How do we get our children to be more engaged and creative? Many parents and educators ask this question. It becomes particularly difficult to answer when the day winds down, and kids want to turn off their brains and turn on their screens. But mixing some brain-stimulating activities that integrate STEAM/STEM time into your little one’s day can be a fun way to keep them engaged with learning.
What is STEAM/STEM?
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math, and STEAM adds art to the acronym. STEAM education aims to stimulate student interest in those core elements. It fosters creativity, collaboration, and inventive thinking and helps build a well-rounded set of expressive and intellectual skills. STEAM projects can include anything from wire sculpture and clay modeling to building a soapbox eco-race car.
Try some of these activities with kids to encourage after-school active learning and add some hands-on experience to supplement their studies.
1. It’s a Bug’s Life
Bugs play a vital role in the community, and that community includes your backyard. Keep science skills fresh by having kids identify the bugs and insects in the backyards, then determine what role the insects play in their environment. From recycling waste to spreading pollen, bugs are an important part of the ecosystem.
2. Time for a Bake-off
Baking is one of the best ways to teach students about math and science. How does dough rise? What sorts of chemical reactions take place when you bake chocolate chip cookies?
For many students, math is abstract, so learning about measurements is a good way to make mathematical concepts practical and memorable. Plus cookies!
3. Go stargazing
Is there anything better than stargazing on a warm night? Get away from the glare of street lamps and enjoy the night sky in the country or along the beach.
Use a telescope or other astronomy tools and books to identify stars and constellations. The night sky always changes over the summer, so you can make this an ongoing exercise to follow and document those changes.
4. Build a Paper Roller Coaster
It’s not always possible to get kids to an amusement park. That’s okay, because you can bring the amusement park to them!
Roller coasters are amazing feats of modern engineering. Explain the many engineering concepts behind roller coasters—physics, gravity, friction losses—by having students build a paper roller coaster.
Elementary students are only as engaged and creative as the challenge before them. With STEAM/STEM skills, the sky is the limit!
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