STEM @Home

Parents, are you struggling with finding educational STEM activities to do with your kids? Or, teachers, are you struggling with finding enriching and meaningful STEM activities that kids can do at home?  Here are some suggestions that might help:

Zeno

Zeno is a math game hub that helps student practice and hone their math skills through games.  They have an extensive library of offline activities for kids (Toolbox) as well as guides and training materials for any adults who would like to start a math club.

Mental Math STEM Games for Struggling Students

The Mental Math Stem games bundles focus students on reviewing and strengthening basic math skills and improving them to the extent that these calculations can be done mentally.  Each printable bundle (cards, dice and spinner) comes with 5 games and provides a direction sheet with examples as well as any game cards needed.

Kodu Game Lab

The Kodu game lab is one of Microsoft’s coding game platforms.  Although resources are located online, the platform is designed to be downloaded onto a pc.  This free software teaches kids how to design, play and share their own games while teaching them how to code.

American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society provides free chemistry-related activities for elementary and middle school students.  Each downloadable activity uses easy-to-find materials and teaches the basics of chemistry.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IEEE hosts the Try Engineering site which helps teachers and students explore electrical engineering through activities, simulations and games.  Students can play different games that teach circuits, learn about projectiles and begin to program.

The Brown Bag STEM Challenges

The Brown Bag STEM Challenge I (and the Brown Bag STEM Challenge II)  were designed to prove that learning STEM doesn’t have to be costly.  Each challenge, where all materials fit into a brown bag,  provides a hands-on, low-cost way to practice STEM skills and develop soft skills like team work, collaboration and problem solving.

NASA’s Space Place

NASA provides a fun place for kids to learn about aerospace and NASA careers.  At Space Place kids can learn through games, crafts and activities.  Plus, kids can watch short videos that answer science questions like: How much water is on Earth?   Check out its sister site- Climate Kids– for games, activities and videos on climate too.

STEM Girls

STEM Girls is designed for middle school and high school girls, but great for everyone.  They do offers activities for kids, but the real gem here is the database of careers.  Each career briefly explains what it’s about and connects kids to the biography of an actual woman in that field.

Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales

Originally developed as a stepping stone to introduce younger students to STEM, Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales I (and II) have been a hot for all ages!  Complete with a design brief (instructions) for each challenge, students read or review popular fairy tales then extend the story to help some of the characters.  Each design challenge is standards-aligned and includes student notebook pages too.

Check out STEM @Home- STEM Games and More STEM @Home for more great ideas!