 And so with that, I'm going to turn things over to our two special guests, Natalie Zidru and Diana Egg. Thank you so much, Harry, and thank you everyone for joining us. I'm going to start our presentation up. Hopefully you'll find some fun things to do with your kids. So welcome to our live session of STEM chat. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and it's something that Natalie and I have always been interested in. Yes, I actually first met Diana through working on Craft Magazine. I interviewed her for an article on our premier issue. And so that was like 15 plus years ago and ever since then, we've always loved sharing information, especially when I had my daughter and my daughter is 12 now. So Diana would text me something cool that was STEM related that I could use with her. Yeah, and when I had kids, I have a toddler and a first grader now I started asking Natalie about what sort of thing she did with her daughter when she was my daughter's age. So because of this exchange over the years. We thought it'd be fun to create a video series to bring to life all these STEM messages and tips that we've shared with each other to parents everywhere. Yep, and we hope to inspire, motivate and encourage kids to be curious about the world of STEM, which I think is nice, especially these days. It's really nice to feel inspired. Yes, so in this live presentation, we're going to share with you some highlights from our previous episodes. But if you want to dive deeper, everything we've covered on STEM chat is on Adafruit's YouTube channel. We also have a new Instagram Instagram account at STEM chat. We categorize each episode into themes and some of the previous themes we've had our learning through play and paper geometry. We're also going to include some extra things that we're currently working on and some things that we're excited about. So we're going to talk. I'm sorry we're going to start by talking about origami which you're probably all familiar with. We love origami and we featured in our episode to a paper geometry. Yep, and it's a great hands on way to learn about math. As you can see my toddler demonstrating. The origami teaches kids about shapes and partitioning shapes, you can see here two squares make up a rectangle. Fractions, you can see how the square is broken up into four, as well as parallel lines, angles and parts of a shape sides and vertices. And it really helps with spatial reasoning 2D and 3D shapes. Origami helps to build dexterity, which also helps with early writing skills which although are technically not STEM we're all pro learning here. So my daughter and I also did origami when she was little. And it's just really fun to do it's like a fun craft project it's very relaxing it's like a family bonding experience. And I actually started doing origami with my youngest daughter when she was under one year old because they found this book on Amazon Japan. And it showed kids who seemed like they were almost babies doing origami and had all sorts of activities you could do with them. They were tearing the paper, they were crumpling it up and making different shapes and making like ice cream and an ice cream cone. And then cutting the paper into shapes and then arranging them to make pictures so you can see my daughter here. She's threading a piece of paper that she folded up through a ring and folding the paper. It's really been interesting trying it so young with her. I'd always thought that the paper was very precious and would only try to make a really perfect thing but after I read this book. I thought oh I'll give her a pack of paper and we'll treat it like a toy and just let her do what she wants with it and it's been really nice. So I love this because I don't think I did origami with my daughter until she was a little older, and it kind of goes with the STEM concept of tinkering and tinkering is all about experimenting, using all the materials making something using your hands so it's the same way it's sort of like toddler origami tinkering. Yes, yes it is. So we want to share some of the things that we made at the origami USA and conference we both attended virtually this summer. So that was a fun thing about the pandemic was that usually this conference takes place in New York City. I'm in the Bay Area in California so we were able to do it virtually together and and to make something which actually helped also inspire our paper paper geometry episode because we experienced that whole conference online. It's true. Yeah, we had lots of fun during the conference we're like texting back and forth during the workshops and being like oh did you get that step I missed that step so it was fun. Yeah, so my daughter and I love doing paper cranes it's just on different prints of paper and she wanted to do like a wonderful crane kind of like mobile for her room. So that's one of the projects we do together and during the conference. We'll go ahead you can show what you did. So, these were pieces from Robert Lang star modular office, 817. And this one has six pieces in it, and this one has many more I don't quite remember how many. But this is very interesting because the way you assemble it is you twist the pieces together and you can see a demonstration of it on our episode to stem chat video. And if you don't know Robert Lang is a famous American physicist but he also is an origami expert slash artist and his work in origami is simply beautiful. And I couldn't, I didn't have time to go back and like finish that that project. But in the meantime, I took an Australian artists, a Grammy session and made a koala. And I was really intimidated I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it but it was really satisfying to finish the one hour session and, and think okay this little square paper turned into a little koala. And that's what's great about paper crafts and arts. And especially when I'm going to paper prism animals, which is