Gearing our Girls up for STEM - in recognition of Women's History Month Vol .6 #14

Our Posterity = Our Children

Enhancing our children's S.T.E.A.M education is imperative to their success and will help them become innovators of the future.

S.T.E.A.M stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.

Hands-on activities helps us to cognitively and visually see how things work. By creating things with our hands, we can understand and appreciate the importance of its existence. We can also become better at:

Brainstorming

Creativity

Critical Thinking

Independent Thinking

Problem Solving

Teamwork

Happy Women's History Month

Celebrating Our Girls

In recognition of Women's History Month, we would like to bring attention to the low participation numbers from girls in STEM classes and talk about ways to get our girls interested!

Girls & STEM

A sad fact is that STEM fields are predominantly held by men. Though the numbers of women in these jobs are slowly growing, we must keep encouraging and exposing young girls to STEM practices and principles!

Talia Milgrom-Elcott contributed an article for Forbes magazine in which she says, "To get, and keep, more women in STEM, we need to show girls that STEM careers align with their interests, values, and desire to make an impact."

How to get girls involved with STEM

Emphasize all the creative parts of engineering
Ask them what they're interested in
Help them to discover the power of visual-spatial activities
Don't over emphasize math and science
Put tools in their hands and let them experiment
Find projects that help others out
Connect with women who are working in STEM careers right now

These suggestions come from the site We Are Teachers. Visit their page for more information!

Simple Machines

Our last blog talk about simple machines and how they can make a job easier to do. The focus was on levers and how they can be used to lift heavy objects with little or no effort! Let's continue our exploration into simple machines by talking about pulleys!

Let's Talk About Pulleys

According to Your Dictionary, a pulley is a small fixed wheel or a group of such wheels with a rope or chain in a grooved rim that is used to lift something up. Many have you have seen and even used a pulley without even knowing it!

Pulleys can be used to:

Raise and drop a flag on a flagpole
Catch a fish on a fishing rod
Lift water in a bucket from a well
Moving sails around on a sailboat
Lifting curtains in a theater

These are only a few examples of how pulleys can make our workload a lot easier! For more information on pulleys and other ways they can be used go to Science Struck.com

Science

Technology

Engineering Activities

Art

Math

Let's Experiment with Pulleys!

Has anyone ever ridden in an elevator before? If you have then you should know that it was a pulley system that makes the elevators cars go up and down! Check out this video on how elevators work!

For this activity you will need:

Large moving box
Shoe box
Ruler
Scissors
Twine
Tape

Go to eHow.com for step by step instructions!

Hi everyone! We want encourage you all to keep learning and exploring with us! Go to BrightAndSmart.com to and check out our blogs and hands-on activities that are associated with each lesson!

We are also starting our Engineering/Coding/Robotics 101 online classes in April, so be sure to sign up early before the classes fill up!

Our you interested in getting more from us? Visit our Patreon page and sign up today!