Simple STEM Activities to Do at Home

(Family Features) Winter is the season for family gatherings, snow days and breaks from school and work, but all this time indoors can lead to a serious case of cabin fever for both children and adults. Before you face another chorus of “I’m bored,” consider these simple activities you and your child can do together when winter weather or schedules have you stuck indoors.

Each activity idea from the experts at KinderCare can help children build foundational skills they’ll need for success in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) areas so you can combine fun and learning.

Infants
Most babies love sensory baskets, and it’s easy to make one at home. Fill a basket or low-sided container with materials in a variety of shapes, textures, weights, smells and sounds for your baby to explore. While your baby explores the materials and develops hand-eye coordination, describe what he or she is doing, seeing, feeling, hearing or tasting to help build his or her vocabulary.

Toddlers
Show your toddler how to make ramps by stacking blocks or small cardboard boxes and placing one edge of a piece of cardboard on top. Invite your child to gather toy vehicles or balls and other objects to see how they roll. Gather objects that will roll and a few that won’t. Encourage your child to ask questions and experiment with ramps of different heights. These experiments in force and motion can help develop your child’s understanding about how different objects behave on inclines.

Preschool (3-4-year-olds)
Invite your child to observe from a safe distance as you boil 1 cup red cabbage in 2 cups water. As the water turns purplish, drain it into a clear container. After the water cools, invite your child to measure a small amount of white vinegar and stir it in while observing what happens as additional vinegar is added. Next, have your child measure a small amount of baking soda or milk and stir it in to observe even more changes. Exploration, experimentation and observation are all key STEM skills.

Pre-Kindergarten (4-5-year-olds)
Gather a variety of craft items, building toys and recycled materials like construction paper, markers, pipe cleaners, craft sticks, fabric scraps, glue sticks, tape, scissors, blocks, interlocking toys, paper towel rolls, tissue boxes, cardboard, lids and plastic food containers. Place the materials you’ve gathered in a bag. Give your child the “tinker bag” and some space to build. Invite him or her to explore the materials, create something and share it with you as a way to build engineering skills and curiosity. Limiting the number of materials children have to work with can often create more opportunities for problem solving and innovation.

School Ages
Gather a few containers from your recycle bin, such as plastic food containers, tin cans or cracker boxes. Talk with your child about how some things typically thrown away or recycled can be reused for the same purpose or a new one. When items are reused, the amount of waste that ends up in landfills is reduced. Invite your child to select one of the containers and decide on a new use for it. When your child is finished creating something new using on-hand craft materials, ask him or her to share the innovation with you. Give your child feedback in the same way engineers do by giving a compliment, asking a question or offering a suggestion.

For more activity ideas, visit kindercare.com.

Science Made Magical

(Family Features) When you see something you can’t explain, it can be easy to mistake those moments for magic, such as a balloon floating into the sky or water disappearing from a surface right before your eyes. However, the truth is these moments aren’t magic but scienceat play. Observing the laws of physics or chemistry can, at first glance, seem too fantastical to be explained, but science can explain a lot.

These moments serving as creative ways to engage kids in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning may be one of the best tricks of them all. STEM touches many aspects of daily lives, and finding the connections between the classroom and the “magical” STEM moments of day-to-day life can inspire children and pique their interests in these topics.

Consider these simple tricks that help convey the “magic” of science:

Rubber Pencil
By holding an ordinary pencil by the eraser between your thumb and index finger then shaking it at just the right speed, it appears to become made of bendable rubber instead of wood. However, it’s simply an optical illusion. The effect is due to visual persistence, which occurs when many different images blend into a single image in the human mind. This is the same reason people can see a rapid sequence of changing images and recognize it as a movie.

