STEM books for kids (and other resources)
If you care about the progress of Stalk — science, applied science, mathematics, and technology — you already know the bad news. Effectually the world, rationality is under set on. Politicians deny the facts. Adults reject the scientific show.
Simply the skillful news is it has never been easier to discover excellent books, games, and applications for educational activity children almost STEM concepts. Hither are a few such resources, some of which I've mentioned in my articles for Parenting Science. I'll be adding more in the time to come.
Full disclosure: I include links to items that can be purchased through Amazon.com. Equally an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This means that (at zero cost to you lot) I will earn a commission if you lot click through the link and finalize a buy.
Activities and experiments
Want to conduct a variety of fascinating experiments at home — experiments that illustrate surprising phenomenon, and crave simply items you already have on hand?
Bank check out Crystal Chatterton's opens in a new windowCrawly Scientific discipline Experiments for Kids: 100+ Fun Stalk / STEAM Projects and Why They Piece of work. A Chemist by preparation, Chatterton doesn't simply tell you what to do. She also explains — clearly and very concisely — the "hows and whys" of what you'll observe. An fantabulous resource for families with uncomplicated school kids.
For younger children, cheque out my Parenting Science pages about opens in a new windowactivities and experiments for preschoolers.
Astronomy and physics
The dark sky used be a expert recruiting tool for careers in Stem. Nowadays, light pollution makes information technology difficult for many children to run across an awesome, starry sky. But there are splendid resources for budding astronomers and physicists.
The opens in a new windowNASA website features many free online games and activities related to outer space exploration and astronomy.
In addition, I recommend the Professor Astro Cat books by physicist Dominic Walliman and illustrator Ben Newman. In opens in a new windowProfessor Astro True cat's Frontiers of Space, Walliman provides kids with an overview of infinite exploration. opens in a new windowProfessor Astro True cat's Diminutive Adventure teaches kids about physics. These books are smart, engaging, and humorous. They illustrations are bold and eye-communicable, with an early space historic period, retro feel.
Kids will also be inspired by the books of David Aguilar. His opens in a new windowInfinite Encyclopedia: A Tour of Our Solar Organization and Beyond (National Geographic Kids) is beautifully illustrated with photographs and crawly, naturalistic paintings.
Estimator programming
Yes, kids can learn to code — and it can boost their interest in programming and robotics.
For example, in one experimental report, 6-year-old girls were taught how to plan a robot with simple commands (forrad, backward, right, left, repeat).
After just 20 minutes of play, the kids were interviewed about their attitudes. Compared with girls in a command group, the girls who had merely programmed expressed greater enthusiasm for programming, and more confidence in their power to use robots (Master et al 2017).
But where and how should children begin?
Become a Scratch business relationship — for gratis!
Researchers at MIT have adult a opens in a new windowfree, online programming environs called Scratch. With Scratch, kids select visual programming elements and larn to combine them into sequences of code. There are other programming platforms for kids, only Scratch has special features that I actually like:
- Creativity and versatility rule. Kids can create animations, arcade games, interactive stories, chat programs, random response generators, advanced platform games, calculators, and homework drills.
- Kids join a community. They tin mail service and share their creations with others.
- The customs is chastened by people at MIT.
Scratch is aimed at kids ages eight and up. For younger children — ages 5-7 — MIT researchers have also created opens in a new windowScratch Junior. It avoids text commands in favor of purely visual ones, and, like Scratch, it'south complimentary.
You don't need any books to using Scratch, simply I recommend ane — especially if you lot have no experience with introducing programming to kids.
DK publishes a number of Scratch workbooks for young children, including opens in a new windowDK Workbooks: Coding in Scratch: Games Workbook. Motivated children as young as 5 might use these successfully — if they work aslope and adult to help them.
For older kids, opens in a new windowHow to Code in ten Easy Lessons: Larn how to design and lawmaking your very own reckoner game (Super Skills) is an excellent beginner'south book for anyone who is clueless about programming. It presupposes no prior noesis or feel, and functions as a kind of general orientation that tin can be completely quickly. In addition to introducing kids to Scratch, the book also includes some exercises in HTML. The book is recommended for kids age eight and upwards.
Another skillful starting point for older kids (age viii+) is Jon Woodcock'due south excellent opens in a new windowCoding Games in Scratch. Dissimilar How to Lawmaking in 10 Easy Lessons, this book focuses exclusively on Scratch, and it'due south a much longer piece of work. It takes kids, step past pace, through the creation of viii games.
