I’m a former high school English teacher. I gave up that noble profession in favor of homeschooling my own children. They are now ages eight, six, and three, and we do our homeschooling inside and outside of our Tiny Home. We love doing school outside when the weather is nice—I have been known to sit on the cement patio with sidewalk chalk for all sorts of lessons and to send the children scurrying to find rocks and leaves and sticks to make patterns with. Hopscotch is great for learning skip-counting—and skipping! The challenge of helping our family thrive in 300 square feet while running their school as well is a delight to my creativity. The children get to experience a huge range of things because of the versatility of both homeschooling and the freedom not having house payments affords us. They are having a very diverse childhood, and loving it.
My sister-in-law sent me a copy of Evan-Moor’s kindergarten level Smart Start: STEM book. I looked it over, and each lesson seemed both to be a lot of fun and to encompass a variety of learning skills. They begin with some basic knowledge and vocabulary pertaining to the lesson and move into activities that cement the knowledge and reinforce skills, such as writing. From that point, the problem is presented in the form of a story; stories are awesome, and everyone knows that any good scientist needs a problem before he or she can begin devising a solution for it. The problem is then broken down into an experiment or challenge that the children need to conquer. Some of them are silly, and all of them are fun.
The first lesson I chose to do from Smart Start: STEM was “Trees Have Parts.” We had a bonus child with us that day, and everyone got involved in the lesson. We talked about trees, and everyone listed the parts of a tree they could think of. We read about what those parts do for the tree. We told stories about different trees, and even reminisced about an autumn color leaf walk we had gone on in the past. Each child took a turn answering the questions on the following pages—the three-year-olds needed a little more help than the older ones when it was time to trace the words. If someone looked like they were maybe going to answer incorrectly, the other children helped redirect them by asking them questions. It was a great example of cooperative learning. I was impressed. They don’t always behave that well during lessons.
We arrived at the problem story. (Each lesson from Smart Start: STEM includes a story with a problem.) My eight-year-old got into story-teller mode and read it to the younger ones. The people from Tree Town seem to know how to make sure apple trees grow, but they are impatient and want a tree now! Can my intrepid student scientists help them acquire one? (Happily, this doesn’t involve stealing someone’s full-grown tree and transplanting it. That would be the wrong lesson.) They are told that they need to stack plastic cups to make a tall tree that will hold an apple on the very top for at least ten seconds. The tree needs to be the tallest you can make, but you’ve only got thirty seconds to build it.
I decided to have them take turns building their trees—with only thirty seconds, I thought four children would get in one another’s way. My eight-year-old drew a semblance of a plan after we all talked about how it might work best to build the tree. My six-year-old began the building. He built a pyramid five cups wide at the base by four cups high. Sadly, just at thirty seconds, it fell over and never got to hold the apple. I had the pair of three-year-olds team up for the second round. They managed to make their tree four cups wide and four cups high. Their tree held the apple!
My eight-year-old wanted to try next. I whispered to her that she might want to try making multiple rows at the base to give the tree more support in its “roots.” Given thirty seconds, there’s not a lot that can be done, but her tree had two rows of five cups each at the base and was five rows high. It, too, held. By then, the younger kids had lost interest, but the elder two helped me finish writing up the results of our tests. Afterward, we had fun building cup trees for the apple to rest on without the constraint of a timer, and built some impressive specimens.
Everyone had fun, the parts of a tree were either learned or reinforced (and the roles each of those parts plays were discussed), those who needed it practiced writing (without explicitly telling them to), everyone began to get a grounding in the scientific method, and everyone felt like we were just playing. My kids didn’t take very long before they asked me when they could do another experiment. Overall, I’d say it was a very successful lesson, and I look forward to more educational play with Evan-Moor’s Smart Start: STEM activity book.
Try a free sample lesson from Smart Start STEM here.
Check out Homeschool STEM Adventure: Building a Mouse Trap for STEM lessons for grades 1-6.
Kathrina E. Jones uses her teacher voice all the time. She used to use it in a high school English classroom, but about four years ago she stopped doing that in favor of homeschooling her three children. Either way, and even before she was in the classroom, she is (and always has been) a teacher. She falls into teaching mode with decided regularity, regardless of subject. Everywhere she goes, she finds something that the kids can learn about in one way or another. The family gets to go a lot of places because they live in a Tiny House (yes, the kind on wheels), where Kathrina teaches the kids, writes short stories and novels, sews occasionally, and hosts dinner parties for up to twelve people. Any more than twelve guests wouldn’t fit at their table. She is a dreamer with a ruthlessly practical streak, and regularly points at the door to send her children outside to play, because outside is a good thing.