a great way to learn geometry. Let's move back to the presentation really quick. Yeah. So, my daughter is in seventh grade. And in the fall before they started the learning about geometry. They made paper prism animals and through this project, she learned really amazing things not only did you learn more things about math and geometry, but just the design and engineering process. And what we did was she wanted to make a lion. And we went online to Google photos and this photo became our inspiration and she actually was like, Okay, I got it now I can make this lion, and the cylinders are going to be the legs, you know rectangle prism for the body. And I was like hexagon for the face and then she's like, Oh, you know what, I want the face to kind of pop out and so I'm going to make a trapezoid. So I thought that was so amazing that you know there are kids imaginations or like, they're just you know, free to go and so she just went around and she sketched everything out and then used her compass to create, you know, precise mathematical paper, you know, flat paper we used actually origami larger format paper 12 by 12 and she created all the pieces, made a template for the cylinder, you know for each of the pieces cut them out, and we assembled it together so she was. It was just amazing to see the process of it and I think there's something about for kids learning, seeing it visually and making something. It really helps them understand the concepts better. Yeah, I think you're right. It's really neat here you can really see how the 2d shape became a 3d shape. Yeah, and then also you know they're able to learn it before they're starting to you know, before you get intimidated by getting a piece of paper with all these you know mathematical equations on it, or like oh I can understand it better because I've made it within pieces of paper. Yeah, my daughter started making some prisms to in kindergarten, they were able to choose a shape and my daughter choose a cylinder, and then they brought it home and cut it out and assembled it and made it into a picture. So that's great, you know you could do it at all ages. Yeah, and I think so this this project I'd say probably for an older child if with help maybe like you know, eight years old and up. For younger kids we have a link on our second episode in the YouTube description to plenty of templates so good can download you know rectangle rectangles, triangle prisms, and kids can cut it out and then they can draw faces on it they can make it their own animals and you know it's not complicated it's really fun for them but it really helps them understand the whole spatial of geometry. Yeah, and I think for younger kids it's nice to because it's kind of like a surprise to have the flat 2d shape and then it looks very different from how you imagine the 3d shape looking so it's nice to see. That's true. Okay, so we've started having some adventures in our backyard. It's a little harder to get out these days to museums and zoos and other fun places during the pandemic. So we're looking at Phyllis Moz mushroom in friends to zine and it has these fantastical landscapes that are made with mushrooms and fruit and vegetables. And it's really nice because she's made these whimsical scenes with things that actually exist in real life. So we decided to have a little adventure of our own in our backyard and forge for some mushrooms and I had my kids were gloves because I'm not really familiar with the different types of mushrooms. So I made sure that the mushrooms didn't actually touch their skin. And after we found the mushrooms. We looked at them with our pocket microscopes. So the image in the middle is magnified 20 to 60 times and the video on the right is magnified 100 to 250 times. So that's cool to see. And even if you can't like, you know, forage for mushrooms around your neighborhood can just go look in your fridge. Maybe a mushrooms there you have onion skins, put it under a microscope let kids explore. Yeah, there's all sorts of neat things in there. I mean this is a cross section of a mushroom date cut one in half. So what did your kids like about the whole mushroom forging experience. So they really like collecting the mushrooms they thought finding them was so much fun it was kind of almost like they were searching for Easter eggs or something. And they also like sorting the different types and when they would find a new one they'd see if it was one they had found before my toddler had a difficult time looking through the viewfinder of the pocket microscope. And so there's a clip you can get and it actually clips over the lens on your camera. I'm sorry the lens on your camera of your cell phone, and then you can snap it into place in the viewfinder and you can view on your cell phone screen what you would view through the viewfinder. So that was very helpful if you have a young child. That's a really helpful thing to get. Another thing I have also as a digital microscope and it's got to stand here, but it also can come off and it can connect to your phone or tablet and you can go outside with this or you know have stuff in your house and you can look at it and you'll be able to see the image on the actual device. We're going to have to get one of those next. So moving with the theme of going outside I think my daughter is doing remote learning so to give her a break from the screen hours of screen time. We like to take walks and she loves to look at flowers and all the, the, you know, nature around us and so there's an app called seek where you can actually roll it over any plant and even insects, and it'll tell you what the name is and so we had to do a project where she wanted to take pictures of her favorite interesting plants she liked and she picked the red hot poker as her project to draw so she has photos of it and then she drew it and she added some facts. And it's kind of a great way to prolong an activity so we're taking