Teachers, learn more about STEM activity with ChildCare Education Institute--Includes Musical Marble Run STEM activity
Do your preschoolers love STEM activities and projects? Would you love professional development training focused on STEM for young children? Today I'm excited to share a STEM activity (Musical Marble Runs) that you can do with your preschoolers and course offerings from ChildCare Education Institute that focus on STEM education for young children!
If you'd like to learn more about STEM for preschoolers, I encourage you to check out ChildCare Education Institute! Childcare Education Institute (CCEI) provides high-quality online training courses and programs that are perfect for teachers and parents!
This activity is a STEM project because it integrates the four pillars of STEM: science, technology, engineering, and math.
Science: Children use problem solving skills and science reasoning concepts like making observations, making hypotheses, testing and experimenting with those hypotheses, and analyzing and sharing their results. They are also investigating science concepts like gravity, force, and friction.
Technology: Technology is the application of knowledge, so using the building skills they have been developing since they were babies to create a marble run is creating their own technology!
Engineering: Designing, testing, and adjusting their marble runs is engineering!
Math: Preschoolers actually experiment with math concepts like size, proportion, and balance while they work on this project!
CCEI has over 150 English and Spanish training courses for early childhood education providers that can be taken to meet licensing requirements and coursework to earn national recognitions like CDA and Director credentials. They are nationally accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) and accredited as an Authorized Provider by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET).
My favorite aspects are their online availability (coursework from the CCEI website is available 24/7 every single day--you can work on it in evenings, early mornings, weekends, or any time you are available!) and their relevant courses (their courses meet licensing requirements and teach skills that are actually needed by people who work with young children)! For example, they offer CUR 106: STEM in the Early Childhood and CHD 110: Birth to Five: Child Development in Young Children!
CUR 106: STEM in Early Childhood Education course provides basic information about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education so early childhood educators can promote the development of foundational science and math skills in young children.
CHD 110: Birth to Five: Child Development in Young Children course covers important developmental milestones from birth through age five, related to physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development.
ChildCare Education Institute has fantastic reviews too! Over 99% of their students would recommend CCEI to others, and over 15,000 early childhood professionals have already graduated from their CDA and other certificate programs! They are constantly adding new courses--over 30 new hours every year! And they award IACET CEU's for completed coursework at no additional cost!
Musical Marble Runs is a STEM project I developed that works wonderfully with all ages! They can get quite complicated with older kids or be super simple for younger kids. My youngest toddler even loves rolling marbles along wooden ramps because of the musical "click-click-clickity-clack," and will happily experiment with blocks and marbles over and over and over.
The supplies for this project are super simple and can be easily adapted to whatever you have on hand! In this case, we used our wooden block bin and marbles. Next week, we will be doing the same thing with larger groups in our homeschool co-op, and we will be using kiva planks. The key to making the music is using wooden building supplies and the marble.
As the marble rolls along the wooden path, it clicks and clacks in different rhythms. Both the kids and I actually find the sound super addictive!
You can build walls to help direct where the marble goes.
Try turning the path.
See what happens with a tall path or a long skinny path!
You can make it an open-ended activity where the supplies are available and you all build together, or make it a specific challenge like tallest, widest, or most "clinks."
With my younger kids, I've been encouraging them to create their favorite musical rhythm and pay attention to how the beat changes with different blocks and spacing. (When I meet with the older kids next week, they will be calculating speed, but that's an entirely different post!)
You can actually hear the musical rhythm in this short video:
Another fun thing about his project is the apparent "mash-up" of supplies. Our kids are used to building marble runs with marble run tracks. They are used to building lots of things with the wooden blocks that do not involve marbles. But combining the marbles and wooden blocks creates a new learning framework, or way to process and store information, in our kiddos' minds. I actually had one kid tell me, "These blocks aren't supposed to make marble runs!" I let her know that she could actually build a marble run with just about anything...and she went on to do a great job!
Every course I've taken from CCEI has been useful and based on current research and best practices. I am very picky about what materials I recommend to people, and so far I have loved everything I have seen from ChildCare Education Institute! You can see reviews I have done for specific courses from them like CCEI 440: Sensational Science, CCEI 112: Active Learning In Early Childhood, Literature 102: Poetry and Nursery Rhymes for Young Children, and CCEI 670: Bright Beginnings: Age Appropriate Activities for Infants and Toddlers! You can also check out their most popular courses HERE!
Do you do STEM activities with your preschoolers? I'd love to hear about your favorites! Feel free to email me or say "Hi!" on Facebook or Instagram!
This post was sponsored by ChildCare Education Institute. As always, all thoughts and responses are mine, and I only recommend companies I believe in 100%!
Happy Educating,
Carla
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