Growing Up with Carnegie Museums

“We absolutely need STEM from the very beginning. It just reaffirms the natural way children learn, which is through observation, exploration, discovery, investigating, and constructing meaning.”
– Cara Ciminillo, executive director of Trying Together (formerly the Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children)

Children are born artists and scientists, discoverers and problem solvers. And thanks to you, our members and donors, the four Carnegie Museums are places for kids of all ages to explore and create—starting with the littlest of learners. You can see them digging for dinosaur bones in Bone Hunters’ Quarry at the Museum of Natural History; experimenting with shapes and colors at their first Museum of Art summer camp; chasing Silver Clouds at The Warhol; and launching leaf races on a tabletop river at the Science Center’s Little Learner Clubhouse.

Sometimes, though, kids and their grown-ups need some extra help. To reach those early learners who may not be able to visit the museums, the Science Center has partnered with PNC Grow Up Great with Science, a project of the PNC Foundation, and Pittsburgh Public Schools to reach more than 14,000 preschoolers in some 130 Head Start classrooms, along with their teachers and guardians. Through scores of hands-on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) experiences and science-based toolkits, the Science Center is helping preschool teachers recognize and embrace science in their everyday world so they can share that appreciation with their students. And they’re inviting their students’ guardians to join in the fun, too.

“Working with the Science Center really helped open my eyes to new possibilities,” says Flo Monroe, a teacher at the Pittsburgh Conroy Early Childhood Center. “Science doesn’t have to be hard. You can look at simple things in nature. You can find science happening in everyday occurrences. I empower my students to be problem solvers and not to have to rely on adults to always give them the solutions.”