a break and we're taking a nice walk and then you can come back home. Look at your photos you took you know they're getting some photography experience and then they're also drawing it finding the facts and putting in So sorry go ahead. Oh I was gonna say it's nice she made this field guide she can look at it when she gets older. Yeah, and she actually does she loves like documenting all these things and I have another friend who her daughter is also 12. She was like I need something to do with her I need to do something with her and I gave her this idea and her daughter. They live in Marin County lots of nature around there and they took a nice walk around their daughter was inspired by saw sunflower and took a photo of it. And also with an instant camera, and then she likes to paint so she painted a little canvas of a sunflower so whatever media you want to do but I love that it's bringing in you know all the children's artistic side to. Yeah, and it's really nice to get outdoors and walk around to. So I have a question does your daughter ever find a flower that she's documented before and then look back through her notebook to find out the facts. My daughter has like an excellent memory because she actually remembers all their names, all the facts so she'll actually end up telling me. Okay, that's this plant here. Oh this is the one I want and this is the name of this I'll be like oh. So she remembers them all and I think it's because she does this process of you know, sketching it down, you know going with the app and we get the name of it and she remembers them all so it's been it's been a fun experience. Oh they're so nice to because she'll grow up knowing about the local wildlife. We're the local plants at least. Yes. Okay, so we've also we've been going on hikes and my children have been going rock counting when we go hiking and looking for rocks in our area. And what happened hold on just a second. Okay, here we go. Yeah, so when we find the rocks they're actually pretty dirty and mostly look like regular rocks, although one time. As you can see in the image on the right, we were in, I don't know, like a special area in the sand was covered in little crystals so that was kind of neat. But for the most part we have to clean up the rock so this is our setup we have some old toothbrushes that we use and scrubber brushes, and we basically scrub the rocks underwater with a little bit of so. Don't you have a rock tumbler. Yes, we do have a rock tumbler to and we featured it in a couple of the older episodes but it turns out that my children didn't like the end result as much. When the rocks were polished they prefer to see how the rocks look naturally but they did have a lot of fun tumbling the rocks and like getting messy cleaning them off. That's cool. The rocks all cleaned off. And you can see so here's some courts that we found. It's very common in our area. And then this is a piece of feldspar, which I'm not completely sure it's feldspar but I think it's feldspar because of how smooth it is when the feldspar breaks it has a very smooth kind of like cleavage or area where it broke. And you'll see there's also a bunch of rocks that have little sparkly bits on those those are Micah. And so I think once there are combinations of different things are called Micah shifts. So when you guys go rock hounding, how do your kids know which rocks to pick up. So I bet online that you're supposed to go on a sunny day and then the sun will hit the rocks on the ground and kind of make them sparkle a little bit and you can pick those up, and then take them home and watch them so that's what we've been doing. So this rock over here, if you can see the little red dots, I believe those are garnets they're very common in our area, especially in around like Micah and feldspar, and they're also the New York State Rock. Very cool. So, we have been looking at rocks around here and that's okay. So a couple years ago, my daughter found this rock and because we're in Northern California. It's got a lot of a pirate in there. So it's kind of cool to see we haven't found one since, but I think since my daughter's seen our rock hounding episode. She's on a mission to find some. Well, maybe we can train the whole rocks one day. Yes. Okay, so I wanted to share my daughter's rock hounding backpack. And she brings it when she goes hiking. It's kind of fun because she like wears it and it's like she's on a rock hounding adventure. And some of the things that she has inside. So we have this bag. It's just, we go through lots of the block bags actually that she stores her finds in. And she has some bamboo skiers that she uses to kind of like dig the rock out of the dirt. And she has a little old screwdriver so that she can pry something off of something if she needs to. And she recently added these goggles, I guess with the screwdriver to her rock hounding pack, so that nothing gets in her eye if she's like really chipping away at things. What she really likes is this little rocks and minerals book it has these beautiful images inside of all the different types of rocks and minerals. And Natalie actually told us about this series. There's a whole bunch of these little DK pocket genius books. Yeah, my daughter when she was five she loved these books we found in a bookstore and there was dinosaurs, which was her favorite she had like tabs of all our favorite dinosaurs. And the book was so great for kids because you're able to see large photos and great color photos of all these things and then they're having the facts there too. So Diana is like brought on her collection for her kids so I thought that was such a good tip and I think kids that are they like to hold small things it feels like and it's very light. So if they carry a couple in their backpack it's not heavy for them either keeps them occupied. Yeah, the photos are so nice and those books to I think also if they can't read they're still learning