By Briana King, Professional Development Manager |

Our education staff is always looking for new ways to engage children in the classroom and opportunities to learn from other early childhood educators. This summer, six staff members attended the Early Learning System Initiative (ELSI) S.T.E.A.M. Camp to gather with other educators and coaches to strengthen their relationships and early learning teaching skills.

S.T.E.A.M. stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. Research shows that S.T.E.A.M.-focused learning can help children with cognitive development, including memory, reasoning, problem-solving, exploration, and discovery. It also helps develop social and emotional skills as well as language and communication. This is true for all young children, including infants and toddlers.

The ELSI Camp was a multi-day learning event for early educators and their coaches to practice incorporating S.T.E.A.M. through hands-on interactive workshops, outdoor activities, relationship-building, and more.

Those of us who attended the event were encouraged to learn that we are already incorporating S.T.E.A.M. practices in the classroom in various ways. Children can learn the fundamentals through classroom experiences like sound exploration with musical instruments or household objects used to create different sounds, walks in nature that offer opportunities to observe and describe the natural world, experimenting with floating and sinking objects, cooking projects, building with blocks, and even learning how to use utensils at the meal table.

Art has always been an important aspect of our classrooms. In fact, last spring our teachers taught kids of all ages about famous artists throughout history, and then the kids created artwork of their own that reflected the style of certain artists. You can read this blog to learn more about this program and Night at the Museum, an event for parents to see the art created by the kids.