Our S.T.E.A.M. Library Is Open! Its Filled With Books and eBooks That Connect To Our Themes, Projects and Kids!

It's back-to-school time and we are so excited about our NEW S.T.E.A.M. Room and program that we have added to Van Meter this year.  

Our students have loved coming to the S.T.E.A.M. Room to learn with Megan Algreen and myself this week.  They are learning what S.T.E.A.M. stands for and have completed a few S.T.E.A.M. challenges together.  

As they learned about the "T" in S.T.E.A.M., we talked about the Technology they know like cell phones, iPads and Chromebooks.  Then we discussed other types of technology like motion, levers, pulleys, wedges, inclined planes and others, which make up the Simple Machines types of technology.

As Megan and I brainstormed and planned over the summer, we thought it would be helpful to introduce these concepts to our students with books and eBooks, which would help them learn about these various simple machines and spark lots of amazing conversations. 

We went to the Capstonepub.com site and found several series perfect for our elementary learners.  I just love all of these series and titles.  Our readers will too!  

When we opened up the box from this very special delivery last week, I thought to myself, 

Hey, we need to open a S.T.E.A.M. Library too!  

This will be a little branch of our main library at Van Meter School.  It will be a place we can thoughtfully work on collection development of a rich and wonderful S.T.E.A.M. library collection. Look at some of the titles we ordered around this first topic of Simple Machines...

...and a few more. 

This is just a start and we can't wait to add even more books that are focused around our S.T.E.A.M. topics in our program.

I also LOVE how I can find eBooks on similar topics within Capstone Connect.  

With Capstone Connect, I searched for titles around Simple Machines.  I found several that I knew our students would love.  Let me show you how! 

Within Capstone Connect,  I searched Simple Machines...

....and several terms like Pulleys, as shown above. Once I found an eBook series that would work with our younger students, I found four that I could add to a choice board around Simple Machines. 

With each title, you can click on the little arrow on the right hand side of each eBook or eResource.  This will tell you more about that resource. 

You can also click on Copy Link to copy the link and use in a choice board or to share in Google Classroom, Seesaw or other places with your students. 

You can even open up the eBooks and check them out before you share with your students. 

I took the covers and links I found to create the Let's Learn About Different Types of Technology choice board. 

You can click here to see how the students would see the choice board and click here to make a copy to add your own resources and links.  You can always find other eBooks and eResources to add to this choice board. 

This choice board can be used online or by printing it out on paper. This is how we use it with our littles who use iPads.  I use QR Code Monkey to create the QR codes so they can see the cover of the book in each.  That hint makes it easy for them to find what book they are wanting to scan and read. 

This is what it looks like with our youngest learners in S.T.E.A.M. this week. 

They loved everything they learned in the eBooks and were able to choose the books we have pulled out and displayed too. 

They all learned so much about the technology part of S.T.E.A.M. 

I am very excited to add these resources to our S.T.E.A.M. program at Van Meter and I can't wait to add these books and lots of others to our S.T.E.A.M. Room Library throughout the year. 

You will find these books and series from Capstone on this list here. 

I will share what we add in print and digitally throughout the year.  I always find lists like this super helpful and ones that help me build our special collections in the library too.