Sustainable fishing, solar energy topics of new 4-H STEM toolkits

University of Maine Cooperative Extension 4-H has two new STEM toolkits available for use by formal and informal educators in hands-on science-based activities with youth.

The Sky’s the Limit is designed to increase awareness and understanding of solar energy through basic circuitry; energy collection and transfer; engineering design principles; and building design challenges. Suitable for grades 6–8. Support for this toolkit is from the Maine 4-H Foundation and RLC Engineering.

The Sustainable Fishing toolkit is designed for use with grades 3–5 to explore and investigate what species are fished for in Maine waters and methods of finding fish, including showing how eDNA is used to detect species’ presence in the water and the difference between sustainable and unsustainable fishing. 

This toolkit is supported by National Science Foundation award #OIA-1849227 to Maine EPSCoR at the University of Maine and developed by UMaine Extension as part of the Maine-eDNA research, education and outreach program.

For more information contact 207-581-3877 or 4-HScience@maine.edu. More information also is available on the Extension 4-H STEM Toolkit webpage at https://extension.umaine.edu/4h/stem-toolkits/.