Children are inquisitive. Their questions are never-ending, starting from why do boats float? How do we get rain? Or how does a plane fly?. Especially if you are dealing with a preschooler you will come across hundreds of questions in a day. Because these little learners have an open mind and are very curious about the things around them.
Despite the huge interest in learning things, they sometimes get bored with the regular class. Especially their enthusiasm gets fade when they grew old and lose interest in the STEM subject. However, when we make learning fun with exciting activities, kids will naturally love to explore the things and learn concepts behind the activities.
We have compiled the most engaging STEM projects for your kids here.
Homemade Ice-Cream
This is one of the most exciting experiments for kids, as it involves ice. Through this experiment, kids will get to see the exciting chemical reactions of salt and ice.
Materials required:
1 table spoon sugar
7 table spoon kosher salt
1 table spoon vanilla extract
½ cup cream
Now fill the bag half full with ice mixed with salt. Then put the sugar, cream and vanilla extract in a small bag and seal it. As the final step, place this small bag in the large bag filled with the ice. Now ask the kids to shake this bag continuously for five to ten minutes.
Parachutes
Do you think is there any exciting method to learn the relationship between force and momentum apart from the book? Yes, This parachute experiment will not only excite the kids but also make the children learn the relationship.
Materials required:
Egg or any other fragile item
Help the kids to build parachutes for a dixie cup to hold the eggs and let them watch what happens when the item is dropped from a height of at least 5 to 6 feet.
Magnetic Slime
Slime activities are always an exciting one for kids, due to their colorful appearance. Most of the parents or educators will include this experiment in their activity session, as they are fun. But this activity is quite different from the regular one. It requires iron oxide powder and magnets where they are added into the mix. However, getting the perfect slime consistency can be quite tricky. In that case, you can make use of liquid starch or glue. Finally, once the mixture is ready to be tested a strong neodymium magnet is required to manipulate the slime.
Materials required:
Glue or liquid starch
Iron oxide powder
Neodymium magnet
Multi-color weight jars
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate how different liquids can measure various kinds of different weights. A mason jar is required to measure the different liquids, also if you want to make this experiment colorful and attractive, then you can make use of food colors to differentiate it.
Materials required:
Honey
Dish soap
Olive oil
Cranberry juice
Plain or colored water
Mason Jar
5 Food colors
Jellybean Building
This is one of the exciting experiments where you will need a pack of jellybeans or large marshmallows. This activity will help the children to understand the design, technology, and concept behind the structural engineering. Help the kids to connect the toothpicks with the jelly beans and let them analyze which all shapes hold together and why?. If the kids are preschoolers you can encourage them to build a stack. To make this activity more interesting, you can ask the kids to build a house or some other structure.
Materials required:
Marshmallows or jellybeans
Toothpicks
Magic of lemon
This activity is one of the interesting ones for kids who are interested in chemistry. The Basic idea of the experiment is to demonstrate how the acid reacts with heat. Take a bowl with a little amount of water in it and squeeze the lemon into it. Now, ask the kids to dip the paintbrush in the liquid and write or draw a structure in a piece. Then, hold the paper near a hot light bulb or run an iron box with minimal heat over it. Once it is done, show them how the transparent ink turned in to brown color.
Materials required:
Paper
Paintbrush
Lemon
Bowl
Water
Colorful slime
Slime – is one of the exciting activities for kids, especially for preschoolers. This activity will demonstrate how to transform elements into a completely different one. However, this experiment does not have one method, there are a total of 5 methods that are completely kids friendly and non-toxic ones. To make it more attractive you can add different colors to make colorful slime.
Do the oranges sink or float
If you are looking for a simple STEM experiment, then you can try this one, as it requires only a vase and orange. The objective of this activity is to explore density science. Take a large vase and drop a regular orange in it and ask the kids if they float or sink. Later, peel the orange skin and drop them in the water and let the kids watch what happens to both of the oranges.
Materials required:
Orange
Vase and water
Erupting volcano
Erupting volcano is a pretty old experiment, but still an exciting one as well. This activity teaches simple chemical reactions, and kids will know how substances will react with each other.
First, take a vase and add 14 cup baking soda in the bottom. Then to make the reactions more colorful add the food colors and glitters on the top of the baking soda. In the final step, add ½ half cup vinegar and let kids watch the colorful volcano eruption
Materials required:
Vase
Baking Soda
Vinegar
Food color
Candle seesaw
All the children love playing a seesaw, but it not possible for them to think about why the position, weight of the opponent plays an important role in balancing. Through this activity, they will understand the art of balancing and investigate the force with a model seesaw made of candles.
Materials Required:
Strong tape
Two identical birthday candles
A needle that is longer than the candle’s diameter
Aluminum foil
Two glasses the same height
Knife
Lighter or matches
Comments