STEM + ESD
What do STEM and ESD actually mean?
The abbreviation STEM stands for the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. ESD, on the other hand, stands for Education for Sustainable Development. We at Terminal for Kids gGmbH believe that these two areas go hand in hand. We try to bring this closer to the children in a playful way and support them with our impulses in their spirit of research.
Science education in our childcare centres means:
Creating new educational opportunities and space for discovery. Early STEM education promotes important skills for the future. Children have a great spirit of discovery. They discover the world through research, based on their own questions and puzzling observations. In their everyday lives, children experience many situations in which STEM plays a role, and where ways of thinking and acting in STEM fields are useful. However, before they can formulate their own question about nature or an object and pursue it in an exploratory way, children need basic experiences. They need to experience and discover the laws of nature through play.
This is where the STEM and ESD pillar plays a role. It makes scientific and technical connections to everyday life tangible and understandable for the children and at the same time enables them to act sustainably and responsibly. The children's engagement with questions touching on mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology (STEM) promotes their curiosity, joy of learning and thinking. In addition, by relating to everyday topics in the childcare centre, the children acquire values and competences for sustainable development in society that affect their own lives in society (ESD). Through key topics such as biodiversity, consumption, waste, water, energy or nutrition, which the children in our care come into contact with in their everyday life at the centre or in their social environment, questions and problems from sustainable development can be derived and integrated into everyday pedagogical life.
Through intensive project work, including smaller impulses, all children can follow their individual interests, answer questions together in learning groups and explore their living and learning worlds.
As head of the STEM + ESD quality pillar, Sabine Münzberg supports our childcare centre directors and specialists in integrating this topic into everyday pedagogical work. We create new educational spaces in the STEM areas and thus support the children in their explorative learning and sustainable influence for their future.
„I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.“
Albert Einstein
Sabine Münzberg
Head of the department STEM + ESD
- advice, support and training
- practice-integrated work
- workshops
- support for the construction of explorer and researcher rooms
- expert advisor according to the Hessian education and development program (Hessischer Bildungs- und Erziehungsplan)
T: 06105 99661-251 (Do./Fr.)