MotherReader

There’s a new meme in town. STEM Friday focuses on books that promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The round-up this week is hosted at Wrapped in Foil.

Over the year I’ll be sharing the preschool program I created for the library and that I’m presenting once a month. The concept behind the program is to introduce science topics by combining fiction and nonfiction, songs and mini-experiments, action rhymes and hands-on times. The target age for the program is three to six years old, so the information and experiments are basic, and intended to encourage a questioning, observational approach to scientific topics.

Motion and Force
Book: Move! by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Song: “This Is the Way”
This is the way we walk to school
Walk to school, walk to school
This is the way we walk to school
So early in the morning.

(Repeat with: kids’ suggestions and/or run, hop, slide)

Book: Forces Make Things Move, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Experiment: “Pushing, Pulling & Stopping”
Give each child a ball. Push the ball. Stop the ball. Both the push and the stopping were forces. Show other forces. Pull the ball with a rubber band. Drop the ball to show gravity. Push, pull, and stop on different surfaces to show the effect of friction.

Book: Hot Rod Hamster, by Cynthia Lord

Experiment: “Animal Crash”
Put a stuffed animal on a toy car and push against a stable object. The animal goes flying off, because objects in motion tend to stay in motion. (Which also shows why we need seat belts.)

Book: What is Velocity? by Joanne Barkan

Book: What’s Faster Than a Speeding Cheetah? by Robert E. Wells

Experiment: “Speed and Distance”
Set up toy cars on different-size ramps and of different surfaces. What changes the speed or distance the cars will go? The size of the ramp? The surface they roll on?