Science sessions Spark young imaginations to Discover STEM
Written by Amy Baird of the Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne
The Discovery Museum is a family-friendly STEM and local history museum dedicated to sharing the story of Tyneside and its people.
We have a specialised early-years learning programme called Tiny Sparks. During term-time we deliver a weekly, hour-long Tiny Sparks session, for children aged 3-5, and their parents and carers.
Last academic year, thanks to funding from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) Outreach Fund, all our Tiny Sparks sessions were focused on chemistry and STEM.
We applied to the Outreach Fund because we wanted to develop our programme. Due to limited resources and equipment, we were unable to deliver a full range of chemistry and STEM-based sessions that properly represented our full Discovery Museum collections. We wanted to develop a series of sessions that allowed young children, and their families, the opportunity to engage with topics which they may not experience elsewhere.
We hoped that by including basic scientific principles in our Tiny Sparks sessions we could build children’s aspirations and expand their horizons. We also wanted to boost confidence among parents and carers about how to talk to and engage their children in scientific topics, both in the Museum and at home.
We successfully applied for £10,000 worth of funding to help us to put these things into action. Some of the new themes we were able to develop sessions around included chemicals, magnets, water cycles, forces, space, reflections and electricity.
As well as buying resources, the funding allowed us to offer free tickets to local families who otherwise would not have been able to attend. We worked with community partners to reach these families through our local food bank and family hubs.
Over the course of the year, 914 early-years foundation stage children engaged with our Tiny Sparks programme, of this 257 engaged free of charge.
My personal highlight from developing Tiny Sparks has been the comments from participating families. One family came to a session on a nursery strike day and enjoyed the science theme so much that they permanently moved their weekly nursery pattern around so that they could attend the rest of the sessions throughout the year.
Another family told me that their toddler had been talking with their dad about what she wanted to be when she grew up. She had said she wanted to be an astronaut. Dad responded by saying she would need to work hard and be good at science in big school. The toddler replied: "Yes, like Amy at the museum."
Developing our Tiny Sparks sessions with the support of the RSC’s Outreach Fund has been such a success, that we have decided to make our full programme chemistry-based again this academic year.
- For further information about Tiny Sparks at Discovery Museum, contact Amy Baird at learning@discoverymuseum.org.uk
