If you walk into an ECMS room mid-morning, you might see children pouring water between jars, building towers that teeter dangerously, collecting insects , or asking why the moon is still in the sky.
What you’re seeing isn’t just play. It’s the early architecture of scientific thinking.
STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - might sound like a concept for later learning. But when we step back and observe how children naturally explore their world, we see that STEM is already there. It just needs to be named, nurtured, and woven intentionally into their learning plan.
At ECMS, we don’t treat STEM as an add-on. It’s embedded in the curiosity, questions and investigations children engage in every day. Our role is to recognise the potential in those moments - and extend it.
What is STEM in the early years?
In early childhood education, STEM is not about formal lessons or coding apps. It’s about fostering the dispositions that underpin STEM thinking: curiosity, problem-solving, pattern recognition, risk-taking, and creative inquiry.
As the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) notes, “Early learning experiences that integrate STEM build cognitive skills, support language and literacy, and promote collaboration” (AERO, 2024).
The Early Years Learning Framework v2.0 positions children as active agents in their learning, with a strong focus on inquiry-based exploration. It encourages educators to create learning environments that support “curiosity, creativity, and problem solving, including through STEM” (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022, p. 17).
And the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) reminds us that when children investigate, predict, measure, compare and test, they are engaging in complex cognitive work that lays the foundation for future learning (DET, 2016).
In short: children are already thinking like scientists and mathematicians. Our job is to make space for it.
How do we do this in a kinder setting?
At ECMS, STEM is not delivered in isolation. It is integrated into children’s interests, community contexts and play-based investigations.
At The Merrell Kindergarten, intentional maths teaching is brought to life through playful, everyday provocations. Early Childhood Teacher Rebecca Waingold uses real-life materials like spades, seeds and dice to encourage children to estimate, graph, measure and compare. These experiences are playful - but also deeply purposeful.
As ECMS Practice Coach Melissa Dann explains, “When the children bring you the treasures they’ve found in the garden and you respond, ‘We’ve got three rocks and two leaves—how many altogether?’ you’re moving from surface learning to deep learning”.
It’s this kind of responsive, embedded teaching that makes STEM learning meaningful for young children.
Technology is more than screens
STEM in the early years isn’t about screens - it’s about tools. Technology can be as simple as pulleys in the outdoor yard, digital microscopes, or programmable toys that support sequencing and logic. It’s about using resources that spark critical thinking, encourage collaboration, and help children make sense of systems.
The Raising Children Network highlights that early technology play helps develop spatial awareness, sequencing, and cause-and-effect reasoning - key building blocks for later digital literacy (RCN, 2024).
At ECMS, we see children using walkie-talkies to send messages across the playground, creating ramps to test speed, or exploring how shadows change with the sun. These are all examples of children engaging with technology and engineering principles through hands-on, relational experiences.
Responding to place, culture and identity
A STEM-rich learning plan must also reflect the place it’s embedded in.
At Bulldogs Community Children’s Centre, an inquiry into local birdlife grew into an exploration of Aboriginal ecological knowledge, language and stewardship. Children didn’t just learn about birds - they asked deeper questions about environment, habitat and responsibility.
By connecting STEM learning to Country, culture and community, we honour children’s identities and deepen their understanding of the world.
STEM begins with relationships
We often think of STEM as structured, but it begins in the most relational spaces - in wondering out loud with a child, in testing a theory together, in delighting in what went wrong and trying again.
As Dr Katherine Bussey reminds us, “STEM in the early years is most powerful when it is rooted in connection - when children are safe to explore, get messy, and make meaning together” (Bussey, 2021).
At ECMS, fostering lifelong learning starts with building wonder. And our kinder learning plans reflect that - rich with opportunities to investigate, question, collaborate and create.
Because when we honour children’s wonder, we build the strongest foundation of all: the confidence to keep asking “why?”
References
Australian Government Department of Education. (2022). Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (v2.0). Canberra: DESE.
Department of Education and Training (DET). (2016). Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework. Melbourne: State Government of Victoria.
Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO). (2024). STEM teaching practices in early childhood education. Retrieved from https://edresearch.edu.au
Raising Children Network (RCN). (2024). STEM for preschoolers: Why it matters. Retrieved from https://raisingchildren.net.au
Bussey, K. (2021). Beyond outcomes: Play, pedagogy and practice in early childhood education. Early Childhood Australia.