Kids are full of questions and it’s important to encourage their curiosity! An early interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics can transform into a lifelong passion with your support and motivation. Society relies on work in the STEM field, and fostering an interest in related subjects can create many opportunities in your child’s future. To help inspire your child to pursue answers to their many questions, we’ve compiled a few kid-friendly at-home STEM activities for you to try!
This fun experiment uses things you have around the house! All kids will love the colourful, foamy explosion (make sure you use your Brat Mat to catch the mess), and older kids will be so excited to do a real science experiment – time to break out the safety goggles and lab coats.
The STEM Concept: Elephant’s Toothpaste is a great introduction to chemical reactions. Encourage your kids to feel the container while the reaction is happening – it should be warm because of the exothermic reaction that produces heat.
Puzzles are a great way to teach problem solving skills to kids of all ages! These puzzle templates help your little ones learn about shapes and grow their reading ability at the same time!
The STEM Concept: This activity builds the foundation for more complex geometry problems. Understanding basic shapes is a critical skill for future math lessons.
Let your kids play with their food! Hand out marshmallows and pretzel sticks, then encourage your budding engineers to build specific shapes (this resource has great flash card templates) or just freestyle! For an additional challenge for older children, challenge them to build a structure that can support weight, or the tallest possible tower.
The STEM Concept: This sweet and salty activity helps further develop geometry skills by giving your kids a hands-on opportunity to understand the structure of various 2D and 3D shapes. Make sure to ask lots of questions – how many pretzels and marshmallows are in each shape? Encourage your kids to test the strength and stability of their creations.
Coding can be intimidating even for adults, but this activity can be simplified so that even your toddlers can participate! This activity is based on the premise that coding is just instructions for meeting a goal – in this case, helping your Lego man get through the maze. Add more complex instructions for older children to create more of a challenge!
The STEM concept: This activity teaches the most basic elements of coding – creating specific instructions for a given task. As your child masters this activity, add elements that parallel more advanced coding concepts such as looping.
The Möbius strip is a super cool shape and your kids can easily make their own at home! This resource includes lots of questions for you to ask to guide your kids’ curiosity. There are several variations of the Möbius strip activity to allow for continued learning.
The STEM Concept: The Möbius strip is a seemingly simple shape with many complex mathematical properties – how can an apparently 3-dimensional shape have only one side? Your kids will think this shape is magic. For extra-curious older kids, continue learning by researching the Klein bottle!
These activities are sure to get any kid – and parent – excited about learning STEM concepts! Make sure you brush up on your relevant knowledge beforehand – your genius-in-training will definitely have lots of questions and they will expect you to have all the answers!