For older kids who've already learned the basics — or who can take hold of on quickly — I also like Al Sweigart's opens in a new windowScratch Programming Playground: Learn to Program by Making Absurd Games. Sweigart walks the reader, step past step, through the programming of each project, illustrated with screenshots. The culminating project is an advanced platform game. The book does an splendid job of teaching readers how to solve certain types of problems in Scratch (similar how to clone objects, or make them carve up in two, or bounce off walls). It also invites kids to come up up with their ain modifications. What it doesn't attempt to exercise is teach kids the sorts of programming fundamentals yous'd find in a secondary schoolhouse informatics textbook.
If that's what you're looking for, you should have a look at Majed Marji'southward opens in a new windowLearn to Programme with Scratch: A Visual Introduction to Programming with Games, Fine art, Science, and Math. Both books are aimed at kids age ten and up.
Computer experimentation
Maybe you don't take a estimator for your child to code with. Or perhaps yous'd similar to demystify the parts of a computer past putting ane together at dwelling house. Or maybe you take an older child who would similar to build a figurer-based weather condition station, security photographic camera, robot, or video game console.
What's the solution? The Raspberry Pi — a very small, very cheap computer that runs on the Linux operating system, every bit well as Raspbian (an operating organisation made expressly for Pi computers).
Created past a charitable system in the U.K., the Raspberry Pi comes in several models, ranging from the blank-bones Pi Nix, to the more avant-garde models of Raspberry Pis iii and 4.
If you're new to this sort of thing, you can past a Pi starter kit. Kits vary in what they contain. My family had good luck with a Raspberry Pi three complete starter kit from Vilros that included the reckoner, a example, a ability supply, 2 heat sinks, and a micro SD bill of fare preloaded with the installer software (NOOBS) that helps you lot gear up the operating arrangement of your choice.
You can cheque the price of that detail kit opens in a new windowhither, but I recommend that you store around and determine what sort of model and package is nearly suited to your needs. And any you choose, keep in mind that y'all volition also crave the usual peripherals — a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor.
Learn more about the Raspberry Pi, and its agile customs of users, by visiting opens in a new windowThe Raspberry Pi Foundation's website.
Development and ecology
My own background is in behavioral ecology and evolutionary anthropology, and I'm a lifelong paleontology geek. So I'one thousand biased. But in that location are objective reasons to think that dinosaurs are an outstanding mode for children to acquire important concepts in biological science. Research suggests that states of marvel enhance learning (Gruber et al 2014), and few topics can excite a child's curiosity more than dinosaurs!
opens in a new window 
In opens in a new windowthis Parenting Scientific discipline article, I offer tips for turning your child'south interest in dinosaurs into a passion for science, and I propose several excellent books for pedagogy biological concepts.
Among these is the storybook, opens in a new windowHow the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses (Evolving Minds), created by researchers and tested on children between the ages of 5 and viii. In experiments, researchers found that but reading this story aloud to children enhanced their grasp of development and natural selection.
Some other proficient book — untested by researchers but beautiful and well-conceived — is Jason Mentum's opens in a new windowIsland: A Story of the Galápagos. This book presents the development of a volcanic island, showing — in a series of sequential panels — how life beginning takes agree, and then adapts to changes over time.
To get preschoolers thinking almost animate being behavior, I like some of the "phase 1" books in the "Let'due south-read-and-discover-out" serial by Harper Collins. opens in a new windowHow Animal Babies Stay Safe (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science) explores concepts like cover-up and parental care. opens in a new windowLarge Tracks, Fiddling Tracks: Post-obit Animal Prints (Allow's-Read-and-Notice-Out Science, Stage i) gets kids thinking almost the traces that behavior leaves behind, and offers a jumping off point for tracking activities.
For information about tracking, see opens in a new windowthis article nigh the cognitive challenges it presents, and these opens in a new windowsuggested activities for young children.
For older kids ready to larn almost the history of life on globe, I recommend Helen Bonner'south highly entertaining opens in a new windowWhen Fish Got Anxiety, When Bugs Were Big, and When Dinos Dawned: A Drawing Prehistory of Life on Globe (National Geographic Kids). As the championship indicates, it presents information in a comic book format.
Mathematics
As I explain elsewhere, opens in a new windowsure types of lath games and carte du jour games can help immature children larn about the number line. In addition, research suggests we can boost early on mathematical skills with these opens in a new windowpreschool number activities.
And just a few minutes each 24-hour interval with the right educational app could make a big difference for some children.
For example, in an experimental report of 587 first graders, Talia Berkowitz and her colleagues gave every participating family an iPad, and so assigned some kids to use a free, story-based mathematics app called Bedtime Math. Other children (in a control group) were assigned to use an app that also featured storytelling, but lacked mathematical content.
