Kitchen as STEM Laboratory in a Preschool - from Experiment to the Learning Pathway
Abstract
The article has been written within the Erasmus+ project entitled “Kitchen Lab 4 Kids”. The aim of this presentation is to present STEM skills and their connections with scientific thinking. STEM skills are described as interdisciplinary meta-competences underlying the life-long learning process, employed in the process of solving meaningful, interdisciplinary problems, but not belonging to any particular scientific discipline. They are often referred to as 21st -century skills necessary for the functioning and development in modern, unpredictable and rapidly changing societies. This paper argues that the development of such skills is deeply rooted in early childhood and should be supported in a preschool environment with the use of tools and means available in every preschool kitchen. Typical “kitchen” skills, used while cooking and food processing, are scientific by nature because they are based on understanding chemical and physical processes / concepts, e. g. weighing ingredients, understanding the proportions of the ingredients, observing the state of matter transformations (from solid to liquid and vice versa), coloring food with natural pigments, using fermentation to bake bread, etc. Comprehending these and similar processes can support the development of scientific thinking in early childhood.
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