Vanishing Water
There is a popular magic trick in which a magician takes an ordinary looking cup, pours water into it and, after a series of gestures, appears to make the water disappear. The viewer is surprised when the cup is flipped over and no water drips out, as if it has vanished into thin air. The science and answer to this mystery is a substance called sodium polyacrylate. This is a “hygroscopic” substance, which means that it acts like a sponge and absorbs water almost instantly. When the cup is lined with this substance, any water that meets it forms a mixture that is a solid gel. Unassuming audiences think the water has suddenly disappeared, when in fact the mixture is simply stuck to the base of the cup.

Ventriloquism
The art of talking with the tongue and not moving the mouth or face is called ventriloquism. When a skilled ventriloquist does this sitting beside a puppet that has a moving mouth, the human brain is tricked into thinking the puppet has come to life and is speaking to the audience. It works because humans use their eyes to find sound sources. The area of the brain that processes sounds entering the ears also appears to process stimulus entering the eyes, providing a novel explanation for why many viewers believe ventriloquists have thrown their voices to the mouths of their puppets.

Knowing how the magic works doesn't necessarily make these tricks any less fun, and these simple tricks help teach children how STEM plays a role in everything, including fun and games. Another way to encourage children with STEM at an early age is encouraging them to participate in a program such as ExploraVision, the only STEM-related competition of its kind. It allows kids of all ages to create ideas for new technological innovations in response to current real-world issues. Participants work on their projects to supplement their science education, while also developing problem-solving, analytical and collaboration skills.

Parents and students can learn more about the competition and how to enter, and teachers can find free tips for engaging students, at exploravision.org.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Practical Ways to Promote STEM Learning

(Family Features) Demand for workers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers continues to explode. Data from the U.S. Department of Education predicts that growth opportunities in these fields will increase 14 percent by 2020. One way to nurture kids’ long-term potential is to make learning STEM subjects fun, hands-on and interactive.

Whether you’re looking for fresh ideas to shake things up in the classroom or planning activities to share with the family at home, consider these creative approaches to increasing students’ interest in STEM topics.

Take a field trip: When learning occurs outside the confines of a classroom, it can create unexpected sparks of interest. Build classroom field trips or family outings around destinations that offer unique ways to highlight STEM subjects. For example, setting up a tour of a local baseball stadium may be a chance to get up close and personal with the game and the field, but it’s also a way to discuss the math behind baseball. Similarly, a visit to an indoor skydiving facility is more than just exposure to an extreme sport; it’s an opportunity to learn about terminal velocity and gravity. Additional options include an outdoor nature lesson, manufacturing facility, planetarium or local farm.

Introduce robotics: Between self-driving cars, drones that can aid in rescue efforts and robots that assist as a “butler” for day-to-day tasks, the future of robotics is here now. Researchers at Brandeis University found that students involved in robotics are two times more likely to take more challenging math and science courses and two times more likely to pursue STEM careers.

One option to increase students’ interest in robotics is the TI-Innovator Rover, a robotic car that introduces middle school and high school students to the basics of coding and programming. Students without any coding or robotics experience can learn to write basic programs on their TI graphing calculators that make Rover do things like draw, dance or even crash. Learn more about the first calculator-controlled robotic car at education.ti.com/rover.

Career show and tell: Seek out speakers or mentors who have real-world STEM careers, ranging from more traditional STEM fields like scientists or engineers to more unexpected jobs that use STEM principles every day, such as a fashion designer or an ice cream flavor scientist. Encourage kids to get hands-on with these careers by having guests both show and tell how they use math and science every day. For example, students can measure and cut materials to make a circle skirt, an unexpected lesson in geometry. Or they can scoop up a physics lesson on states of matter as milk transforms into ice cream. 

Cook up some fun: When it comes to bucking tradition, the kitchen may not be the first place you think of to drive home the benefits of STEM learning. However, the kitchen is a perfect place to explore the chemistry of combining ingredients and hone math skills such as dividing fractions when splitting a recipe.

Solve real-world problems: Give students an opportunity to think through a real problem and come up with a solution. For example, challenge them to solve how they would create low-cost options for filtering water in countries without clean water. Through trial and error, students can learn that failure is OK and sometimes leads to a better solution.