Ellis’s rich early childhood education program saw another growth spurt in early November, when Ana Davis became the first STEM teacher working five days a week in all South End and Jamaica Plain locations. Weekly STEM lessons have now joined music classes as enrichment programs that start with fun and teach along the way.
Ana came to Ellis with a degree from Harvard in the history of science and a job at the Boston Children’s Museum, where she helped develop education programs. “The Children’s Museum job definitely got me interested in teaching science to very young children,” she says. “It’s beautiful to watch how everything is new and magical at that age.”
Ellis now offers every toddler and preschool child 30 minutes per week of age-appropriate STEM education. “These are really child-directed activities geared to exploring and learning,” Ana says. She closely coordinates with the classroom teachers so topics mesh with the current classroom curricula and are age-appropriate.
Recently the youngest STEM learners had a classroom unit on bodies and what they can do. To build on that work, Ana filled the STEM lab with mirrors. (In Jamaica Plain, she brought mirrors into the classrooms.) Children were delighted watching themselves in front of the mirrors and showing their friends their reflections. They loved the silliness and the fun as they pointed out different parts of their faces, investigated their toys’ reflections, and threw reflective foil into the air to watch it float back down.
Other topics for the one- and two-year-olds include learning how objects move. Ana planned activities using balls on ramps, objects to roll on the floor, and a magnet wall where the children could build their own ramp course. A unit on sounds gave children shakers with different items hidden inside. It’s an experiment to shake one thing after another, notice the differences, and try to understand what makes the different sounds.
Some activities are meaningful at different levels for children of different ages. A lesson on throwing different objects into a wind tunnel and seeing what happens was such a big hit with younger children that Ana decided to give the three-year olds a turn, with an appropriate age twist. “Older children will not only get to see the fun results of throwing things into the wind tunnel but will also build their very own parachutes to watch objects soar through the air!”
Three- and four-year-olds can engage in more complex activities. For sessions on color, children matched a variety of materials to the appropriate places on a color wheel and talked about the different shades of a single color. They loved using eyedrops to place a mix of food coloring and vinegar onto sheets of baking soda and watch bubbles of color magically appear.
Lessons on water let children see what sinks or floats. Some children start to understand the difference between light and heavy objects; all children have fun. “Children always love playing with water,” Ana says. “Sensory play is a really important element of early learning, so water can be used both to explore science and to engage touch and sensation.”
Ana is now working with the four-year olds on the most complex project yet. Over several weeks they are building simple machines from wooden Kibo blocks and learning some basics of coding to make the machines move. “Each step of the way, the children are having a blast,” Ana says.
Ellis is fortunate to have Ana in this role. When she turns materials found around the centers into science projects or finds new ways to engage children and use time, Ana’s creative juices flow to develop ideas and put them into action. “I love creating play-based activities where children set the direction,” Ana says. My job is to see that they leave with some baseline understanding of the learning goals I’ve set.”
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