The connection between STEM (Coding) and Literacy
Books and literature can sharpen your child’s STEM and coding skills. These publications have been helping students to gain knowledge and familiarity with any subject as it provides new ideas and relevant facts. So, you can indeed use books to introduce STEM and coding for kids.
However, your child would enjoy learning to code for kids if the books you are using are fun and exciting. Some extraordinary books for STEM skills and code learning for kids are picture books. These are books featuring images, activities, and puzzles.
To help you choose the books suitable for your kids, here are some of the favourite picture books highlighting STEM and kids coding activities.
Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty
The Ada Twist, Scientist picture book offers science experiments for your child. It gives new experiences and journeys to tickle their curiosity same as its main character, Ada. Ada is a curious girl who keeps on finding facts and evidence. She is a well-driven girl to achieve her mission through experimentation. She also learns problem-solving skills while maintaining her curious attitude toward all the activities she is doing. Other than that, your child could also learn about thunder, lighting, and logical statements which are very important in coding for kids and STEM learning for your children.
Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
The author, Andrea Beaty, again created a picture book about STEM skills. Her book Rosie Revere, Engineer highlights a girl who ever dreams to be an engineer. The plot of the story showcases how Rosie builds incredible inventions in her room during the night but most of the time, she fails. She hides all her failed projects under her bed. Fortunately, her great-great-aunt Rose reminded her that the first failure isn’t something to fear, but something to celebrate. Rose taught her that the only way to fail is if Rosie quits.
The awesome picture book about Rosie Revere teaches kids how to be resilient in all activities they are making. It is fine to fail, so everyone should not give up. Aside from that, this picture book also provides amazing engineering projects for your kids. It is available on Author Andrea’s website.
Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty
Other than the engineer and scientist books of Andrea Beaty, she also promotes architecture. This storybook presents Iggy Peck who created a life-size replica of the Great Sphinx on their front lawn. It is very different from other kids who created sand castles, mudpies, and block towers. Through Iggy Peck’s unique creation, many did not appreciate him until a fateful field trip showed people how great he can be.
This picture book teaches your child to be unique and motivated in bringing something new to the table. It also helps them practise STEM activities for building bridges and constructing a miniature city.
This Bridge Will Not Be Gray by Dave Eggers
A book that gives the history of bridges is the main point of this picture book. Dave Eggers and Tucker Nichols presented “This Bridge Will Not Be Gray” to explain how the bridge works, particularly Golden Gate Bridge.
Through this book, your child will understand how to build bridges and how they can create their own. The author and artist also provided bridge-building activities to familiarise engineering principles. Other than that, it helps them practise their creativity whilst improving their STEM skills.
How to Code a Sandcastle by Josh Funk
An exciting picture book of How to Code a Sandcastle brings out amazing characters like Pearl and her robot friend Pascal. These two characters have a problem building a sandcastle. So, they use sequences and loops to break down the problem into simple steps. Through this, they finally built an incredible sandcastle.
Pearl and Pascal ensure to apply coding principles like sequences and loops on this process which teaches your kid about coding. It also includes a real computer programming activity suitable for 5 years old. Through these games, your child could experience loops, conditions, and sequences that will surely enhance their STEM skills.
The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
This picture book focuses on a little girl and her canine assistant who created a magnificent invention. She is proud to present it to everyone, but the project did not work according to her plans. She was very frustrated and quit. Her canine assistant suggests they take a long walk, and whilst they are walking, the little girl realises that she should complete and work until she succeeds.
Through this short story, your child will learn how to be courageous and confident in their inventions. If it does not work perfectly at first, they still need to do other things to achieve their goals. Besides that, author Ashley Spires also included STEM challenges and activities for kids which highlights the use of recycled materials.
If I Built A Car by Chris Van Dusen
Young Jack and a robot named Robot are the characters in this picture book. It reveals Jack’s journey in building a car and its features. It is like an eye-opening tour for your kid, too. All these amazing features are in Jack’s imagination making him motivated to put it into life in the future.
This picture book helps your child to look for a career that would make them very interested. Like Jack, your kid could also pursue STEM careers and even coding careers like software programming, web development, and other computer science related. Besides that, this book also caters to different activities that would inspire your child to construct their own car using craft materials and household items.
Rube Golderg’s Simple Normal Humdrum Day by Jennifer George
This picture book carries humour for your kids. It features Rube who wants to accomplish all everyday tasks and keeps on overcomplicating the steps. Your child would learn something from Rube as he performs all the tasks using a machine.
So, this picture book will also give chances to your child to build a Rube Goldberg machine. Your kids can use household materials to build this machine. Moreover, the picture book provides step-by-step instructions to accomplish this project.
Computer Decoder: Dorothy Vaughan, Computer Scientist by Andi Diehn
The author Andi Diehn featured Dorothy Vaughan, a female computer scientist who was part of NASA’s first African American managers and front liner of electronic computing. Diehn.She published a picture book biography focusing on Vaughan’s computer decoding. It helps kids to easily understand careers in computer sciences.
This picture book also provides code bracelet activities. It guides your kids to practise coding through beads. In this activity, your child would understand how to properly code in line segments and notice the pattern of coding languages.
What is the real connection between STEM and Literacy?
From the books I mentioned above, it is clear that you can utilise literature to teach children about STEM and coding learning for kids. They even present incredible activities to hone your kid’s abilities in computer sciences.
Other than that, through the incredible books, modules, and PDFs about coding, your children would be able to acquire the skill and competencies of a real STEM career professional.
As a result, you are preparing these young minds to be the next computer scientists, engineers, architects, and developers.
How to improve my child’s STEM and coding skills?
Besides books and literature, many parents indulge their children in after-school care programs. One of the effective programs that offers STEM education franchises in Sydney, Australia is the Skill Samurai.
Skill Samurai is open for boys and girls ages 7 to 18 to learn about robotics classes for kids, programming for kids, and computer classes for kids. It also brings out the best STEM activities using digital platforms like Minecraft, Scratch, Python, and Roblox.
If you want to elevate your child’s STEM and coding skills, sign them up now at Skill Samurai.