STEAM education is a learning approach that incorporates science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. These subjects are a baseline for critical thinking, student inquiries, and new dialogues.
Learning happens every day outside of the classroom and it’s important to encourage your child to seek real-world experiences to apply their knowledge and gain new insight. STEAM education impacts student achievement and enables them to make connections between school and life.
Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA) encourages lifelong learning for students, so we’ve created a list of summer STEAM ideas that can keep your child busy and engaged. Summer STEAM activities encourage your child to enjoy the sun with outdoor activities or find an educational way to spend a rainy day inside.
1. Design Magnetic Marble Mazes
You only need three pieces to create a magnetic marble maze. First, you can create your own maze or print designs off of your computer. After you have your paper maze, you place the magnetic marble on the track and use a magnet under the paper to guide the marble.
You can print off easy tracks or more difficult ones and let your children master each difficulty. If you have more than one child, you can encourage them to race each other as they stay in the lines. With this game, you can teach your child about colors and shapes and introduce them to magnetic forces as they play.
This activity is best for elementary children. If you use larger pieces, you can also allow toddlers and kindergarteners to experiment. The best summer STEAM activities for kindergarten and elementary school children reinforce concepts they learn in school, such as numbers and colors.
2. Create Bottle Rockets
Bottle rockets are fun for all times of the year, but children especially love showing off these projects for the Fourth of July celebrations and other events where there are fireworks. These rockets introduce children to concepts of chemical reactions, motion, and flight and improve their problem-solving skills as they navigate through the design process. Bottle rockets are wonderful summer STEAM activities for middle school children, but they do require active adult supervision.
To create a bottle rocket, you’ll need to gather baking soda, vinegar, colored pencils, tape, a wine cork, and a plastic bottle. Your child should never use a glass bottle for their rocket because it can shatter.
Your child will first need to tape the pencils to the bottle so that the flat end of the pencils will balance on the ground when the bottle is upside down. Then, they can pour vinegar into the bottle and top it off with baking soda. Quickly after, they need to cover the hole with the wine cork, then flip the bottle over, step away, and watch it take off in moments.
3. MakePom Pom Catapults
A pom pom catapult is a fun indoor STEAM activity that students of any age can enjoy, though younger kids may need help with the construction. First, you’ll need to gather three pencils, a rectangular box, rubber bands, a hole punch, tape or glue, a paper clip, and a jar lid. Your box can be a shoebox, cereal box, or tissue box.
Steps to create a pom pom catapult include:
- Help your child punch a hole in the long side of the box about three inches from the short side and a matching hole on the other side.
- Center a third hole on the short side of the box near the bottom.
- Assemble the arms by placing two pencils in an upside-down lowercase T and securing them with rubber bands.
- Glue or tape the jar lid to the long end of the pencils.
- Create a slipknot with another rubber band to secure the bottom of the arm.
- Insert a pencil into the side holes and thread the slipknot through the center hole, using a paper clip to hold it in place.
- Use the third pencil to create a stopper by placing it over the top of the box and using a rubber band to secure one end, under the box, and resting on the other end of the pencil.
After completing the catapult, your child can spend the day flinging pom poms, pennies, and other light objects across the room. This activity will give them first-hand experience with simple machines and introduce them to inertia and energy. They can learn about angles and weight to determine what objects fly and how far they go.
4. Test Out Fizzy Paints
Experimenting with fizzy paints is a fun way for kids to experience art and science. They can watch as safe chemicals mix and enjoy painting beautiful artwork simultaneously. For this activity, you’ll need watercolor paper, vinegar, baking soda, food coloring, and a dropper.
Have your child sprinkle the baking soda over the paper while you mix a few drops of food coloring with a tablespoon of vinegar. Pour the colored vinegar into the dropper and watch as your child marvels at the fizzy colors they create. After the paper has dried, you can scrape off the remaining baking soda and hang up your child’s new artwork.
If you want to keep your home clean, your child can easily complete this activity outside. After your child has tested the dropper a few times, encourage them to make hearts, smiley faces, stars, and other simple designs, or let their creativity take them wherever they want to go.
5. Play Math Fact Dominoes
Making math fun is an excellent way to get your child thinking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, even during the summer. You can use dominoes to play games with your child that encourage them to continue working with numbers.
You only need popsicle sticks, a sharpie, and different colored circle stickers for this activity. You can use one color sticker for the problems and another color for the solutions.
For example, you could use a blue sticker to write 2+5 and place it on the left side of one popsicle stick. You could then place a yellow circle on another stick with the seven on the right side. To solve the problem, your child will need to match the left side of the first stick to the right side of the second stick. This way, your child will have to search for the answer and will build a pattern of problems and solutions that all connect.
Depending on your child’s age and current lesson plans, you can make the problems more challenging. You could have one set of sticks for addition, another for subtraction, and others for multiplication or division. As they master their math skills, make the problems longer or mix the sets so they can work on different types of problems at the same time.
Encourage STEAM Learning With CCA
Most kids love their summer break and getting to give their minds a rest from their academics. However, finding new STEAM experiments or games is an excellent way to keep your students engaged and hone their skills while having fun.
CCA knows all about keeping students engaged because we create personalized education plans for each of our learners. We want your child to be passionate about learning all summer and actively seek new growth opportunities. We offer tons of STEAM-themed clubs and extracurricular activities for your children to participate in and collaborate with peers who love the same things they do.
Request more information about STEAM clubs and our personalized lesson plans or enroll your student in CCA and watch as they develop a passion for lifelong learning.
