Fuel At-Home STEM Explorations
Explore free resources supported by the National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation, which provided support for the development of Connect4Learning, has long supported innovative STEM education programs that supplement classroom learning and draw from education theory and best practices. To help schools that have closed their doors to restrict the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the National Science Foundation has identified a few STEM resources that help children to get creative and dive deeper into STEM concepts.
PEEP Family Science
PEEP Family Science is designed for parents and their children. It comes in free, easy-to-use apps, in English and Spanish, that make it fun for families to do science together at home. It focuses on the science about which young children are naturally curious: shadows, ramps and movement, sounds, and colors. Featuring characters children love, the apps combine animated stories from the TV show PEEP and the Big Wide World, one of the first STEM-focused shows for preschool-aged children, with playful, hands-on science activities.
Each app features four weeks of videos of animated stories, live-action videos featuring real children, hands-on activity instructions, and parent videos. Along with the science apps, there is an extensive set of video and print resources to support educators and program coordinators.
- Peep Family Science: Shadows Parents and children explore shadows outdoors, including their own. They’ll notice how shadows change over the course of the day. Indoors, they’ll create shadows using lamps and flashlights and experiment with changing their shapes and sizes. They’ll use what they discovered to make shadow and puppets and put on a play.
- Peep Family Science: Ramps Parents and children explore ramps indoors and outdoors. Together, they’ll experiment with ramps that are steep, test how objects move down ramps with smooth and rough surfaces, discover that some things roll while others slide down ramps, and invent some ramps of their own.
- Peep Family Science: Sounds Parents and children listen to and identify sounds that make up their everyday world, indoors and outdoors. Together, they’ll explore and compare loud, soft, high, and low sounds, experiment with their voices, create their own musical instruments, and record and test the sounds they make.
- Peep Family Science: Colors Parents and children explore the colors they see around them, indoors and outdoors. Together, they’ll experiment with mixing two colors to create a new one, notice colors that blend in with their environment, compare different shades of the same color, and discover how light can change colors.
PEEP Family Science supports preschool science concepts and skills emphasized in Connect4Learning such as making observations and comparisons, testing and problem solving, and communicating and sharing ideas. These skills strengthen literacy and critical thinking, and develop initiative, curiosity, attention, and perseverance.
We encourage you to share one or more of these resources with the families of children you serve.