Right now, I am safe at home with my three-year-old and five-year-old. Like many of you, I feel the challenge of balancing at-home work with full-time parenting. I know many of your school districts are doing an amazing job of providing distance learning resources. Yet, I wanted to share a few STEM resources you can put in your own personal toolbox for those times when you just need to get something done and your kids seem to be bouncing off the walls!
The resources below can make you feel good about allowing your kids to use their devices, because they help kids develop their engineering skills. Did you know STEM-related jobs are expected to grow at 17% compared to 9.8% for non-STEM jobs? Projections indicate the United States will experience a shortage of engineers. Some projections look like there may be as many as one million more engineers needed, than our education system will produce at its current rate. So, letting your kids have fun with the engineering design challenges below will help you, help them and potentially help all of us!
Design different machines to help the ball reach its goal:
https://invention.si.edu/tinker-ball
Put on your engineering hats to design a course to guide a ball to an ultimate goal:
https://launchball.sciencemuseum.org.uk/
Adjust the Rube Goldberg machine, so lunch can be served:
https://www.gamesloon.com/free-educational-27/goldburger-to-go-33707.html
Design a structure to help the hamster reach its food:
https://pbskids.org/ruff/structures/game
Find the parts to complete each machine:
https://iowa.pbslearningmedia.org/asset/741049e7-165c-4437-9146-ce2b5f9c35f3.asset/EN/
Use simple machines to design a solution to complete each task:
https://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/Activities/Games/simple_machines/
Join forces with the Fidgets to solve four engineering challenges:
https://pbskids.org/designsquad/games/
Important Note: Many of these resources require Flash, so make sure you have it enabled in your browser or you may not be able to see the resource.