How much do you know about engineering? Could you spot common misconceptions and identify unlikely engineers? 

One of the most pervasive misconceptions is that engineering is too complicated for young children to find engaging. But did you know that 65% of surveyed scientists and graduate students reported that their interest in STEM began before middle school? It’s time to break stereotypes. Challenge those misconceptions. 

 Take our “Engineering IQ” quiz and find out your engineering IQ! Good luck. Have fun and share our quiz with your peers!

EiE and the Museum of Science, Boston have submitted two panels for consideration for next March’s SXSW EDU conference, the education component of the famous SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. And, we need your help to get to there! SXSW EDU organizers have a unique way of selecting panels. They collect thousands of potential entries like ours, and then call on the education community to vote on those they would like to see actually take place through a process called PanelPicker.

Hands-on engineering activities empower young children to see themselves as problem solvers. They learn that there’s more than one way to solve a problem, and that it’s okay to fail and try again. A classroom-tested engineering design challenge with an age-appropriate engineering design process will provide fun and engaging opportunities for the youngest learners. We found in creating our early childhood curricula that engineering activities should look different in preschool in comparison to kindergarten. Learn about those differences below and why age-appropriate engineering activities are so important.

How can you make engineering even more fun? Try it out with the whole family! Educators often tell us amazing stories about students that began engineering in the classroom, then took it upon themselves to bring their designs home and improve them with the help of family and friends. When students take their engineering work home, they become the experts. They can impress their families with their knowledge of engineering, technology, and the Engineering Design Process, and they might even teach their parents something new! We compiled a list of four units with simple and fun testing procedures that use materials students can find at home or transport easily from the classroom. If you’re looking for a fun, hands-on way to get families involved in students’ STEM lessons, these units are the perfect way to keep the learning going after the school day ends!

How much do you know about engineering? Think you can spot common misconceptions about the field of engineering? 

Before creating our preschool curriculum Wee Engineer, we knew that it was important to answer these questions, "Why engineer with preschoolers?" and “How will engineering support early childhood development?” Preschoolers make a lot of things, and our challenge was to channel this natural inclination of children into an engineering activity that would align with the skills they’re already developing. We conducted hours of research, consulted with many early childhood educators, and tested our activities in various early childhood settings with the goal of answering the above question.

Through this work, we identified several ways in which engineering is beneficial to young children as they develop skills in these important learning domains: social-emotional, language acquisition, executive functioning, and fine and gross motor skills.