The Children's Center at Caltech has been providing STEM-focused early childhood education for over 16 years. Recently, they have focused more on the "E" for engineering. They created engineering challenges and scenarios for different age groups to explore. For infants, they explored clay and used tools and their bodies. Toddlers experimented with catapults and building structures. Preschoolers designed boats out of foil. Through these activities, the children demonstrated natural engineering behaviors like asking questions, imagining, creating, designing, testing and improving. The Center documented the children's experiences and wants to share them with parents to help parents understand appropriate engineering for young children.

1. The Children’s Center at Caltech has been a STEM-focused
early childhood center for infant, toddler, and preschool-
aged children for more than 16 years. Our teaching staff
enjoys sharing how our youngest students continually
surprise us, building on and revising their knowledge and
abilities as they crawl, stumble, and navigate their world.
Many of our children arrive as infants and leave our program
five years later to begin their kindergarten journey. Weekly,
we share anecdotal stories of our young students’ cognitive
and developmental milestones. The infants’ teacher marvels
at former students’ growth, as their scientific, engineering,
and mathematical knowledge matures as they move through
the preschool program.
When we made the decision two years ago to focus on the
E in STEM, our goal was “to guide our children’s knowledge
toward a more scientifically-based and coherent view
of engineering” (NRC, 2012, p. 11). The integration of
engineering is advocated by the Next Generation of Science
Standards. Engineering provides a context for developing
problem-solving skills and a context for the development
of communication skills with real-world context for learning
science and mathematics.
One of our first challenges was to educate our parents and
ourselves. We are a children’s center located on the campus
of one of the most well-known technology, engineering,
and science universities in the world. We provide child care
for children from birth to age six for staff, students, and
faculty from the university, in addition to families from our
local community. Our children’s parents are busy leading
planetary science missions; testing rovers; constructing
nano-size robots; and investigating cures for diseases. It
may be assumed that our parents would consider their
child to naturally be ready to engineer. Aren’t all children
born to create, design, test, and reconsider what they
have constructed? Much of everything in a child’s world is
engineered. Children are naturally curious and want to know
how things are made. We decided to get up-close and see
what exactly engineering is. What is the engineering design
process? How do you explore engineering with children,
birth to age six?
Our discussions and research made us realize we needed
to educate our parents as to what is cognitively and
developmentally appropriate when it comes to engineering
with specific age groups. We decided to give them this
opportunity at Back to School Night. First, we would design
engineering challenges or ‘scenarios’ to do with their
children so we could provide documentation and then allow
parents to experience the challenge at our annual Back
to School Night. It was our desire to kick off a discussion
between the teachers and the families as to how engineering
and the design process, skills and the tools needed, can
foster engineering habits of mind for all ages. We wanted
parents to appreciate the developmental process children
Carrie Lynne Draper is the Executive Director of Readiness Learning
Associates, a STEM Readiness organization growing children’s learn-
ing processes using science, technology, engineering, and mathe-
matics from birth through college. Focusing on the development of
scientific dispositions through STEM and pedagogical design of
equity-oriented STEM learning environments, Carrie has worked in
STEM education for more than 30 years as a classroom teacher, program adminis-
trator, and higher education instructor and administrator. She served on the White
House Early Learning STEM Symposium and recently presented at Congressional
hearings on Early Learning STEM and STEM Excellence. She has received numer-
ous honors and builds STEM partnerships of collaboration to target academic-
promising minority students to become future science, technology, engineering,
and math innovators.
Susan Wood has served as the Executive Director of the Children’s
Center at Caltech since 2000. Susan’s experience over the past 38
years includes serving as classroom instructor, overseeing class-
room teachers, coordinating community college preschool practi-
cum students, and providing developmentally appropriate actives
for children. After 20 years in the classroom Susan chose to work in
an administrative level as a director of two university child care centers: USC and
UCLA; as adjunct faculty at Pasadena City College; as partner and trainer for the
Center for Child and family Services Head Start; as a trainer for Los Angeles County
Office of Education; as UCLA Extension instructor. Susan’s passion to support early
childhood educators in providing research based, high-quality STEM child educa-
tion has lead to the creation community outreach programs, which has included:
workshops, a director support group, research projects, and study groups. She is
an active member of National Association for the Education of Young Children and
National Science Teachers Association and has presented workshops on a national
level in the areas of early childhood curriculum with an emphasis on science edu-
cation. She received a MA in Child Development from Pacific Oaks College,
Pasadena, California.
