SIUE STEM Center Launches STEM @ Home Series
Working from home, learning from home, teaching from home. These days, people are having to do it all at once, and the juggle is overwhelming.
Hoping to alleviate a bit of the stress while promoting high-quality learning, the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Research, Education and Outreach, has launched the STEM @ Home series. Each week, the Center’s STEM educators will share activities, adapted from research-based curricula, to ensure fun and engaging STEM learning opportunities at home.
“A program like this is always important but it’s especially important right now. SIUE is a source of education and resources for this area, and we want people to know that the STEM Center is committed to providing those opportunities whether the public can visit us or not,” said STEM Center Instructor and Outreach Specialist Colin Wilson. “Our activities are designed to use materials that many likely have in their house already. Each week’s lessons can be completed as independent activities, or they can be done throughout the week as continuous learning for an ongoing project.”
“These activities are similar to cooking recipes,” Wilson explained. “The activity may be an hour, but only 20 minutes might be “active” cooking time. As with all great learning, the majority of the effort and time should be on the student, not the teacher/parent.”
The Center will engage learners online through the sharing of unique “What is this?” pictures that spark conversation and videos that answer questions submitted by the public. You can share pictures of your at-home learning or send questions for the STEM Center’s educators via Facebook at facebook.com/stem.siue on Instagram at stem.siue or on Twitter at @siuestem.
To celebrate the beginning of spring, the first STEM @ Home curriculum aims to help kids explore changing weather patterns. Online videos and activities are broken done by grade levels.
- Grades K-2: How does rain happen?
- Grades 3-5: Why does the weather change?
- Middle School: What are weather fronts?
- High School: What is the spring equinox?
Weather-related activities include making temperature and solar stills to track weather and outdoor temperatures, using barometers to learn about air pressure and how it affects the weather, and measuring the wind using a homemade weathervane.
The STEM @ Home series includes links to additional resources the STEM Center offers, and “staff picks,” which include a list of staff approved resources from outside sources.
For more information, visit siuestemcenter.org/stem-at-home.
