“(The kids) won’t always
Julia Trumpy stretch-ed her arms wide like airplane wings and encouraged a lively room of kids to dive into the day’s theme — exploring the science of flight.
“Come along and fly with me,” she sang on a recent morning at the Collierville Burch Library before launching hands-on experiments about lift, weight, thrust and drag.
Children as young as 2 years old are learning concepts in science, technology, engineering, arts and math through free classes taught by Trumpy through Dec. 20. The “Full STEAM Ahead” program is new to the Collierville library and offered to anyone who wants to bring their little ones.
“A lot of people think that 2 to 5 years old is too early to be learning STEAM,” Trumpy said. “To an extent, they’re right. (The kids) won’t always get the concepts, but they will start looking at the world around them differently.”
The class aims to inspire youngsters to ask lots of questions, like “why is my shadow taller in the morning?” It also encourages critical-thinking skills, plus
Katie Fretland
showing parents how to make simple science experiments at home. About 30 children have been attending each class this fall.
“Young children (from birth to 8 years) are intrinsically curious about the world with a desire to figure out
how the world works,” said Dr. Shelly L. Counsell, associate professor in early childhood education at the University of Memphis.
“It is imperative that early childhood educators and early caregivers provide young children with important opportunities to build STEM content knowledge through active exploration, making sense of their surroundings, using what they learn to design and create something new — activities involving inquiry and engineering design.”
What happens in class?
At the Collierville library, Trumpy starts the half-hour class by reading a story followed by songs and rhymes geared toward the day’s topic. The children and parents then split into three stations to start their experiments. During one recent class, a group used iced water, rubber gloves and Crisco to investigate how marine mammals keep warm in cold water with blubber.
During the class on flight, the kids made parachutes with coffee filters and eggs, and they explored how weight impacted the course of paper airplanes by applying paper clips.
“STEM has become a really big part of children’s education,” Trumpy said, noting that Collierville’s elementary school children are learning robotics. “As a library we try to adapt to what the community needs. We decided to try out a STEAM-based story time, and we were able to launch it this fall.”
Trumpy, 28, is the library’s youth services librarian. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she joined the library about a year and a half ago. She is originally from the small northwest Illinois community of Orangeville.
“We don’t grow oranges,” she joked. The town farms soybeans, corn and wheat.
Trumpy got her start in libraries with a part-time job back home developing collections and creating programming before she completed her master’s degree. She enjoys reading the authors of fantasy and adventure books, including C.S. Lewis and William Joyce.
“Julia feels libraries are important because they offer a unique place for people to explore and learn, both from the library and from each other,” according to her Collierville Library bio. “To Julia, the library is a place to pursue interests, no matter how strange they may seem, and maybe find other like-minded people that one would not have otherwise met. Overall, says Julia, the library is a great resource for knowledge of all kinds.”