STEM Activities for Kids at Home

These are constraints rather than instructions. A constraint has more than one solution and none of them is supplied, which is why it produces thinking where a set of steps produces compliance.

Four to six

• Build the tallest tower that stays up on its own, from anything
• Make a bridge two toys can cross, using only paper
• Sort a handful of objects, then sort them a different way
• Make something that rolls down a slope slowly

Six to nine

• A container that keeps an ice cube frozen longest, left outside
• A boat from foil that carries the most coins before sinking
• A ramp that makes a marble travel furthest across the floor
• A structure from newspaper and tape that holds a book fifteen centimetres up
• A parachute for a small toy dropped from the stairs
• The strongest possible bridge from twenty spaghetti strands

Nine to twelve

• A device that gets an egg to the ground from an upstairs window unbroken
• A water filter from sand, gravel and cloth, tested with muddy water
• A chain reaction machine with five steps that works three times running
• Measure the height of the house without climbing it
• A catapult that hits a target twice in a row, which requires consistency rather than power

Twelve and up

• Design and cost a real improvement to something in the house
• Work out the cheapest way to heat one room, with numbers
• Build something that solves an actual household annoyance
• Take a broken appliance apart, diagnose it, and decide whether it is repairable

Two rules that make these work

State the constraint, not the method. "Hold a book fifteen centimetres up using only this newspaper" is a problem. "Roll the newspaper into tubes and tape them" is an instruction, and it removes everything worth having.

Let the first attempt fail. Iteration is the actual skill. A child whose first design works has had a less useful afternoon than one whose third design works.

The question at the end

Not "did it work". Ask what they would change if they did it again, and what they learned from the version that collapsed.

That question is the difference between an activity and an engineering education.