Jordan blows bubbles from the new gravity STEM kit at the Athenaeum while Noah and Gianna look on.
Emily, 5 and Alicia Booth play with foam figures in the civil engineering kit.
Jordan, 7 and Aimee Bell try out the weights and measures in one of the new STEM kits at the Westfield Athenaeum.
Gianna, 6 and Noah, 8 build a marble run out of blocks.
Anne Rock of Shurtleff Children’s Services Fund watches as Jordan blows bubbles from the new gravity STEM kit at the Athenaeum.
Gianna, 6, builds a magnetic maze on a ramp before rolling a ball down it.
Anne Rock, from the board of the Shurtleff Children’s Services Fund, helps Gianna to blow a bubble from the gravity STEM kit at the Athenaeum, while Jordan waits her turn.
WESTFIELD – Saturday afternoon, children and their parents were invited to play with the new STEM kits (science, technology, engineering and math) that recently arrived in the Boys and Girls Library at the Westfield Athenaeum, thanks to a grant from the Shurtleff Children’s Services Fund.
The three kits, for ages 3 & up, come packed with hands-on activities and a curriculum with research-based lessons aligned with national standards. One kit focuses on 2-D and 3-D shapes, weight, volume and construction. Another has pre-school lessons on civil engineering, and the third introduces the concept of gravity, allowing children to predict, test and observe to develop evidence-based conclusions using the scientific method.
Jessica Blasko, head of youth services at the Athenaeum, said the kits are especially useful for pre-school teachers, kindergarten teachers and homeschoolers. They are among 30 early childhood kits now available for the public to check out from the library.
Gianna, 6, was building a magnetic maze on a ramp before rolling a marble down it.
“We home school,” said her mother, Amy Beluzo. “I think it will be a good supplement to what we’re doing.”
Beluzo said the variety of activities, the books and the staff are fantastic at the library.“I’m here three times a week,” she said.
Gianna then joined Noah, 8, who was building a ball run out of blocks.
“It’s enough fun that I want to do it again,” Noah said.
Anne Rock, who serves on the board of Shurtleff, said she thought it was a good plan to invite the public for a hands-on experience with the kits.
“I’m very glad to see that it’s happily received. It really works for children,” Rock said. “Both the parents and the children’s librarian are very happy because of the curriculum in it.”
