What Can We Build Together Using Bricks and S.T.E.M.?

Funded Sep 11, 2019

Our community Bricks4Kidz experts, parents, teachers and students came together to make this collaborative experience a success. Students welcomed our guests and readied their curious minds for the introduction of new materials and in anticipation of hands' on lesson activities. Previous knowledge from our study of balls was accessed as students readily shared and made connections throughout the station challenges. Rotating through teacher directed and free build learning zones of discovery offered students opportunities with engineering and critical thinking. From discovering the exponential patterning structure as they built a ball out of legos, realizing that it did indeed have the ability to roll, working together with partners and small groups, gaining and using new vocabulary, designing and testing their own vehicle construction that could move and roll were but some of the benefits. The stand up ramp station allowed students to explore science concepts of gravity and elevation in relationship to speed and to conduct scientific trials. If their design failed and broke apart, students gained practice and showed eagerness to try again. While working in the cause and effect tubular free build station, students combined their ideas and structures to make basketball hoops and complex pathways. This station concluded with high fives and hugs for a job well done.

I recall specific growth moments for each student as they demonstrated successful group work, attended and engaged, practiced communication skills, included others in their play, celebrated with a peer, had patience and took turns. Our PreK students developed and demonstrated directed focus as they modified and tested the engineering challenges in each station with a sense of excitement and proud accomplishment. To have this shared experience with our parent volunteers reinforces and validates the benefits of engagement and the beauty of coming together to create a nurturing learning community.

The impact of our visitors continues to shape our students' social skills as we welcome and learn with new community experts for other topics of study. Since this in-school opportunity, we have witnessed greater growth in teamwork, student acceptance of others' ideas, taking the risk to try new tasks and persistence through unfamiliar challenges. Throughout our school day we are seeing evidence of more purposeful play and construction with various materials and greater flexibility in combining materials in symbolic ways as they create.

Thank you for gifting this in-school foundational experience to nurture our PreK students as they develop new awarenesses, skills, and sense of curiosity.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Knost