If you’ve been following the blog for awhile you may think that we are doing crazy STEAM activities everyday here and creating little STEAM geniuses…haha!
Here’s the truth: I love doing STEAM activities with my kids, and wish I had the time, energy, and creativity to do them everyday, but even I, Engineering Emily, do not do planned STEAM activities everyday, or even every week with my kids.
Before I hear any more of my friends or followers say they can’t do as many STEAM activities with their kids as I do, or that they can’t believe how much I am doing with my kids, let me tell you how much we really do.
I promise you it is more doable than you think, and we all can easily incorporate STEAM for kids into our lives.
I post every STEAM experiment we do at home here on the blog, which means we do just one per month, at the most! It takes awhile for me to research and come up with ideas and materials for the experiments, and I’m not ready to do more than one a month right now.
Another STEAM activity we like is reading STEAM books. Occasionally I receive new STEAM books to read and review here on the blog. We usually really like the books and continue to read them daily.
Reading is very important to me, and I make a point of reading every day to my kids. We usually end up reading at least one STEAM book a day since we have so many STEAM books in our home library.
We also play with lots of STEAM toys. It’s amazing how many toys you already have at home can actually be considered STEAM toys. We sometimes review new STEAM toys that are kindly donated to me to try out on the blog. And beyond those one-off reviews, we play with our STEAM toys at home most days.
The STEAM toys we use the most are Legos, Duplos, and magnetic tiles. Any 3-D building toys (like Crafty Connects, Kids K-nex, Lincoln Logs, etc) are really popular with my kids. Which is 100% ok with me! They are learning to think about shapes, and building spatially in 3 dimensions. That is a foundation that will serve them well throughout their lives and careers.
This may seem like, yes, we are actually doing lots of STEAM every single day. But I promise you it is doable. We don’t realize we are doing STEAM most of the time.
For us, doing STEAM daily is just reading our favorite books and playing with our favorite toys. If you provide them the books and toys you want them to read and play with (hopefully STEAM based), that will become their new favorites.
As you know, I love math, so we also try to add math into our everyday lives whenever possible. For example, if we’re looking at pictures in a magazine, I will ask my kids to tell me how many birds they see in the picture. It’s just the simple, easy things you do everyday with them that help them learn to count and practice their numbers.
My daughter still can’t identify most of the letters of the alphabet when you show them to her, but she knows all her numbers! I am so proud that numbers have been such a huge focus for her and that she really knows them well even though I have spent very little to no time specifically trying to teach her to identify numbers.
Meanwhile, I am trying to teach her to identify letters, and she has no interest in learning them. I need to find a way to incorporate learning letters into our everyday lives like I do with math, and maybe she will learn letters easier that way! 😉
I want you and every parent out there to know that incorporating STEAM into your everyday lives doesn’t have to be intimidating. It is so simple to get started doing more STEAM at home with your kids, and they will greatly benefit from any amount, big or small that you do with them.
If you like reading, check out our buy a STEAM themed book (you can look here to read some of the book reviews I’ve shared).
If you like to let your kids play, give them more legos, or blocks to play with. This will help them develop their spatial skills. And check out some of the STEAM toys I have reviewed.
If you like getting messy with your kids and trying new things, pick one of my simple STEAM experiments to do with your kids at home on a rainy day.
All my STEAM for Kids experiments, books, and toy reviews, can be found on my updated STEAM for Kids page on the blog. Check it out and be inspired – not intimated – to add more STEAM into your kids’ daily lives. 🙂
The younger you start instilling the interest, passion and focus on the importance of STEAM in your kids, the better! STEAM subjects will seem as easy as ABCs to your kids and they will never understand why friends will say math is hard. 🙂
How do you incorporate STEAM into your kids everyday lives? What is your favorite way to do STEAM with your kids?
