Action Research On Carrying Out Kindergarten STEM Project Activities Using Picture Books As A Carrie

STEM education is an education that integrates science,technology,engineering,and mathematics,and it helps students improve their thinking skills and creativity,which are their core competencies in the future.However,there are still few research results on STEM education in practice in early childhood.In recent years,picture books have been widely used in kindergarten teaching,which also provides a new vision for the development of STEM education.This study mainly adopts the action research method.The researcher conducted a three-month action research in cooperation with an action research team,taking the older children of kindergarten X in Qingdao as the research target.Starting from the existing problems,the researcher designed and implemented three STEM project activities based on project learning theory and the 6E teaching model: "Three Little Pigs Build a House","Building a Super Bridge" and "Amazing Masterpiece" with picture books as the carrier.After three rounds of implementation,reflection and improvement,we explored the strategy of using picture books as a carrier for STEM project activities and verified the effectiveness of the activities based on children’s learning quality.Research shows that STEM project activities with picture books promote the development of young children’s learning qualities and help develop their interest and initiative in learning,persistence and concentration,imagination and creativity,and reflection and interpretation skills.The strategies to carry out STEM project activities with picture books are:(1)interpreting picture books based on STEM education concepts(2)fully exploring STEM contextual resources contained in picture books;(3)using STEM picture books as clues to carry out engineering design;(4)relying on picture books to create STEM learning spaces;(5)using picture book characters as examples to show the problem-solving process;(6)constructing STEM background knowledge in picture book reading;(7)Integrating interdisciplinary knowledge with picture books and stories.Based on the findings,this paper makes the following recommendations: first,put in sufficient STEM picture books and manipulative materials.Second,encourage children to identify problems and test their conjectures in practice.Third,pay attention to the connection between picture books and STEM education.