from looking at the images. Exactly. Okay, hold on let me get back to the presentation. Okay. Okay, so now we were outside and I don't know about you but the weather has been very cold here it's been stormy we haven't been able to get out much so there's no better place for stem than in the kitchen this is something we're working on for a future episode in a couple months are in the kitchen episode and I know that sometimes kids have problems learning fractions and we do a lot of baking we've been making bread cookies whatever and my daughter loves to bake and she loves measuring everything and doing everything in the cups from when she was little till you know even now. So it's a great way to teach kids how all the haves make a hole, and you can see it better illustrated on on the photo on the top right with the rice where you know one measuring cup of rice is in the same, you know, volume as in the glass, you can see, you know, one cup of rice there below it is one and a half cups of water so that one cup in the measuring cup another half cup, and you pour it in and it'll equal one and a half there and so it's a great way to show like you know, they're taking you know, a quarter cups and so forth and I have these really cool measuring spoons I got them like years and years ago, and it's a brand called perfect po you are. And it is very precise and so usually teaspoons are down to like quarter teaspoon this one goes down to 164th and it has both English and metric measurements so it's really cool to get the actual precise measurement into things and it can you know kids can play with it and and see all the numbers and the measurements. That's really neat I think it's so nice to be in the kitchen, especially if you have younger kids who still like to put stuff in their mouths. You could do this pouring project with breakfast cereal and use like Cheerios and Rice Krispies, and then you don't have to worry about them eating it can be like a snack time experiment. And my daughter love like, when I put like food coloring and she would mix colors together so even just adding some food coloring little cups and then she can mix it and it would come and then it just reinforces the whole getting them used to using math and playing with math. Before they're, you know, later on when they have to actually be in school and using on the worksheets or fractions better. Yes, hands on. It's always nice. So something we've been doing in the kitchen recently is filling balloons with different types of ingredients. So this orange balloon was filled with salt and so is the yellow balloon. And then the pink one which you'll see in a bit was filled with rice and the green one is filled with flour. And it's been kind of like a fun experiment away because the kids try to guess how the balloons are going to behave when they have the different ingredients inside of them. And then they also just get to choose whatever ingredient they want and we try to stuff it into one of the balloons. Okay, I think this project is amazing. And how did you get the ingredients into that yellow skinny balloon. That's what I want to know. Okay, so on the in the picture on the left. That's actually the top of a water bottle. And we use that as a funnel because the opening is very wide and so I use the same thing for the yellow balloon but when you're making that you want to really push down whatever ingredient you're using into the balloon and kind of stretch the balloon out and impact it so that there's no extra air inside. That's cool. What was your kids favorite ingredient to put inside the balloons. I think it was the salt, because when you stretch the thing out with the salt it just stays into position. And they thought it was really neat. But this was also nice because it's kind of like a cleaner version of play doh they like to make all different things and like we'll bring it in the car and they'll make a bowl, and then they'll like make different little things and put it in the bowl, and the cleanup is just throwing all the balloons into the balloon bin. Oh, that's cool. That's like a great little like road trip thing to in addition to all the science behind it. Yeah, yeah, also like sensory for the toddler. Right. Okay, another thing we've been doing with balloons is that instead of a ball pit we made a balloon pit. And it's nice because the balloons move nice and slowly. You can really see their movement and like how they fall it's kind of like you can do some physics experiments with them and play with them too. Oh yeah this looks so much like so much fun. And probably makes a lot of sense these days since all these like indoor kids gyms are with the little ball pits are closed. Yes, yes, and this is I looked at into getting some of the balls to make my own ball pit and I didn't know where to store them afterward. So this is really nice because you just pop all the balloons when you're done. You're blowing all these balloons up yourself. No, I'm not. I actually have this electronic balloon pop and so I just stick a balloon on like It's like super fast. That's really cool. I didn't even know that those existed that sounds like. That would be a lot of hot air. Okay, so we've also been sending mail and letters to lots of friends recently and the mail is a really great way to share your interest. So here we are we're working on a giant dinosaur letter. And after we finished it we folded it up and we fit it in a first class size envelope and mailed it off to a friend. And my older daughter here is measuring out and drawing a life size time in a source Rex tooth, and my younger daughter is gluing a dinosaur fact that we had printed out a whole bunch of different dinosaur facts and she cut them out and was gluing them on the dinosaur. But we're actually inspired to print the dinosaur facts by Natalie's daughter because she had sent my daughter a card and it had some jokes in it that she had printed and cut