Babipur STEM: Trees

#babipurSTEM

Yesterday officially marked the start of Autumn and that means big changes outdoors. This fortnights STEM challenge we want you to make learning fun whilst exploring the theme of trees!

Depending on the age of your little or not so little ones you can tailor the activities to suit. We want you to have fun in the woods, or your garden, collecting natural treasures on the school run and using them in an educational way.

We will post ideas throughout the fortnight and you can find some posts for inspiration right here on the Babipur blog under the Babipur STEM section.

STEM Ideas

Toddlers

We went acorn collecting this weekend and it was a great opportunity to do some simple counting activities with our haul.

Toddlers love to line things up and sneaking in 1-5 is a great way to get them thinking about numbers.

Early Years Children 

We went for a walk in the park and tried to find different types of leaves. We talked about all trees having different names and how they all come in different shapes and sizes and grow at different speeds.

Older children  

With the changing season upon us we used one of our favourite books to track the changes in the seasons visually. We tried to find leaves in different colours and discussed chlorophyll being the chemical that make leaves green.

We matched the autumn colours to Nins and made an Autumn Rainbow with our Ostheimer Scarves.

STEM Inspiration

We’ve got a few ideas planned over the next few weeks including;

Leaf rubbings – great sensory activity and can tie it in with the circulatory system and learn all the different parts that make up each leaf.

Osmosis – water play activity exploring tree roots absorbing nutrients through the earth. We thought this might be fun in the bath or with nappy boosters and cloth wipes.

Wood properties and dendrochronology – counting rings on tree stumps to determine their age was always fun when we were little. We thought we’d have a closer look at the wood grain on some of our toys and see if we could guess how old they were. We also want to look at the difference between hard and soft wood.

How do you enter?

All you have to do is take a picture or a video and post it in our Facebook Hangout Group or on your public Instagram account using the tag #babipurSTEM – that way can find your entry!

Multiple entries are always encouraged and the challenge closes at 11am on Monday 8th October 2018.

This fortnight the prize is the lovely Plan Toys Stacking Tree, which is great for fine motor skills, logic and problem solving. It’s also rather gorgeous to look at when not in use. 

We look forward to seeing your creativity over the next two weeks x