Beginnings Professional Development Workshopwww.ChildCareExchange.com INFANTS AND TODDLERS 61
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From Stumble to STEM: One School’s Journey
to Explore STEM with its Youngest Students
by Carrie Lynne Draper and Susan Wood
Copyright © Exchange Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. A single copy of these materials may be
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Visit us at www.ChildCareExchange.com or
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2. must go through to become confident problem-solvers,
communicators, and collaborators while experiencing
engineering.
We looked at research by Dr. Valerie L. Ackerson, professor
of science education at Indiana University. She examines
how young children can conceptualize the NOS (Nature
of Science) from an early age. She states, “We need to
share how children start with the concrete and move to
the abstract; introduce and emphasize the distinction
between observation and inference; the importance of
contextual clues as well as background knowledge in making
inferences.” Nature of Science skills include describing
their observations; describing what they notice; and telling
what they think will happen next. These NOS skills make
it possible for students to engineer. Additionally, we were
inspired by the research of Van Meeteren and Zan (University
of Northern Iowa) leading researchers in engineering
education for young children.
With the help of our Children’s Engineering Facilitator,
we decided to create our own engineering challenges or
‘scenarios’ to see what might inspire our children. There
is very little engineering curriculum available for this age
range. Creating scenarios for our young students would
allow us to describe and catalog children’s actions; see
the different design process and tools young children use;
and identify children’s behaviors that potentially grow
engineering habits of mind. Here we share a glimpse of what
our early engineering scenarios looked like for each age
group.
Engineering is a Sensory Experience for
One-Year-Olds
The infant teachers set up clay for children to explore and
gain needed sensory experiences. Engineering for this age
requires experiences using their senses. The clay was new
material for the infants and they were naturally curious
about it. We observed some children stopping to look at it.
Others went straight in to touch the clay. Some were very
careful to touch it only with one finger. After the first feel,
they went back in for more pokes or to squeeze a handful
of it. The teachers asked them, “What does it feel like?” as
they stared at the clay that stuck onto their small hands. We
described how we perceived the clay: it’s cold, soft, sticky,
and mushy. After a couple of days of clay introduction, we
added a spray bottle of water and basic wooden tools for
the children to use. The infants used their hands and tools to
mold the clay into different shapes and change its form. The
teachers described the clay as it became “wet, slippery, and
slimy,” which produced a different feeling. The infants were
engaged at the clay table a little bit longer now that they
experienced it in a different form. It was interesting to see
the children use the new tools we incorporated; however,
the most important ‘tools’ they used to engineer the clay
were their own hands.
The infants continued to explore the clay through their
senses, primarily their hands and mouths. The children
enjoyed feeling, rubbing, squishing, and smearing the
clay with their hands and on their bodies. Next, we were
interested in watching the children explore the clay with
large body movements. We put a large amount of clay on
canvas, placed on the floor. The children then used their
bodies to climb, walk, and feel the clay with their feet. Feet
were very important in the room, given that most children
were just starting to walk and wear shoes for the first time.
Catapult Construction
with 18- to 24-Month-
Olds
Children between the ages
of 18–24 months were very
interested in cause-and-
effect. Our first experience
Photosbytheauthors
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EXCHANGE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

3. came from a child’s curiosity with a trash can and a metal
container. The child put the metal container on top of
the trash can and launched it onto the counter top. At
first glance a teacher assumed the child was throwing the
container, but then another teacher observed that much
more was happening. Teachers began to realize the child’s
intentions, grabbed the camera, and began to document this
amazing experiment. Other children
became fascinated and wanted to
see if they could ‘launch’ other items.
The teachers provided additional
materials and observed as children
constructed and designed other
types of catapults using fulcrums,
levers, and pom-pom balls.
Architecture and Seismology
Engineering for Two-Year-
Olds
Teachers placed two wooden
structures in the block area. Two
children started to build by adding
blocks to it and created structures,
calling them airports. Three others
came to the block area and began
to parallel build. It became important to separate the circle
time area from the block area so that it could be designated
as a ‘construction zone,’ so that the building process would
not be disturbed.
