STEM with Our Youngest Learners
For infants and toddlers, we find it is most engaging to offer STEM experiences that begin closest to the child— ones that include familiar and accessible objects and materials that are presented in novel ways. Open-ended materials allow children to make choices, connect what they already know to new experiences, and develop independence in play. Our efforts are grounded in the work of Piaget, and our definition of STEM for the youngest learners is based on our careful observations of what children birth to age 3 do with materials and what we know about how children in this age group learn and interact with their environments. Their exploration is a kind of free inquiry( Warden 2021) that is not linear but that includes the following steps( Van Meeteren & Peterson 2022):
ROCKINGANDROLLING
Research has shown that children’ s interest and engagement are heightened when activities align with their everyday experiences( Holt 1977; McClure et al. 2017; NAEYC 2020). For infants and toddlers, these include a constellation of the people, activities, and materials they encounter at home and in early learning settings— including things they eat; objects they can grab, bang, throw, dump, pour, rattle, pound, and roll; and people who matter to them. Educators support the idea that learning emerges from the familiar when they select activities and design learning experiences that consider a child’ s culture, place, and prior experiences( Van Meeteren & Peterson 2022).
In this article, I outline how the Iowa Regents’ Center approaches STEM education. I then offer strategies for educators as they choose materials and plan inquiry learning experiences that honor infants’ and toddlers’ contexts and foster STEM explorations.
› Infants and toddlers wonder, resolve, and strategize actions as they engage with open-ended materials.
› As they handle and explore materials, they develop new understandings about the materials’ properties.
› Observing the ways that materials respond to their actions, children decide whether to repeat an action or try new strategies.
› Infants and toddlers often attempt to create or solve a problem— either one of their own making or one they encounter. They may stop to think for a while, observe a peer, or leave the investigation.
› If a child does not accept their solution to a problem, they revisit it with new strategies or new materials. This extends the inquiry process until the child reaches a resolution that is acceptable to them or decides to leave the problem behind.
We also consider the child’ s active role in the experience as critical to their learning and engagement. Toward that end, we evaluate STEM experiences to ensure that they include what we refer to as PIOV( Counsell et al. 2016):
1. The child must be able to produce an action themselves.
2. The result of that action is immediate.
3. The result of the action must be observable by the child.
4. There is something for the young learner to vary and try again.
Summer 2025 Young Children 89