Today’s focus for #ocsbSTEAM week is Science. Have fun with today’s science-focused STEAM challenge and learn about ways you can support your child’s learning in the field of science.
STEAM challenge of the day
Create a “chain reaction” (aka Rube Goldberg Machine). Check out this cool video for inspiration! Share your creations online using #ocsbSTEAM and #ocsbScience.
Ideas to support your child’s exploration of science
- Encourage curiosity, close observation, problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity.
- When you don’t know the answer to a question, collaborate to find the answer.
If your child is in Kindergarten to grade 6
- Go on nature walks, whether in your neighbourhood or a nearby nature trail. Take the time to look at the environment around you. What do you notice? What has changed? What remains the same? Why?
- Foster your child’s inner scientist by encouraging them to observe, ask questions, tinker, make, experiment and seek their own solutions to challenges or problems.
If your child is in grades 7 to 12
- Get outdoors! It provides a terrific opportunity to discuss a wide range of topics such as animal habitats, photosynthesis, astronomy, predator-prey relationships, and local geology!
- Keep learning “hands-on.” Encourage your child to pose a question to explore, gather information, think about what they discovered, and talk about it as a family. With a hands-on approach to science, students are inspired to ask questions about the world around them and apply this method to solve their problems instead of finding the easy answers.
How we support your child’s learning at the OCSB
- We’ve provided each of our schools with an Inksmith’s Climate Action kit to explore coding and the environment.
- Our science initiatives foster the competencies of Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity, Citizenship, Community, Character.
- We’ve been working with Science North to provide our teachers with professional development, resources, and virtual live experiments to try in their classrooms.
- We give your child access to interactive digital tools like Gizmos that simulate real world problems, so they can form and test ideas to find solutions– just like real scientists.