 We are preparing our youngsters for jobs that we don't even know about. And so the big pieces that we're building are that perseverance and being able to problem solve and being able to work collaboratively in groups. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. We're very fortunate to have STEM schools and have that type of education here in our district because students have an ability to really delve in and learn through projects, real life application with STEM. And emphasis in really exploring things that they're curious about and asking questions and then discovering and constructing knowledge through different projects that they're working on. So STEM education provides those avenues for kids to explore and to understand the world around them. Some examples of things that kids can do through engineering is say working on bridges and trying to figure out what kind of bridge can hold the most weight. It would require kids to do some research to find out how do we construct bridges? What makes a bridge strong? What makes it sturdy? And then put those things into practice by designing it and taking that design into application and actually building it and testing it out and then having conversations about what worked and what didn't and then going back through the process again to make improvements. So that's a real life application at a model level so that kids really have an opportunity to dig in to engineering and pull those pieces together. And the veins in our body hold blood. Our blood. Blood but the veins in the cell are holding one. The water. The water, that's right. Isn't that cool? When we're looking at STEM at early childhood, a lot of that occurs through exploration. It really is about building foundational skills for children. So for the science, technology, engineering and math, it's not a matter of teachers standing in front of students trying to lecture to them but really giving them opportunities to explore and understand each of those disciplines. But because it hasn't done what in the last few days? Rain. Rain. Where do they go when there's no moisture? So I'll give you some examples. In this class, four-year-olds were exploring with their senses. They're learning about science and learning about their senses and how to use that to explore the world around us. We talked before about early childhood being about exploration. And one thing that students love to do is to explore technology. So in this video footage, we can see examples of students using iPads for reading, for math. STEM doesn't mean that you can't pull in reading, that you can't pull in writing. It's important to pull all of these pieces together for a deeper understanding of STEM and kids really growing the skills that they will need later on in school and eventually in their careers. One, two, three. Chevea, will you come and show us what happens first? Our early childhood students can build foundational skills in all areas of STEM. We can even accomplish that in engineering. Now you want him to turn right. No. But that's what you're going to program him to do, right? Remember, this is where we're trying to get, but we have to think of each step that it takes to get there, right? In this classroom, first-grade students are working on programming. So with their V-bots, they're able to put in a simple program and have the robots, in this case, go to the X. So you can see by trial and error and collaboration, kids are figuring out how to make the bot go where it needs to go and learning from their mistakes. So very much STEM education. This didn't quite work the way I wanted it to. How do I go back and correct it? In math, you see kids counting in a variety of ways, using dinosaurs, counting apples and placing those on the trees. Here, we see ten frames that have five and five. So in counting, the students are holding on to that concept and not having to count again. That's an important developmental milestone for children to be able to hold on to that number when counting. Awesome. Do you think you can do it, Michael? Here's another example of conservation of numbers. Notice the young boy is rolling the number cube and he's able to get to that number just by taking dinosaurs away. He didn't have to recount what was already there. He held on to the fact that there's two dinosaurs, I rolled a six, I'm going to add four more. Now, we can see in this example, he's doing quite well with conserving numbers. In contrast, here's a young lady. You can see that she's rolled three, but she's adding many more dinosaurs than three. So as a teacher, I would ask some questions and work with her a little bit more on conserving numbers and maybe even take a step back and make sure she understands the concept of one-to-one correspondence. Teachers do not have to have any type of special certification. They just have to have an open mind to realize they can pull in anything. Reading, writing, as I mentioned, research for bridges is an opportunity to read about it, to write down your thoughts so pulling all of those pieces in to make it real-life application for kids. Just because they're young doesn't mean that they cannot be exposed to and learn about STEM and STEM practices. These are skills that we start now and they will be vital to them as they grow throughout their time in school and eventually in whatever career they may choose. We've heard it time and time again. We are preparing our youngsters for jobs that we don't even know about. And so the big pieces that we're building are that perseverance and being able to problem-solve and being able to work collaboratively in groups. You might have noticed that all of our groups were working but really they were self-paced and independent. Our future workers need to know how to do that and we're starting at the earliest ages.