
This report is the result of a project to investigate through a sociocultural lens whether girls-only, informal STEM experiences have potential long-term influences on young women's lives, both in terms of STEM but also more generally. The authors documented young women's perceptions of their program experiences and the ways in which they influenced their future choices in education, careers, leisure pursuits, and ways of thinking about what science is and who does it. This report includes the questionnaire used in the study.
Children feed alphabet letters to a talking baby dragon, drive a New York City fire truck, paint on a six-foot art wall, and crawl through a challenge course in PlayWorks™ at the Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) in New York. Manhattan’s largest public play and learning center for early childhood marries the skills that children need to succeed in kindergarten with fun stuff that kids love. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the project through a 2006 Museums for America grant to support the museum as a center of community engagement and lifelong learning. “PlayWorks™ is a joyful place for learning science, math, reading and other things. We incorporate fun and learning into the whole design to create a scaffold of learning. Families come to the museum to supplement preschool experiences,” said Andy S. Ackerman, CMOM’s executive director. The museum also offers parents, sitters, and other care-providers guidance on engaging their children with the exhibit. Based on the concept that children’s learning and personal growth is rooted in play, the 4,000-square-foot space is divided into five learning areas: Language, Math and Physics, Arts and Science, Imagination and Dramatic Play, and Practice Play (for infants and crawlers).
The Please Touch Museum is requesting $684,602 for the development of educational resource materials in science and mathematics for four-year old children, and training for their parents and teachers in Head Start and other daycare programs. This 44 month project will develop, test, and produce six materials-based science and math activity kits, science training workshops for parents and daycare educators, and related family materials and events. It will culminate in a national dissemination program to promote more effective preschool science and math education through materials- based science inquiry and increased professional relations between educators in youth museums and daycare centers.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marzy SykesRenee HenryTracey Prendergast
The Minnesota Children's Museum, in collaboration with the American Library Association will develop a project to engage children ages two through seven years old and their parents in exploring mathematics through hands-on, book-based math activities in libraries and children's museums across the country. The main elements of the project are: 1. A 1200 square foot exhibit at the Minnesota Children's Museum; 2. A traveling exhibit to ten children's museums over a six month period; 3. Five smaller versions of the exhibit will travel to 75 libraries sponsored by the American Library Association. Each library that apply for the exhibit must present a plan in which 50 percent of their exhibit audience will be children and families of the under-represented, lower income groups, and racial and/or ethnic groups. 4. Programs and materials will be designed to provide parents with the means to actively participate in their children's math education. The collaboration of the Minnesota Children's Museum and the American Library Association draws together two organizations whose natural constituencies are parents with young children. Project 1,2,3 is designed to be national in scope and creates multiple formats within which families can enjoy exploring math. Its goals and objectives reflect four messages: start early, math is everywhere, parental involvement and get into books. The project Principal Investigator (PI) Ms. Jeanne W. Vergeront received her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Science in Child and Family Studies and Environmental Design, respectively from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Currently, she serves as the Vice President, Educational Projects at the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota.
This project is a collaboration between the Miami Museum of Science and the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Greater Miami (BBBS) to empower single-parent families to become actively engaged in the science, mathematics, and technology education (SMT) of their children. It will involve, over the course of the project, parents, mentors, and community elements to create and expand a resource network and support primarily father-absent homes. The design of the project is focused on providing resources and advocacy critical to the success of young children in SMT education. It is a project designed to get parents actively involved with their children's science, mathematics, and technology education. The program will serve Dade County, Florida families. Museum staff and volunteers of BBBS will work closely in the development of mentor materials to be nationally distributed. The strategies that are used and refined will be packaged in a Tripod Toolkit and Mentor Handbook that can be used by other community groups to aid and assist parents in becoming more active in the science, mathematics, and technology education of their children. In addition to the toolkit materials, a set of Science/math Matters activities will be included designed to promoted science learning in the home with parents and their children. These materials will be produced in both English and Spanish to meet the needs of a diverse and multicultural American society.
The Louisville Science Center and the National Center for Family Literacy will engage in a year's planning to introduce the Parent- Child Interaction Project to teams of educators in six target cities. The goal is to explore the feasibility of a future national implementation of the model. The Parent-Child Interaction Project aims to empower underserved parents to become their child's most important teacher and provide these parents and their children the opportunity to gain science, mathematics, and technology education together. The participants are the parents and pre-school children enrolled in family literacy programs. During the Project, parents and children will make at least four trips to the participating science-technology center and evaluate their trips during follow-up class sessions. The joint efforts of the family literacy programs and science- technology centers can achieve the following goals: * Improve the involvement of low-income and low-literacy parents in the education of their children, specifically in the areas of science, mathematics and technology. * Increase the awareness of local science and technology centers as available community resources, particularly for underserved audiences. * Use science center visits and related projects to extend NCFL classroom learning for adult education students, their children and their teachers.
Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, CA, will develop a three-pronged project called "Round and Round" focused on the geometry, science and technology of circles and wheels. All three project products (one permanent and one traveling version of a 2000-sq. ft. exhibition; an array of complementary educational programs for children ages 3-10; and published research on patterns of interactions among families of diverse backgrounds in museum settings) will be developed in cooperation with developmental psychologists from the University of California at Santa Cruz and advisors from Latino and Vietnamese communities in San Jose. "Round and Round" exhibits and programs will offer a trans-cultural, gender-neutral, and multi-disciplinary look at the ingenuity and ubiquity of circles. Together they will provide a comprehensive array of interactive experiences that help children, ages 3-10, and adults explore the mathematics, physics, physical properties and engineering advantages of circles and wheels. The project is expected to serve three million visitors in science and children's museums across the nation within four years of implementation.
The Science Museum of Minnesota conducted the StretchAbility program on January 25th, and February 1st, 2010, and the Children’s Museum of Houston conducted the program on November 10th, 14th, and 25th, 2009. A total of 20 paired adult and child groups provided feedback through a survey designed to measure their engagement with and comprehension of the activity. After the activity, evaluators targeted participating children 8 or younger who were verbal for the interview, and gave a survey to the child’s parent to complete. Paired surveys were used due to the lower verbal nature of the younger