Search

December 06, 2016 The Kids Beat

Pin It
Reddit
Email
Print
Favorite
Share

ECHO's Early Learning Initiative Grant Brings Science to All 

By
click to enlarge Champ Lane at ECHO
  • Champ Lane at ECHO

Vermont's budding young scientists are getting a boost from the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain. The Burlington science center and lake aquarium recently received an Early Learning Initiative grant of nearly $150,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Over the next two years, ECHO will create curricula, materials and training for educators who work with the preschool set. Last February, ECHO opened Champ Lane, a play space for children ages 6 and under that provides rich learning opportunities through hands-on activities including a water table, a multilevel boat, a French-language market and a tree house, plus twice-daily science programs taught by ECHO staff in the space. In partnership with Let's Grow Kids, the Greater Burlington YMCA, the Boys & Girls Club and Burlington Children's Space, the new grant money will allow ECHO to train early educators around the state to teach STEM concepts — like the ones taught in Champ Lane — in their own spaces, says ECHO's executive director Phelan Fretz. Every young child is a scientist, "trying to figure out how the world works," Fretz says. "Our job is to guide them."

To learn more about the Institute of Museum and Library Services' Early Learning Initiative, visit imls.gov/issues/national-issues/early-learning.

More The Kids Beat »

Tags: , , , , ,

Comments

Subscribe to this thread:
By Email
With RSS

Add a comment

Keep commenting classy! Read our guidelines....

More by Alison Novak

camps central

Kroka Expeditions

Kroka Expeditions

Marlow, NH

Kroka is a farm-based wilderness expedition school in Marlow, NH. We believe in the power of nature and community to awaken our highest selves, and that appropriate risk-taking is a doorway to trust in ourselves and others. Summer at Kroka offers 36 unique expeditions for ages 9-19 in whitewater paddling,…(more)

other camps » learn more »

The Kids Beat

Contact Us

Submissions

The Magazine

PO Box 1184
Burlington, VT 05402
802-985-5482