As a certified EiE teacher educator, I am qualified to train teachers in the EiE curriculum. Engineering is Elementary supports educators and children with curricula and professional development that develop engineering literacy.

Children are born engineers – they are fascinated with building, with taking things apart, and with how thing work. The EiE curriculum harnesses children’s natural curiosity to promote their learning of engineering and technology concepts and skills. This fun, flexible, inquiry-based curriculum integrates engineering with the science topics regularly taught in elementary grades.

One of the most widely implemented elementary engineering curricula in the nation, EiE is a rigorously classroom tested and researched based curriculum that integrates engineering with elementary science topics.  EiE’s 20 units present fun, engaging engineering challenges that allow students to apply science knowledge in meaningful ways.  Each unit is introduced by a storybook about a child who solves a problem through engineering.  Set in locations around the world, the storybooks integrate literacy and social studies—and provide context and meaning for the hands-on activities that follow. Connections to math also are made.

Using storybooks and applying the engineering design process, participants explore fun and engaging engineering challenges using household materials. While earning about the framework of the units, participants explore how this fun, flexible, inquiry-based curriculum integrates engineering with the science topics regularly taught in grades K-5, meets the new South Dakota Science Standards and connects with ELA, social studies, and mathematics.

Comments from workshop participants:

• It allowed me to see that teaching engineering is easier and more approachable than what I thought.
• It was great to do the hands on tasks and going through the steps the students would do.
• It was helpful to go through the actual lessons and seeing the lesson structure.
• The chance to try out some lessons as a student and to be able to reflect on them as a teacher helped to prepare me to use it in the classroom.
• It opened up ideas for me in the engineering field that I hadn’t thought of.
• The classroom management aspects were very helpful.
• She did a really good job of showing us all of the components of the units and highlighting similarities as well as modeling different ways to manage them.
• The use of “Student Hat” and “Teacher Hat” was very effective.