Dear educators and NAEYC members,

In a little over a year, NAEYC will mark 100 years of advocating for high-quality early childhood education. It’s an exciting time—and one that gives us a chance to honor the past, acknowledge the present, and build for the future.

This issue, with its focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), reflects NAEYC’s mission, which is that each child reaches their full potential. NAEYC emphasizes hands-on exploratory learning, individualizing for diverse learners, and supporting educators in their professional development. It guides educators in taking strengths-based approaches as they offer children opportunities for explorations in STEM.

As early childhood educators, we are lifelong learners, and this issue also reflects how we may have a different emphasis today than in the past. NAEYC began to use the term STEM regularly in 2010. One of the first articles in Young Children highlighting the term was “STEM Comes to Preschool,” by Sally Moomaw and Jaumall A. Davis. The concepts described in that article were familiar: building materials, play, and the integrated curriculum. However, the term STEM offered new emphasis on the importance of hands-on exploration with intention across content areas, such as science, math, technology, and engineering.

Today, we see this approach in a still-evolving and broader context, understanding STEM experiences as supporting children from a range of backgrounds and making connections to children’s books that both inspire STEM creations and reflect children’s and families’ experiences, languages, and cultures. This issue reflects a wide range of themes important to early childhood educators:

• Taking a strengths-based approach. Throughout, you will read about educators adjusting materials and approaches to make sure all children have opportunities to see themselves as STEM thinkers and explorers. This includes “Connect, Deepen, Extend: Creating Meaningful Science, Technology, and Engineering Learning Experiences” and “Small Hands, Big Ideas: Exploring STEM Through Tinkering, Making, and Engineering.”
• Engaging in ongoing professional development. Teachers can become more comfortable in their own STEM teaching by exploring materials themselves, as described in “Making Time for Tinkering: A Playful Pathway Toward STEM Learning.”
• Responding to children’s interests and to timely topics. STEM offers ways for educators to approach important and current issues, including one I am deeply committed to exploring—the impacts of climate change. In “‘The Sky Is Orange!’ Reflecting on an Investigation of Light and Shadows,” the site manager of a preschool in California describes how educators addressed children’s observations about changes in the color of the sky during a period of wild fires. They used children’s observations of the smoke-filled sky to spur a tinkering exploration into light and shadows.

We are thankful to General Motors, the funder of this issue, for its generous support in offering educators STEM content to support their work and helping us all to remain lifelong learners in how best to support young children as they develop, grow, and thrive.

Michelle Kang
Chief Executive Officer

Copyright © 2024 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See permissions and reprints online at NAEYC.org/resources/permissions.