Looking ahead, preschools add STEM to the curriculum

Preschool teacher Denise Nelson doesn’t talk much about volcanoes anymore. Or dinosaurs.

Instead, she has spent the past six weeks trying to get 20 3- to 5-year-olds in her Head Start classroom at a Worcester preschool to ponder the properties of water. Leaning over water tables, they find out which blocks float and why paper boats sink. And they get a bit wet along the way.

On the surface, the switch in topics may not seem significant. But what Nelson is doing represents the beginning of a change in preschool education as more schools introduce science, technology, engineering, and math – the so-called STEM subjects – to students so young that many don’t even read yet.

Will her efforts turn out the next Bill Gates? That she doesn’t know. But Nelson does want her students to be better prepared to compete when they enter the workforce.

By Michael B. Farrell

Full Story: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2012/02/21/looking_for_budding_engineers_in_preschool/