In 2009, President Obama launched “Educate to Innovate,” a campaign to improve K-12 STEM education. Then, in 2013, he advocated for high-quality preschool for every child. Now these initiatives are connecting: earlier this month, the White House put out a call to support America’s youngest students with early STEM education.

The Engineering is Elementary project is already on board. This winter, we started work on a PreK-K engineering curriculum for ages 3–5 that is modeled after our award-winning EiE curriculum for ages 6–10. The three-year, $425,000 PreK-K initiative is funded by entirely by the EiE project at the Museum of Science, Boston.

When the Engineering is Elementary curriculum was first being developed, one skeptic told EiE director Christine Cunningham, “You’re crazy. It’s impossible to teach engineering to elementary students!” Today, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have made K - 5 engineering mainstream. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is thinking about even younger engineers.

The President has made early childhood education a priority, including—at the urging of the National Science Board—early STEM education. But what does “quality Pre-K - K STEM education” look like? And how do you help teachers expand early STEM education nationwide? EiE’s director, Christine Cunningham, is one of 14 educators pondering such questions as part of the Early Childhood STEM Working Group, meeting this week in Chicago.