STEM Girl

Running my morning errands with Harper and Grant, I saw a woman working on a construction site today.  I found myself wishing that Avery was with me.  She loves seeing a girl in a hard hat.

When Avery's in the backseat of the car, or by my side for a walk, you'd be amazed at how different the world looks.

At the park yesterday, we could hear the faint cries of marching band horns and the pounding of drums in the distance as we played. We decided to try and track the band down (they march through our neighborhoods every Thursday in the springtime.)

We listened as hard as we could, then raced in the direction we thought we heard them coming from. Avery said, "if we were snakes we could track them down by their scent.  If we smelled them going left , we'd go left.  If we smelled them coming right, we'd go right."

Then she wondered, "why don't worms have eyes ?"

"Maybe because they find things by scent, too, like snakes..."  I suggested.

"Well," she said, "then why do snakes HAVE eyes?" Hmmm, I thought.  Stumped.

At the zoo a few weeks ago, Avery stood in front of the crowds of kids at each exhibit, reciting facts from memory about each animal.  Children listening eagerly, as she excitedly shared. She could have been reading from one of the placards, she was so spot on.  How snakes shed their skin. The wing span of an eagle.  The lifespan of each bug.

She's been sharing with me facts about the geography of Hawaii. And, on a recent car ride home, she gave her carpool buddies a lesson on fractions, explaining that when Siri directed them to turn left in a quarter of a mile, they should imagine a pie cut in four equal pieces.  The quarter of a mile, then, was one of those four pieces.

She says she wants to be an astronaut.  And, I believe she will be, if she wants to be.

Future STEM girl on our hands?  I think so.