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Stop by the Ben and Maxine Miller Child Learning Center any day during the week and chances are good you’ll see undergraduate students gaining hands-on experience in an early childhood classroom. But you may be surprised to learn that some of those students are not child development and family studies majors, but engineers.
The center is partnering with the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program at Purdue to help engage young children in science and engineering inquiry. Last fall, five engineering students on the EPICS team began working with the children and early childhood teachers to design and build a weather station to introduce children to basic concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The students met weekly throughout the fall semester and visited the classroom often to observe how the children learn and to identify age-appropriate concepts for the weather station.
This semester, the EPICS team (which has grown to nearly 20 students) will be building the weather station and developing lesson plans for teachers to use in the classroom. Through the weather station, the children will be introduced to important scientific processes of observation, data collection, and analysis as they explore how weather changes and develop theories for how these changes relate to each other. At the same time, the engineering students who design and build the weather station are gaining valuable skills in leadership, project management, communication, and collaboration.
Hail Purdue!
Dennis Savaiano
Dean
For more information on the EPICS program at the Ben and Maxine Miller Child Learning Center, visit the team’s Web site.
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