out. So through this pandemic, our children have become pen pal with my daughter being like the older sister, and they've been sending stuff and then my daughter got the postcard of the mushroom. And so she's been into mushrooms like just, you know, the whole theme of it and the beauty of the mushroom so I just love that you know it's also building a sense of community sharing the art. But I think it's, it's fun to get a letter in the mail. And I think this is amazing to me because I would never think to have a big scale project of a dinosaur, which is in itself an activity for your child, you know, take some time for the two of them to work on. But something so grand and big scale, like an art piece and then fold it up and send it to a friend and sort of like creating your own like little interactive community art, but like friendship art. Yeah, yeah, so we've actually we've been kind of thinking about what sort of things we could send in the mail because this is really nice it actually since it was in a first class letter. It just needed a 55 cent stamp on it and we're able to mail I actually stuck a second stamp on just in case, which I usually do, but it's still not bad for $1 tend to be able to send this and share it with a friend. I do want to send something in the mail and send a first class letter. There's some rules you have to follow the letter needs to be machinable, which means it needs to be a rectangle, not a strange shape and also not a square. It needs to be flexible. And it needs to have a maximum size of six and an eighth by 11 and a half by a quarter inch and a maximum weight of 3.5 ounces and a minimum size of three and a half inches by five inches. But another fun thing that we sent, we sent a rock through the first class mail because we found some Micah when we were hiking and we took this little flight off. And it's actually flexible so it was it went into our first class machineable letter. And I want to add about Diana, she doesn't just send something she always has wonderful stamps on the envelope which my daughter loves because she collects stamps so they're always like stem related stamps either vintage from my daughter to collect or new ones and I think on the USPS site you're able to like look for any kind of new stem stands so you add a little science onto your and your envelope as well. Yeah, yeah the stamps actually have really nice stories behind them they're very well researched and they always talk about the artist and how they design the stamps. So they're really neat they're like little works of art in themselves. The first thing we showed in the very first episode of stem chat with these Grimm's Rambo blocks. Actually became the inspiration for our stem chat content and kind of kicked us off into brainstorming all the ideas for all our different episodes. And it just kind of reinforced to us as I had never seen these rainbow blocks before that through the natural course of play that kids are learning about science and math and engineering with these rainbow arcs. Yeah, and I had a lot of fun. I'm talking to you about them Natalie I feel like it was really nice. And I love when it stacks together and never get tired of that. Okay, so in addition to the rainbow blocks we also have these unit blocks, they're the wood color blocks here, and they're a great way for kids to learn about math and my kids kind of play with them all together. Okay, so these are units blocks which means that one block is made out of two blocks, or even four blocks and it's a great way for kids to learn about fractions and partitioning shapes. Maybe they need a rectangle block that they don't have one so they can use to square blocks instead. And this goes back just like the same thing with the measuring cups in the kitchen, you know, the difference, you know, two half cups. That's right, more hands on learning. Exactly. So at the end of each episode of stem chat we kind of present our favorite things so we wanted to do the same for you today. Yep, and we're going to start by talking about the snap together robot kits, which my older daughter is obsessed with right now. So they make all different types of kits and the kits come, they're mostly plastic pieces that you can cut out and then you snap together so they don't actually need model glue or anything and they're pretty simple and easy to build. It's a little difficult to line up the gear so you just have to spend some extra time doing that. And this is what the finished robot looks like this is a solar powered bug bot. It works really well it crawls around and this kit was pretty affordable too. And she's also, she's been building them with her relatives and friends on zoom. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, my daughter used to build some of those little things to she loved them. It's really fun to do. It's quarantine time and I think everyone has gotten into puzzles. And what we kind of got into was my daughter got this as a gift it's a Harry Potter she loves Harry Potter. It's a 3d puzzle. So we've actually put the pieces back in but we built it last summer. And I couldn't believe that she could build this because okay, I've done flat puzzles everything was 2d. And I think kids are very, they've been growing up with 3d and thinking in 3d. And it was a great, you know, no screen activity, we kind of all work together and try to figure out the different, you know, levels and layers and it was really fun to do so I want to get another one of these to do. Actually, after my kids saw us talking about the 3d puzzle and episode one, they decided to get this puzzle for their dad for Christmas. Wow, we had a lot of fun putting it together. Yeah, it just brings a different element to puzzles. Okay, and so I wanted to bring up this new series of middle grade chapter books for kids it's from my friend terrace Terry Salting David, we actually have a full interview with her she's a friend of mine