Environmental Focus - 1 Adventure, 2 STEM-packs

This set contains one STEM+C Adventure and two Storytime STEM-packs with an environmental theme. Bee-Bots are not included. If you need to purchase Bee-Bots, please visit the Terrapin website.  The Happy Planet STEM+C Adventure is all about involving children in caring for the Earth, and builds  their understanding of human impact on the environment while laying a  foundation for STEM and computer science, using Bee-Bot robots. Children program Superworm-Bot to clean up their community on the colorful vinyl  mat. Reading Charlie’s  Dirt Day, children learn about composting, worms, and sorting trash  and program Bee-Bot to find trash items on the mat. Children listen to the  story The Tale of the  Whale, discovering the “plastic soup” in the ocean. Engaging in  storyboarding, they figure out where the plastic in the ocean is coming from and become  engineers, designing, building, and testing a trash mover attachment for  Bee-Bot to clean trash items from the mat. This Adventure consists of five integrated STEM+C activities that each  take 45 minutes to implement. Three storybooks, 6 colorful vinyl mats, and hands-on materials for 24 children are included. Sparrow Loves Birds Storytime STEM-pack is anchored by the story of Sparrow and what inspired her love of birds. Children watch a video of the hustle and bustle of birds flocking to a feeder and learn about external parts of a bird and describe how young are similar but not identical to their parents. They then tally the number of birds that come  to the feeder, visualizing their data with a bar graph,  using post-it notes. Each group makes a small bird feeder with the materials provided  that can be hung outside to attract local birds. Sparrow Loves birds has two parts, each taking 45 minutes to implement. It addresses the science concepts of structure and function and inheritance of traits as well as mathematics concepts of counting and representing data. Included is the hard cover book, two facilitator guides, and all hands-on and print materials for 24 children. Over and Under the Pond Storytime STEM-pack introduces children to aquatic ecosystems, using a storybook with beautifully illustrated scenes of a pond, as a child discovers the wonder of creatures found there, while canoeing with his mother. It builds the mathematics concepts of counting, subitizing and addition within 20, using a number bead board/rekenrek and scenes from the pond. Materials for 24 children to each build their own rekenrek are included.