What happens when you direct the energy and imagination of a kindergartener into the engineering design process? That’s the question my colleagues and I set out to answer last year at Kingsley Montessori School in Boston when we decided to develop a Kindergarten Engineering Design Workshop. One source of inspiration was the Engineering is Elementary curriculum.

See you at the NSTA STEM Forum!

The National Science Teachers Association holds its annual STEM Forum and Expo later this week in Denver. A team from Engineering is Elementary will be there, and we’d love to see you. Find us at booth #527 in the exhibit hall, and check out five sessions featuring hands-on EiE in-school and afterschool activities. Review the list below and mark your calendar today!

Have you been charged with integrating engineering into the curriculum at your school or afterschool program? Are you wondering how the heck that will work? Help is at hand.

When the Next Generation Science Standards were first released in 2013, the National Academy of Engineering quickly recognized that many educators could use some support addressing the new expectations around engineering education. The Academy mustered a committee of prominent K-12 engineering educators (including EiE’s founder and director, Dr. Christine Cunningham) to brainstorm a solution, sought input from teachers across the country, and, a little less than a year ago, launched LinkEngineering, a new website that’s expressly designed to help educators start teaching engineering.

The EiE video takes you inside a D.C. classroom where every kid is an engineer!

The National Science Foundation (NSF)’s second annual “STEM for ALL Video Showcase” opens today, and you’re invited. This event is like the Sundance Film Festival for STEM education research: it includes more than 150 NSF-supported projects, all sharing short videos that showcase their work in STEM education. A production by Engineering is Elementary’s talented videography team is one of the entries . . . and there’s a “people’s choice” award. So please visit, view, and vote!

It’s National Teacher Appreciation Week! Personally, I‘m sending retrospective appreciation to my mom, a first-grade teacher who made a big difference to lots of kids. Back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Mom taught at a Title I school in Massachusetts . . .  where she was considered a renegade for insisting that science be an important part of the school day. Her students grew seedlings, hatched baby chicks, and engineered a lunar lander from a refrigerator box.