Over the form of the school year, kids who oftentimes used the math app with their parents made substantial gains compared with kids in the command group. And the outcome near dramatic among children with math-anxious parents (Berkowitz et al 2016). You tin get this opens in a new windowapp for gratuitous from the Bedtime Math website.
It shouldn't really surprise us that well-crafted educational materials tin spur achievement, especially if they help parents find ways to explain and teach. Personally, I'one thousand impressed with books past Loreen Leedy, which mostly target children in the early on-to-mid primary school grades.
Her book, opens in a new windowMeasuring Penny (Ascent and Shine) follows a kid as she takes a series of measurements of her dog. Leedy explores both standard and nonstandard units of measurement, and inspires readers (grades 2-four) to accept up measurement projects of their own. For other excellent Leedy math books, encounter opens in a new windowMission: Addition, opens in a new windowThe Great Graph Contest, opens in a new windowSubtraction Action, and opens in a new windowInformation technology's Probably Penny.
What virtually older children — kids who've learned multiplication, segmentation, fractions, and decimals?
I've noticed that many kids become turned off by mathematics because it seems to be most memorizing addition facts, times tables, and simple algorithms. They don't realize that mathematics can exist cute, and reveal fascinating patterns. These kids need to be introduced to math as an intellectual discipline — not just an occasion for rote memorization. And for this, I recommend two lively, intensely-illustrated books by Johnny Ball.
In opens in a new windowGet Figure!: Large Questions About Numbers, Ball traces the origins of different number systems around the globe, and introduces the "magic" numbers (pi, magic squares, the gilt ratio, primes, etc) as well as geometry, topology, logic, and anarchy theory. Throughout, Ball peppers the text with questions, puzzles, and activities.
In his 2d book, opens in a new windowWhy Pi? (Large Questions), Brawl explores the many applications of mathematics — how humans throughout history have used math to sympathize the globe. Topics include the measure out of fourth dimension, electricity, music, light, navigation, and mapping.
Spatial skills and structure
Speaking of navigation and mapping, there is testify that young children can learn and use simple maps. Gail Hartman'due south opens in a new windowAs the Crow Flies (Rise and Shine) helps innovate preschoolers to the concept of mapping past getting them to imagine a bird's middle view of the ground. For uncomplicated schoolhouse children, Loreen Leedy's opens in a new windowMapping Penny'south Globe is useful.
For more information about mapping activities, see opens in a new windowthis Parenting Science article almost building spatial skills. There I also discuss the show that structure toys can boost spatial skills.
How does it work? Research suggests that opens in a new windowplaying with blocks helps children learn to model shapes in their minds, so they can anticipate what objects await like from different angles. It also appears that a particular form of play — opens in a new windowstructured cake play — is particularly helpful.
If yous consider that opens in a new windowconstruction play has other educational benefits, it seems that construction toys — like traditional edifice blocks, Legos, Mega Blox, and wooden planks — are among the most versatile, enduring, and price effective toys yous tin buy.
Can video games boost spatial skills? I call back opens in a new windowthe show is pretty persuasive. In experiments, people assigned to play action video games (first person "shooter" games) acquired better mental rotation abilities (Greenish and Bavelier 2007; Feng et al 2007; Boot et al 2008). To engagement, at to the lowest degree one study has also found benefits from playing the classic game of Tetris (Terlecki et al 2008).
References: STEM books for kids
Berkowitz T, Schaeffer MW, Maloney EA, Peterson L, Gregor C, Levine SC, Beilock SL. 2015. Math at home adds upwardly to achievement in schoolhouse. Science 350 (6257): 196-198.
Boot WR, Kramer AF, Simons DJ, Fabiani G, and Gratton G. 2008. The effects of video game playing on attending, retention, and executive control. Acta Psychol (Amst). 129(3):387-98.
Feng J, Spence I, and Pratt J. 2007. Playing an action video game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition. Psychol Sci. 18(x):850-5.
Green CS and Bavelier D. 2007. Activity-video-game experience alters the spatial resolution of vision. Psychol Sci. eighteen(ane):88-94.
Gruber MJ, Gelman BD, Ranganath C. 2014. States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron. 84(2):486-96.
Master et al. 2017. Programming experience promotes higher Stem motivation among first-form girls. J Exp Kid Psychol. 160:92-106.
Content of "STEM books for kids" last modified 12/11/2021
Paradigm credits for Stalk books for kids
championship prototype of robots on alien planet by opens in a new windowStefan Keller / pixabay
image of girls experimenting by opens in a new windowUS Army CCDC / flickr
paradigm of opens in a new windowRaspberry Pi past flickr
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