STEM@Home
Kids have fun while using their brains! These hands-on STEM activities follow the engineering design process. Each introduces a different STEM concept and career based on a real world challenge.
How? Each activity can be completed in a little over an hour with household materials. Parents with their younger children complete activities together or teachers may provide coaching to learners 10+ years old to do on their own. Review the facilitator guide to see materials required, associated STEM concept & career as well as tips. Provide your learner with the interactive activity guide and briefly review the opening sections together before they start the hands-on activity. They can photograph their designs and ratings to share their success!
Need Some Support?
Learn about structural design by creating a structure that will support many text books. A performance factor is presented to encourage trade-offs.
Designer Ice Cream
Mix up a batch of ice cream and freeze it with an ice bath. Measure the impact of salt in depressing the freezing point of the ice bath.
Is All Slime Engineered Equally?
Investigate making slime using simple ingredients. Then test its properties using design criteria and create a new materials test to evaluate slime.
Design Like a Spider
Design and build a spider web, which is just tight enough. Toss Velcro “spider” ping-pong balls at the web to measure effectiveness.
Solar Cooker
Create a solar cooker to make S’mores and in the process learn about solar energy and its use as a fuel source.