OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Schools nationwide are continuing to bounce back from the pandemic.
According to the Kansas Department of Education, math and English scores went up during the 2022-2023 school year.
According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, math scores increased or held steady, and English scores increased slightly during the 2022-2023 school year.
It’s part of why we’ve seen new learning methods pop up over the last few years, like the science of reading and technology-based learning.
The Learning Experience is a preschool in Overland Park is teaching early engineering skills to its students.
“These skills, as early as our infant room, is understanding how the world works, how the world is put together,” Simone Muller, The Learning Experience’s associate center director, said.
Lessons are structured by age. The younger students start by working with 3-D shapes and functions like zippers and buttons.
The older students work with toy hammers and wrenches to practice building structures.
“Engineers have been able to have these open concept ideas to build buildings, the skyscrapers we’re seeing, building bridges,” Muller said.
Ashley Denhof, the center director at The Learning Experience, said these early experiences are what shape a child’s learning.
She said it’s why they embody providing as many unique experiences as possible.
“We offer Mandarin and Spanish and sign language for all of our kids,” Denhof said. “We go outside of that learning to where we also to teach them how to be good people. It’s not just about letters and numbers, it’s about how to treat a friend so they’ll want to be my friend back."
So while The Learning Experience’s tools are shaping education, they could also be building the next generation of educators.
“We might have engineers in this school right now that are going to build the actual car we do get to fly,” Muller said. “Or we have artists. A lot of these ideas are building artists as well as mathematicians and scientists.”
—
