Emily Hunt’s ’15-Minute STEM’ is an exciting collection of 40 quick, easy-to-resource, tried-and-tested STEM activities for 5 11 year-olds.
Governments, industries and scientific bodies around the world are increasingly prioritising investment in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) knowledge and skills because these are regarded as key, interlinked foundations of future employment and economic growth. Those in the education community also recognise the importance of teaching children these skills from a young age; however, many primary teachers are inexperienced in this area and lack the time and confidence to integrate STEM activities into the already packed curriculum.
Enter ’15-Minute STEM’. This innovative resource has been designed to reassure educators (and parents) that they don’t need to be experts to deliver high-quality STEM education. Each activity includes step-by-step instructions, takes just 15 minutes to complete and can be resourced from everyday materials found in the classroom or at home. This means that, with minimal preparation, teachers can slot these cross-curricular activities into an otherwise busy day, broadening their pupils learning at no cost to their focus on core curriculum areas.
The activities make connections to real-world scenarios, helping children to understand how their learning is relevant to their future, and have been linked to conceptually similar STEM-related careers all of which are individually profiled in a glossary at the back of the book. The practical, problem-solving element of each activity offers a great way for children to develop important soft skills such as creativity, critical thinking and spatial awareness.
Accompanying instructions are framed and phrased in a way that encourages the children to lead the learning and exploration allowing the supervising adult to take a more hands-off, facilitative approach and opportunities for further investigation are provided in order to broaden the learning focus and extend the tasks beyond 15 minutes. Hand-drawn illustrations and full colour photographs are also included alongside each activity to give an idea of what the end results might look like. Suitable for both teachers and parents.