from San Francisco and she has a tinkering camp for girls and then now for boys and girls in the city. And this is her new book series the first book came out called the renegades by project and it has the whole, like a novel with diverse set of girls and so that when you read the book you feel like you're part of the club to and she has about eight or nine projects per book. This is to make a periscope it's in this comic book style. It's really fun so you know it was a way for kids who were going to her summer camps to and then they got to old for it I think. The fourth grade is a limit or fifth grade and this kind of like brought the stories and these ideas of stem onto for older girls. It's really nice I think it's such a great idea to be able to build a project while you're reading the book you feel like you're one of the characters in the story. So I'm going to share this tinker box it's basically a box of things like paper things that we would normally be recycling, and my kids love to grab things from it and make other things. And it's just a lot of fun it's hands on, and they get to do some paper engineering, and it's kind of like recycling it one more time before it gets actually recycled. And they have fun making something out of you know, recycled objects and I just that's what I love about that I think kids have such varied imagination so they can, you know, they are little artists, it's amazing. So this is I want to introduce you to chibi tronics, and it's what kids don't like stickers, I love stickers, and they're actually sticker circuits, and this was like a little. This was an idea that Diana gave me for my daughter's 10th birthday because I didn't know what to do for a birthday party, we only had a little small amount of girls over, and all the girls did this project and actually my daughter did more and so you have like the project to do, you put down the sticker tape and there's a battery in the box and a light bulb and you can light up the light up a light bulb and you really it's amazing I love this. This little kit and I actually give it to a lot of friends for Christmas or their birthdays because this is something that will engage kids and they're again away from a screen, but they're learning and they're having fun, and it's pretty cool stickers are great. You know it's really funny because my daughter's birthday is coming up and I just asked Natalie if she had any ideas for her birthday. I guess we're always sharing some ideas. Of course, of course, so if you want to find all our episodes that YouTube calm slash Adafruit. If you just go to the menu and click playlist you'll see stem chat right there and you can actually subscribe to just our playlist of episodes. So follow us on Instagram we just started the account and we'll let you know when we have new episodes out and we'll also include some new content on Instagram as well. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you both that was fantastic. We really appreciate it some really fantastic ideas. We've got some questions starting to appear in the chat so I'm going to look at those right now and see if if you have any questions again just type them in and we will get to those. So, here's one from our two actually they're in here now. I'm at actually first saying no questions this was wonderful my son listen in as a wish list of ideas for homeschool and his birthday now so thank you for that. Another one from Lou what you're doing is amazing. Wonder if you were able to speak. If you're willing to speak neuroscientifically experientially observationally or even just speculative leave how how a human mind will form differently from these enriched hands on ideas and play. You know, that's just interesting to think about how the kinds of activities you're talking about affect development. So, I know you're doing this really kind of from more from perspective as, you know, as, you know, professional designers and and and moms at the same time, but I don't know, you know what you're if you noticed anything about the development of your children as you've introduced activities like these. Well, you know it's funny to say that because we've been this is our passion since you know before we had kids. So I start seeing it in my daughter now that you know she's in middle school, and math to her is not a challenge it's like, I'm going to figure this out. You know, like, there is something about her generation where in her school I think it was around first grade, they started a tinker studio. So I think, and then I talked to her fifth grade teacher and he taught there for 20 years and this generation, I used to see girls go math is too hard. When I don't see it in this generation of girls now, because we're not making them scared anymore, we're getting them hands on they're building things, they're figuring things out themselves and they're not afraid for them. They already figured out the challenge when they were making stuff before so when it came down to actually working on equations, they know how to do it they know how to figure it out. That's what I found. And so I kind of told Diana was like hey you know what, it's kind of funny because we kind of were into the stuff but I think it really does work. Yeah, I think they get there were used to thinking about it if you start at a younger age and so when they're older, I think they're more comfortable with it. Also, so kind of a related observation I noticed about my younger daughter since we started doing origami very early. She's actually she's a toddler now she's three and she's actually pretty good at doing origami like I'm. I was very surprised I was like oh I didn't know you could fold those types of things when you were three so I guess if you start really young. It makes it easier as you get older. So I mean, I wish I was doing origami back when I was three years old. Yeah, I think I might be more mathematically oriented right now