Engineering Week Activities
Need some hands-on ideas for helping your kids explore engineering for a week – or more, if you have the time? Read on for some great DIY activities.
Engineering for Everyone
It might come as a surprise, but engineering is all around us, not just in an architect’s office or machinist’s workshop. This makes it an important topic to introduce even young kids to. Whether you’re focusing on it for Engineers Week or digging in because you want your kids to take an interest in more STEM-related topics, we hope these activities lead to hands-on science fun.
For more ideas, see our engineering page with complete kits and more.
Make a DIY Marble Run
That might sound ambitious, but it’s doable! You can give a whirlwind survey of engineering concepts in a week with activities aimed at covering some topics from the following list – and then, once your kids are hooked, encourage them to explore more on their own or with future projects.
- Simple Machines – levers, screws, wheels and axles, wedges, pulleys, and inclined planes, which are used constantly in our day-to-day life.
- Buoyancy – does it sink or float?
- Volume & Mass – how much space does it take up?
- Entropy – things break down over time.
- Velocity & Acceleration – how fast does it go?
- Force – needed to make an object move. Related are pressure and friction.
Don’t have much time? Try doing one engineering-related project per week over the summer instead.
And if things don’t turn out quite the way you planned, no worries! This is a great time to discuss the importance of trial-and-error, critical thinking, revising hypotheses, and repeated testing – all things essential to any engineer’s success.
Engaging Engineering Activities
Here comes the exciting part: putting science principles into practice through hands-on experiments. Here are some easy ways you can enjoyably investigate STEM topics with your kids, using household materials:
- Build a Mini Roller Coaster. This is a great one for multiple ages working together. Use empty cardboard toilet paper rolls, paint stir sticks or rulers, hot glue, stacks of books, Lego bricks, or whatever else you can come up with and see how deluxe a course you can make for Matchbox-sized cars. (You can also go the route of taping paper tubes in descending layers on the wall and make a vertical marble run.) In the process, learn about things like velocity, force, and momentum.
- Make a Wind or Water Wheel. This ties alternative energy in with simple machines. Use a wooden skewer or pencil and plastic lids from a yogurt container, peanut butter jar, etc. An adult will need to carefully drill a hole into the center of the lid, then it can be inserted onto an “axle” and your choice of running water or wind (outside or from a fan) can be used to make it go. Experiment with different designs to really put young engineering minds to work!
- Create a Lava Lamp. All you need is an empty soda bottle, food coloring, water, and vegetable oil. (But add glitter and/or throw an Alka-Seltzer tablet in at the end to make it more exciting with rising and falling bubbles.) Add food coloring to the water, then add oil to see different densities and surface tension at work.
- Make a Balloon Hovercraft. Use a blank CD, a water bottle or dish soap lid (the kind with a pop-up top), and a balloon to create a vehicle that can float on a cushion of air. Glue the bottle lid to the opening in the middle of the CD, push it closed, then blow up the balloon as full as possible and attach it over the lid. top Then pull the lid top open and watch as the hovercraft shoots off along the table or floor.
- Craft a Paper Flyer. Learn about principles of flight (aerodynamics) by creating your own paper airplanes, gliders, and helicopters. Look online for templates, or hand over some straws, paper clips, index cards, scissors, tape, and card stock to kids to see what they come up with on their own!
We hope you enjoy these projects and your kids can have fun expanding their knowledge – and become lifelong STEM enthusiasts.
