Sari Hurme-Mehtälä, CEO of Kide Science: A Leader with over 15 years' of experience helping children become active producers of knowledge and meaning

As the education world explores strategies to equip students with the skills and knowledge they’ll need to be successful innovators in a 21st century workforce, there has been a growing emphasis on STEAM — the educational discipline that engages students around the subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Math. Many education experts regard STEAM (and its predecessor STEM) as an essential component of 21st century education. Why? According to the U.S. Department of Education, “In an ever-changing, increasingly complex world, it’s more important than ever that our nation’s youth are prepared to bring knowledge and skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions.” Enhancing such skills lies at the heart of STEM and STEAM education.

STEAM empowers teachers to employ project-based learning that crosses each of the five disciplines and fosters an inclusive learning environment in which all students are able to engage and contribute. As opposed to traditional models of teaching, educators using the STEAM framework bring the disciplines together, leveraging the synergy between the modeling process and math and science content, for example, in order to blur the boundaries between modeling techniques and scientific/mathematical thinking. Through this holistic approach, students are able to exercise both sides of their brain at once.

Kide Science is an award-winning, child-centric approach to teaching that helps early childhood educators equip 3-to-8-year-olds with life-long skills from problem solving to communication. Born from a five-year academic research project at the University of Helsinki, Kide Science is backed by Education Finland and loved by teachers in 30 other countries. At Kide Science, they know that children are active learners by nature. As a teacher or a parent, you’re bound to know it, too. Because children have a strong tendency to explore and experiment, their pedagogy shifts science learning into imaginative science play. Kide Science develops young children’s scientific thinking skills through engaging hands-on experiments that solve real science problems. Its scalable online platform provides teachers and parents with training and story-based lesson plans to lead playful STEAM education for 3-8 year-olds.

Train your preschool, kindergarten, and special needs teachers in their award-winning, research-backed playful learning methodology, developed by Finnish teachers and adaptable for any education system and learning standards. It includes;

• High quality training with experts from Finland, adaptable for any education system and learning standards
• Made for PreK - 3rd Grade teachers, including special education teachers
• Remote or face to face training as a single session or comprehensive packages
• Teacher and school certifications in the award-winning pedagogical method
• Complementary materials: Free access to their online lesson plans, teaching and assessment materials, printouts, and more.

Scientific Thinking Skills - Highway to a Better Future

Their contemporary society is going through groundbreaking changes. Never before has the climate warmed as quickly as it does now, and access to information has never been as open as it is now.  Science and technology strongly drive the change in theirr society. Not only will they need more people who strive towards science and technology-related careers, but more importantly, they will need remarkably more people who are able to think scientifically and critically to back up their daily decisions with scientific knowledge.

Kide Science is a Finnish pedagogical STEAM innovation that provides educators and parents with top quality and scalable curriculum materials to implement early science education in a playful way. When children do science with the Kide curriculum, they feel like they're playing and enjoying themselves, while in fact, they are building highly important skills needed in the scientific process and thinking. For educators and parents, Kide Science is an easy plug-and-play method to ensure that children will gain the skills needed in the future.

Kide Science uses storytelling as a powerful tool to motivate children to participate in science activities. The story world of Kide sessions is free of cultural stamps because it stems from the imaginary world called Supraland, located in a different dimension. In Supraland forests are made from crystals and animals are geometric shapes, for instance. That kind of world celebrates children’s natural curiosity and imagination without binding it to a specific cultural environment.  Through play, children will be able to relate scientific concepts and practices to their cultural worlds and therefore, make science relevant for themselves.

Kide Science has online platform for educators and parents in English, Chinese and Finnish. In Finland Kide Science founders have co-created also a science TV show series "Tiedonjyvä" (Reach 300  000 families) with Finland’s national public service broadcaster. Kide Science has also published children´s book series "Tiedeseikkailu" (25 000 books) with Sanoma.

About | Sari Hurme- Mehtälä

Sari currently serves Kide Science as CEO & co-founder. She is also a board member for Nordic EdTech Network - N8. Sari has over 15 years business experience globally and locally from media, retail, design, and ICT industry, like Samsung. She has worked in big companies´ marketing and sales positions but felt that she wants to do something more meaningful, especially with children, after becoming a mother of two little scientists.

"Kide Science is here to help children become active producers of knowledge and meaning, helping them grow into the problem solvers and creative thinkers our future society needs."