STEM for Girls Starts in Pre-K

By Stephanie Waters
Pre-K Teacher
Innovation Grant Recipient

This year, SCH Pre-K girls continued their journey as coders, engineers, and problem-solvers through an expanded version of “Pre-K Girls Code and Build,” an Innovation Grant project led by teacher Stephanie Waters. While last year’s work focused primarily on unplugged coding and computational thinking, this year’s project deepens the “build” component through hands-on engineering investigations centered on force, motion, ramps, tunnels, balance, gravity, and construction.

Using open-ended materials from Kodo Kids, students spend extended periods designing, testing, revising, and collaborating as they explore foundational physics concepts through play. Rooted in a constructivist approach to education, the project emphasizes inquiry, experimentation, and joyful discovery. Rather than presenting children with one “correct” outcome, students are encouraged to ask questions, develop theories, and learn through experience.

“Joyful rigor is at the center of everything we do in Pre-K,” says Waters. “Young children deserve meaningful intellectual work that honors their curiosity, creativity, and capacity for deep thinking. The rigor comes from persistence, problem-solving, and collaboration. The joy comes from the wonder of discovering something for yourself.”

During building sessions, the classroom buzzes with scientific language and enthusiastic observations. Four- and five-year-olds can be heard exclaiming:

• “It went faster when the ramp got steeper!”
• “I think the tunnel is blocking the force.”
• “What if we make it taller?”
• “It crashed because it was too heavy!”
• “Wait, let’s test it again. We want it to rebound.”
• “I made a path all the way across the rug!”

Waters describes these moments as the heart of the project. “The children are learning that failure is information,” she explains. “When something falls apart, they don’t see it as the end. They see it as an invitation to rethink, redesign, and try again.”

The work also reflects the influence of educator David Hawkins, who described children’s exploratory investigations as “messing about,” the essential process of learning through open-ended interaction with materials before formal instruction begins. Students are given time to experiment freely while teachers scaffold vocabulary, model questioning, and help children connect their discoveries to scientific concepts like gravity, friction, momentum, and counterforce.

The project builds an important bridge between the Early Childhood Center's exploratory, Reggio Emilia-inspired experiences and the Lower School’s emphasis on STEM and design thinking. It also reinforces a larger mission: helping young girls see themselves as capable builders, engineers, scientists, and innovators from the very beginning of their school experience.

“Engineering in Pre-K doesn’t look like worksheets or memorization,” says Waters. “It looks like collaboration, imagination, persistence, and courage. It looks like children joyfully testing an idea that might not work yet and trying again anyway.”