actually. So another other questions have come up. Let's so another one how deep do you get into math concepts is this more experiential or do you attempt to introduce terminology, you know that kind of comprehension early on. Okay, so for my kids because they're younger it's more experiential, I mean we will say some of the shape names when we're doing origami. But, you know, I think it's more that I just want them to kind of understand the concept. Yeah, and I think if you are also if you're doing a homeschool program, you can look up the standards for math for requirements and you can use kind of like what we, what we've kind of shown as examples and you can add in the terminology. If you think it's appropriate for their age level. I think as they get older you might want to say okay you know, these are the actual fractions maybe I'll write the equations on the side here for you and then also show you with the measuring cups so you can relate the, the what I'm going to add in the description to what's on the paper. Next to you. I think that's a really important point because that was that was another question I was thinking about is you know maybe you know how to connect this, you know more to to actual curriculum that the parents are dealing with whether they're, you know, doing homework with their kids at home that they're getting from virtual schooling or if they're homeschooling kids, you know and trying to kind of meet those curriculum requirements so I think that's a really good point to find ways of connecting it and so I was interested to see that you were talking about some of the criticisms which is something that you know we introduce that we were doing when we were doing live in person tours in the museum, we have medical sculptures and glass objects in our collection. So yeah I think that's really great you brought that out because I think it's terrific to kind of connect some of these ideas back when you can to to actual curriculum again if you're a parent, or a teacher actually looking for engaging activities like this. One more question that came just came in a minute ago. How do you store your rock collections and comment you know very inspiring possibilities you share with us tonight so how do you store your rock collections. Well, so right now it's, it is kind of like collections we have so many that we found, since we've been hiking a lot but most of our rocks we have been a big wooden tray that has sections in it. However, we also have a large Ikea bin of rocks that have yet to be cleaned that are in our guest bathroom bathtub. So that's that can be a challenge when you collect things. I know because I make art out of recycled plastic pieces and all that good stuff. So, it is a challenge when you start one. So questions tonight. Let's see. I think I've gotten the ones that that have been put in here. There was another one kind of followed from a previous question, you know, what we also say that having, having fun is really important to the formation of a person, you know pertaining to, you know that that stem mind, you know as as children grow, I think I think fun is is probably a pretty important part of this. I think it's, it's a key thing and I've, I've taught so many craft projects. We used to have an event called maker fair and the craft area would be where all the kids came. And I've taught craft projects to older, you know women and kids are not afraid to try anything. They will, they will actually even make something that you never even thought could be made because. I love that their imaginations are open. I think that's why we try to want, you know, come up with themes where we can make it easy, especially during this pandemic, you know, it's not can't really go to museums and can't really go, you know, kids can't really sometimes they can't even be in school so what are things we can do at home for them to kind of supplement and help them have fun. They're learning and they're busy, they're keeping busy, primarily without a screen all the time. I think fun is kind of like the best motivator to it's like you really want to, I feel like I want my children to be curious and so if they're like curious and have questions then they'll kind of do the work to find the answer. And one more question, how do you organize all of these activities do you try to keep everything separated and pulled out at set times or they just sort of available always I guess depending on the age of age of your child. Are they just kind of always out there available to them or do you set aside time or you know place separate these activities out. I talked about in our first episode, you should talk about that. Yeah, yeah, so I actually have all of the toys set out like the blocks, so they could just go up and get those on their own but for messier projects. You know we'll have like a designated experiment time with stuff set up to help us keep a little bit neater. And I guess like also scrubbing the rocks in the bathroom I usually try to sit in the bathroom with them when they're doing that or it just becomes a disaster. I think also it depends on your child if you think you know sometimes when they, they see it around too much they may not know so putting things out, you know, maybe on a pick a table or their playroom or something. Maybe every week you switch things out that are like little projects that they can do and it's kind of like oh it's new again and you can rotate them around to. Yeah, yeah we just we actually just after Christmas we started, we have kind of like a large shelf with all the toys and we do kind of a toy rotation but then my older daughter had gotten a microscope and the younger daughter got some magnifying glasses so we set up like a little science corner and they were very excited about it. Yeah, it's again it is a challenge I imagine to keep all of this organized but but fantastic projects I mean I was really struck by many of them. I don't