activities

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Make, imagine, innovate – Ideas, suggestion, construction information, guidelines for making stuff. Many don’t need adults to help once you have the materials. Most of the materials are readily available and inexpensive.

There are activities, games, simulations in most of the stories in the Engineering 4 Kids collection. They are located in the Do it section of the story page. For activities about specific topics, search for the stories with those words. Project ideas are everywhere, thanks to a lot of interest in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) TV shows and websites. Here are some web sites that specialize in helping you make stuff and just a few cool projects we found at each site. Here are some extras.

find, use, protect, solve, share, make

  • FAA aviation and space education activities
  • DiscoverE  – lots of hands-on activities – requires info to download
  • catapult (video) – hanger, spoon, rubber bands, marshmallow, .pdf
  • 1) Straw Rockets and Water Rockets, 2) Solar System Simulation, 3) Egg Drop Device, 4) Inertia Cars, 5) Catapults, 6) Energy Skate Park Simulation, 7) Death Ray, 8) Breeding Dragons.
  • Virtual Field Trip – can be an activity for any story. Use devices to record, research and present a “trip” to a location.
  • Computer Science Unplugged – Background sections explain the significance of each activity to computer science, and answers are provided for all problems. All you need for most of these activities are curiosity and enthusiasm. There are photos and videos showing some of the activities in action, and we’ve collected links to other useful resources.
  • The Workshop for Young Engineers – Project -Based Engineering for Kids
  • STEM Challenges – Creating Sparks for Energy, Wetsuits for Paratriathletes, Catching the Drugs Cheats, Design a Sports Glove, Develop a new Sports Venue
  • Do It Yourself Hands-on activities
  • Discovery – suggested activities, complete in 30-40 minutes, great for classroom groups
  • Wallace’s Workshop – Design and test a variety of contraptions to move Wallace from point A to point B and advance to the next level
  • Futurecade -Test advanced technology in the areas of synthetic biology, biomimetic robotics, geo-engineering, and space to see if it can defend humankind
  • Kitchen Science – many of these involve engineering
  • Instructables – How-To guides, people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others. * Project-Based Engineering for Kids – lots of great projects, low cost materials, easy to follow instructions with pictures, videos * Instructables.com – mechanical hand from straws
  • Make magazine
  • Makezine – magazine, Maker Faire convention
  • Hackaday.com – more technical, Arduino projects, water rocket launcher
  • NASA Summer of Innovation – Engineering * Rocket Races – balloon powered rocket cars* Balloon rockets – attached to long line, balloon rockets power across the room* Paper / Soda Rockets – sturdy paper rocket, with fins and nose cone, launched with launcher made of PVC pipe and 2 litre soda bottles
  • Hot air balloons – with candles
  • Moon habitat – You can be a Moon explorer too. Practice by building your own Moon habitat. Pretend you are an astronaut working with your team mates on the Moon to build your new home. Materials you will need to build one Moon habitat: 148 sheets of newspaper (use a paper with large pages—tabloid size is too small—and use the full square spread) pictures

Classes

  • SkillShare – Project-Based Classes, Anytime, Anywhere. Share real-world skills through collaborative learning. It is a community marketplace for classes where anyone with experience and knowledge can teach a class, and any place can be a classroom

For teachers

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