The children were fascinated with balance and with how
high they could build their structures. The teacher assisted
the children by providing stepstools in order to reach new
heights. Children began to experiment by building on large
wooden trucks and were interested in how moving their
structures could affect ‘sway’ movement before gravity
caused their structures to fall. When the structures became
too high and wide for the block area, we decided to expand
the ‘construction zone’ to the patio outside our classroom.
This allowed for structures to be saved and worked on
over several days and they became much more intricate in
design.
Marine-Science and Materials Engineering with
Three-Year-Olds
A favorite story, Lost, by Oliver Jeffers, was the impetus for
an engineering project designing boats. This charming
story is about a lost penguin finding his way back home
with the help of a small boy and a rowboat. The teachers
invited students to build boats from aluminum foil to get
the penguin home. Originally, we thought the building
and testing of boats using aluminum foil would be a huge
success. The teachers placed counting bears out, thinking
the children would substitute the bears for the role of the
penguin. The children expressed no interest in testing
their boats at the water table with the counting bears. We
Photosbytheauthors
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4. Beginnings Professional Development Workshop 64 INFANTS AND TODDLERS www.ChildCareExchange.com
EXCHANGE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
realized that to connect the book with the activity, these
concrete learners needed penguins. Children at this
age are often very literal. Having the penguin available
made all the difference. As they built and tested their
boats, the activity expanded to experimenting with
sink, float, and surface tension. The students noticed the
differences between the boats’ design and compared
and contrasted boats that held multiple penguins up
versus the ones that sank. The children began to talk
about the size of their boats and the size of the penguin.
They noticed similarities and differences and began
discussing with each other how they engineered their
individual boats. The children could not be pulled away
from the activity.
Conclusion
In the short time we
have been creating
engineering scenarios
and focusing on the
E in STEM, we have
discovered no matter
what the age, children
naturally use the
engineering design
process. They:
■■ ask
■■ imagine
■■ create
■■ design and test
■■ improve
Even the youngest
with limited words
use their actions to
demonstrate they are curious, show their imagination, test
and continue to explore. As NSTA blog contributor Peggy
Ashbrook shares, “We (as educators) need to discuss how
to implement engineering challenges in our classrooms.
Children encounter problems to solve in their play.” Some,
Peggy suggests, are “keeping block structures from falling
over, choosing the best blanket to drape over chairs to
make a tent, digging holes that won’t collapse, and carrying
armloads of balls.”
We are documenting the children’s experiments by
photographing and uploading to an electronic portfolio,
where we describe and catalog children’s engineering
actions; categorize the different design process tools they
are using; and identify children’s behaviors that potentially
represent precursors to engineering habits of mind.
We look forward to comparing our student’s experiences
with their parents. What will these engineering scenarios
look like when parents are doing them? How will this help
Photosbytheauthors

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 EXCHANGE
parents understand the processes their children need to go
through when they are engineering?
References
Brophy, S., Klein, S., Portsmore, M., & Rogers, C. (2008).
Advancing engineering education in P-12 classroom. Journal
of Engineering Education, 97(3): 369–387.
NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards:
For states, by states. Washington, DC: National Academies
Press. www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-
standards
Akerson, V., & Donnelly, L. A. (2009). Teaching Nature of
Science to K-2 Students: What understandings can they
attain? International Journal of Science Education, 30(1):
97–124.
Van Meeteren, B., Ed.D., Director, Regents’ Center for Early
Developmental Education, Curriculum Development and
Researcher. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls, IA.
www.uni.edu/rampsandpathways/program/research-
findings/designing-elementary-engineering-education-
perspective-young-child
Zan, B., Ph.D., Associate Professor and Research Fellow,
Regents’ Center for Early Developmental Education,
Curriculum Development. University of Northern Iowa. Cedar
Falls, IA.
SEED Papers: Revealing the Word of Young Engineers in Early
Childhood Education
http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/beyond/seed/zan.html
Ashbrook, P. (2014, October 17). NSTA Blog: Science in Early
Childhood. 2014 NSTA area conference, Richmond, VA.
http://learningcenter.nsta.org/discuss/default.
aspx?fid=ryclPO3p1E8_E
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