EYFS resources

Overview

At NUSTEM, we know that the earlier intervention starts, the better. The aims of our EYFS units are to develop, deliver and enable a high-quality STEM intervention in EYFS. There are many adults other than the teacher working in EYFS settings who will all be key influencers but may not have the STEM qualifications or training. This intervention is an opportunity to include these adults along with families of EYFS children in promoting STEM and STEM careers in EYFS and to ensure that gender (and all other) stereotyping is avoided during STEM interactions with children.

We have produced a series of units, each based on a high quality STEM story books. The units include STEM related questions to go with the book, a STEM person with a related career and their attributes, instructions for three adult led and three provocations related to the story to use in the setting and a STEM at home activity. The packs also contain STEM guides for practitioners to go with each activity including correct explanations of concepts and vocabulary lists and questions and suggestions for developing play, extending STEM learning and promoting STEM attributes. We plan to develop a consistency in approach in all adults, by imparting the units to practitioners in a non-intimidating, easy to access way.

Units

By Lipton sale at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3356308

The Meteorologist

Meteorologists use special equipment and make forecasts of what the weather is going to be like. Meteorologist are:
Curious and want to know what the weather will be like in the future.
Observant when they look at what the weather is like today.
Collaborative as they work together with other people to get their job done.

Glaciologist

A glaciologist is a scientist who studies glaciers. Glaciers are huge lumps of ice found on mountains or near the poles which move slowly towards the sea. Glaciologists are:

Curious and want to know more about how the ice in glaciers moves.

Observant as they watch the ice carefully to see how it is moving and changing.

Resilient as they need to be able work in cold and windy conditions. They need to be quick to recover and get back out in the cold again each day.

Marine Engineer

Marine engineers make and fix boats and ships, submarines, oil rigs and drilling equipment.

Marine engineers are:

Curious and want to know which materials sink and float.

Creative when they design and build things like boats, ships, submarines and oil rigs.

Resilient when their ideas or designs don’t work the first time – they try again to get it right.

Lighting Technician

Lighting technicians design the way lights are used in television programmes, films, concerts, in the theatre or to light up buildings, statues or bridges from the outside.

Lighting technicians are:

Observant and look carefully at light and shadows.

Creative in the way they use lights to make people feel happy, sad, frightened or excited.

Collaborative when they work in a team to set up lights for shows, filming and events.

Fluid Scientist

Fluid scientists are interested in how liquid, gas, blood and plasma are like and how they move and behave.

Fluid scientists are:

Curious about what different fluids can do and how they might help us.

Observant when they watch fluids carefully to see how they behave.

Resilient because they try lots of tests before they find the best uses for different fluids.

Robotics Engineer

Robotics engineers design, build and programme machines to do jobs more easily than a human could.

Robotics engineers are:

Creative when they design and build robots for different jobs.

Observant as they need to find and fix faults in robots and computer code.

Resilient because they need to try lots of different ways to design, build and programme robots before they get them to work properly.

Magnet Engineer

Magnet engineers design magnets or machines that use magnets. Magnet engineers are:

Curious about how they can use magnets in different machines.

Creative when they use magnets in their designs.

Observant as they look closely at what magnets can do.

Arborist

Arborists work for lots of different people to make sure their trees are healthy. Arborists are sometimes called Tree surgeons.