Early Childhood Round Table

December 12, 2017

Problem-Solving Pigs

The “E” in STEM can be a little daunting for early educators when planning out lessons for the week. Unless you are familiar with the engineering process, it can be difficult to know where to begin. The good news is, the process is simple to understand! When engineers design a product, they are typically looking to meet a need, or solve a problem. So when early educators think about how they will present an engineering idea for students to explore, it works well to create a “problem” or scenario in which the children are asked to solve the issue.

In the story, The Three Little Pigs, the problem is obvious – the pigs need to design a home that can withstand the wolf’s blustery lungs. After identifying the problem, the next step an engineer would take is to design a solution. Then the third step would be to build the prototype, and following that they would test and evaluate its performance. If adjustments need made, then the process is to go “back to the drawing board” and come up with another design to try.

In the tote, Problem Solving Pigs, it comes with everything you need to set up the scenario and let the children design a solution. The materials shown below are from Lakeshore Learning. There is a teacher page and instruction cards for the students, as well as “bricks” for the students to use to build their prototype.

When students are satisfied with the results, then the last is to step is to document their results. This is as simple as taking a photo and sharing it with the students and their families.

Keep in mind that when children are first learning to use the engineering design process, they will not necessarily follow the steps in order. For instance, in the process of experimenting with materials and ideas, they may make adaptations before testing the first design. This is appropriate in the early years and teachers should support students through this more “organic” approach.

The Engineering Lesson Plan

There are basic pieces when writing an engineering lesson plan that are similar to any pre-planned activity, which is having a “Big Idea,” and a learning concept/objective that fits under that big idea. You might also want to refer to the KansasEarly Learning Standards to verify where the learning objective fits in those standards. Then along with a list of needed materials, the intentional teacher will also want to think about what the engineering “problem” is, and how they will set it up/describe it to the students, as well as open-ended questions they will ask students during the design and evaluation process to help guide their learning.

When presenting the “problem” to students, you can use reality-based scenarios, or tap into children’s interests and imaginations and present problems that are fantasy-based. Knowing the students and their interests will help you determine where to start. Below is a list of possible scenarios that you can use as springboards to get you started:

Three bears need to live in three caves, but they need a way to also be able to talk to each other without going outside.
The mining town is in a valley between two large mountains. Food is scarce – how can they get food to the town?
Large robots have moved outside of town and keep coming in to play with the townspeople. The problem is they stomp all over the gardens and ruin the food. How can they protect the gardens from the robots?
The town is built on an island and there are not enough parking spaces for the cars.
Old town has skinny roads and new town has wide roads. How will they connect the roads so people can drive from one side to the other?
The piano is too big to go up the stairs but there is a big window in the room on the second floor. How will they get the piano through the window?
The road from home to school has to pass through a mountain, a river and another town but there is a rule that no bridges are allowed.