Date : March 30, 2019
While there are many children who naturally love to read, what do you do if your child is more science-minded? STEM activities for kids (AKS science, technology, engineering and mathematical activities) can be equally valuable in encouraging literacy skills in your child. By carefully selecting books they’ll be more likely to be interested in and following that with interesting and fun STEM-based activities, your child will be a little bookworm in no time! Read on to find out more!
Be subject-savvy
Do you have a dinosaur-loving child or is your child obsessed with space? There are clever ways to combine STEM activities for kids with reading. Choose a picture book or a non-fiction book written for kids and read it with your child. Afterwards, encourage them to talk about what they’ve read.
You could go a step further and design a fun activity or experiment. With dinosaurs, a sandpit, some toy bones and a paintbrush, you could encourage your little palaeontologist to excavate dinosaur fossils. With your budding astrophysicist, you could both conduct a study of the night sky and map out the constellations. Or you can build a model of your child’s favourite planet together.
Mad Scientist!
Books like Roald Dahl’s fabulous George’s Marvellous Medicine are great for encouraging science-loving kids to get into reading. If your budding little scientist loves conducting experiments or getting their hands dirty, why not try some age appropriate chemistry-based experiments? From making slime to experiments with colour and growing sugar crystals, there’s a host of amazing science experiments for kids on YouTube or on educational websites like this one.
Discover the wonder of nature
If your child loves animals, nature and being outside, reading books based in the Australian landscape can be hugely inspirational. Obviously May Gibbs’ wonderful stories are great for this, but also Jeannie Baker’s Where the Forest Meets the Sea or Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French. Afterwards, you can encourage your child to take a nature walk with you, discovering interesting tree and flower specimens which you can then take home to identify. Your child could keep a nature diary to record their findings. If they love animals, you could encourage them to take note of birds and wildlife they see on their travels and draw what they look like.
