Educational Insights | STEAM - Creating a Positive Impact

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) education has received growing attention over the past decade, especially for its importance in early years. Research has shown that providing meaningful hands-on STEAM experiences for early childhood positively impacts their perceptions and dispositions towards STEAM. In the Nest, we learn about various topics by incorporating STEAM activities across year groups into all major content areas. 

Consider this example of freezing animals from the Arctic and Antarctic regions in our pre-nursery class. It invited children to use their senses and explore the sensation of the 'cold' ice while also offering the opportunity to explore how to remove the animals from the ice (i.e. melting the ice away by using water and sunshine etc.). Children were encouraged to hypothesize what will happen to the ice, use their senses to explore, describe what is happening and experiment with different ways to rescue the animals. They discovered some quick ways!

Our Reception children used tablets to conduct research about their favourite sea animals and followed their lines of inquiry. They conducted WebQuests and accessed e-books to read about an animal of their choice. A WebQuest is an inquiry-based, online learning activity. The objective of the activity was to carry out research successfully, which was accomplished through the reading, analysis, and synthesis of online resources. The children then recorded their learning by drawing and writing about the information they found.

This is a fabulous example of an engineering challenge that our Year 1 children undertook. They built a little ‘kingdom’ complete with areas for recreation, an underpass, a bridge and a lookout tower. The children worked collaboratively to experiment with ways to keep the lookout tower stable. The tower toppled numerous times however, the children were determined and kept persisting till they were successful. Engineering activities provide opportunities for children to grow and mature, and engineering design challenges promote social and emotional learning.

We emphasize the importance of visual and performing arts in the Nest by offering a range of attractive invitations for children to engage in. Our Nursery children performed ‘Musical Chairs’ for an assembly. Children used their math skills to practice the rhythm of the music and practice self-expression. This performance also helped build motor skills, strengthen memory skills and social-emotional skills as they performed in front of an audience. 

For the topic of ‘Diwali’, children across the Nest made beautiful ‘Diya’ lamps. They used their fine motor skills to mould them into the ‘Diya’ shape and then paint them. Early childhood is a good time to offer opportunities that enable children to stretch beyond the familiar. Children can learn to appreciate cultural diversity in styles of art, craft, music and dance which truly foster global citizenship.

Under the topic of ‘Healthy Living’, students used real objects to learn the concept of ‘Fractions’ in the virtual learning environment. Children came up with extremely creative ideas and one of those was cutting healthy food from ‘Whole’ into ‘Halves’ and ‘Quarters’. This is a fantastic example of marrying the topic being investigated, to the content area focus, through real-life experiences. A ‘theme-based resource’ is not conceived as a mere material resource but as a context for teaching and learning mathematics through the availability of tasks with features which, at first glance, do not appear to be mathematical. They embrace a host of potentially mathematical experiences structured around problem-solving, investigative or project work. 

Implementation of STEAM leads to highly motivated students who take charge of their own learning. STEAM is the driving force that supports children as they develop into the future guardians of our earth.