know thank you from one of our participants. One of the projects I was struck by was the male art piece. I think that's a really great one that I think a lot of people have rediscovered during the pandemic I know we have a, an exhibition of male art from different different age models from kids up through older adults that's up right now. So, but it seems that that's really had sort of a resurgence. So is that something that you were thinking about in terms of that project is that if you've seen other male art come your way or is just like, you know, our kids are pen pals and this really is a good way to make that connection. I've always kind of been following it online. I guess I went to a stamp convention several years ago and I was like oh these stamps are interesting and I was kind of thinking about other things you can mail because I think someone said you can mail like a box of candy like some of the candy actually fits within the first class mail requirements or maybe you put some extra stamps on so it's kind of been like a fun challenge to see what you can mail. So next things we're planning to do we're going to send like a secret coded letter with the key in it to one of my daughter's friends and then we may also mail some snacks so my younger daughter can have snack time and face time. That's what cool that's actually reminds me of this book there's actually like a whole spy project and I have like a code cipher. I sent this book to Diana to read with our girls as a gift and you can actually make a whole code key and then you can decode them messages with each other. Okay we'll look up that chapter maybe we'll do that for our. We'll look forward to future episodes of stem chat and any other questions before we we finish up for the evening, you can put them in there now. But I really look forward to seeing what you both come up with next it's just a fantastic idea and one again that just seems so fitting for the times where we're living through right now, particularly but I think anytime. I think parents you know looking for ways to engage their, their children. And I could see, I could see you both developing kits for for parents down the road as well so that's something else just a suggestion I had to put out there for our audience to also look at your local institutions, you know libraries, museums and others and may not be able to offer in person programs right now many of them are producing kits with activities including stem activities that you can arrange to pick up and use at home so I know that's something we'll be doing here this coming weekend. We have a free admission three day weekend to spread out the period so that people aren't coming in all at one time. And we're producing kits with stem based activities that parents can pick up and take home, rather than having the crowded activity tables that we used to have in the museum for programs like that so. I definitely encourage folks to look for those kinds of things out there, wherever you are as well. But I want to thank you both tonight for really fantastic program fantastic ideas. And I have one more question here looks like a question of related to coding but it doesn't look like you're quite getting into that yet. We have stuff planned for future episodes I mean my daughter has done coding they did start they do start young now. And it's funny thing because my daughter was really into these there's these robots called dot and dash, and Diana's older daughter now is into it and so the two of them have face timed and Chloe has done little experiments to show her what can be done. So there are and I think I really like these robots I think they have at the Children's Museum in San Francisco, and you're able to visually see how to code it's very visual and manipulate a robot. So my daughter has done stuff where she's had the robot come in the kitchen to say hi mom and then she can record her voice and go back but it's just the beginning of that kind of stuff. But I think also for us it's not, we don't, we're not necessarily pushing any kids to be just you know coders and whatever we want to explore all aspects of stem nature and everything around us, especially at this time. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I was gonna say I think some of the early coding to is about just kind of moving around in the different spaces. Because we actually so we got the dash robot after Natalie's daughter, demoed it. And it's, I think some of the initial things you're just saying to the robot like you know go forward to and then to the right three. Yeah, I think robots are where a lot of kids kind of got their start, you know, kind of started to get interested in coding I know I remember that with with my son. But, but yeah, I mean, that's something that again they can build on over time but I think that right now it probably is important for kids to get outside and connect with the natural world as much as they can given how much time we're spending on screens. Well again I want to thank you all for spending some screen time with us tonight. And I wanted to let you know that we will be releasing the video if you know folks who'd like to see this who haven't seen it yet. We're participating tonight that is. We're on Telfer Museum's YouTube channel in the near future, and you may be seeing it through other other avenues as well and please look out for Diana and Natalie on stem chat on the web series and check out the the great projects that do they're doing in future episodes. Thank you all for joining us tonight. I hope you have a great evening and please check out our schedule for more of pulse we have more virtual talks and a couple of virtual stem workshops that we're doing on Saturday with the society of women engineers here in in Savannah, Georgia. So thanks everyone and we hope you have a good evening and hopefully see you again soon. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Bye bye.