Monthly Newsletter – April 2021

If any planet is worth celebrating, it’s the one 99.999..% of us spend our entire lives on – Earth. Celebrate by helping preserve and heal our planet. You can bike to work, conserve water, plant a tree (or donate to get one planted), use long-lasting light bulbs, recycle, or volunteer to clean up. If you’d like to teach your students more about Earth Day and how they can help, keep reading for some free lessons and book recommendations!

Our Latest Blog Posts:

When you view our blogs, you’ll notice we got a new website! You can browse all our new products, curriculum, and free resources.

• Esports: An Emerging Industry
• Coding Without Barriers – An Interview With Shireen Hafeez, Founder of Deaf Kids Code
• St. Patty’s Day The STEM Way
• 3D Printing, Quantum Mechanics, and STEM Careers

Free Earth Day Lessons You’ll Love

There are a ton of ways you can help restore our Earth. Here are some free resources:

• List of “Restore Our Earth” lessons & activities
• Implementing a composting system – Advocacy Packet
• How to make your school sports eco-friendly – Advocacy Packet
• Learn more about COP26 and the Paris Agreement
• Ecology Disrupted – Lesson plans on environmental issues & ecological functions
• Changing Climate, Changing Cities – Virtual field trip from Phoenix to Shenzhen

Visit earthday.org to find even more ways you can celebrate our planet.

Earth Day Books:

• Dear Earth…From Your Friends in Room 5 by Erin Dealey
• This Pretty Planet by Tom Chaplin
• We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom
• Stand Up! Speak Up! by Andrew Joyner

An Environmentalist’s Kit

Our micro:bit Smart Science IoT Kit has students investigate and test the environment using a micro:bit expansion board, OLED, mini servo, and its many sensors:

• Humidity (BME 280) sensor
• Motion (PIR) sensor
• Sonar:bit
• Water level sensor
• Soil moisture sensor
• Noise sensor
• Dust sensor

The kit comes with many various free lessons to get you started with projects! All our kits work with both the original micro:bit and v2. Contact us to purchase your kit with a micro:bit v2 or shop all micro:bit Kits here.

Upcoming Events

On April 20, Corey and Christine will be co-presenting at the Indiana Out-of-School Learning Summit along with Workforce Development coordinator Kara Webb and Indiana 4H Director Danielle Sands. The four ladies will be sharing strategies for forming community partnerships to encourage STEM learning, especially for younger students. Register for the summit here.

STEM Champions to Follow

• @heathermlister – Librarian, Maker Educator, Founder and Chief Education Officer at Construct Learning
• @shannonmmiller – Innovation Director of Instructional Technology and Library Media, Future Ready Librarians Spokesperson, Buncee’s Teacher Librarian Advisor