Round up the kids for these educational but fun (we promise) activities you can do together at home!
Heart palpitations? Hot sweats? An overwhelming desire to crawl under the couch with a bottle of wine? We don’t claim to be medical professionals, but it sounds to us like a classic case of The School Holidays. Fret not; we have reinforcements. Here, our friends from Canadian International School (CIS) have offered up a fantastic selection of activities you can do at home with the kids that are not only fun, but also sneakily educational.
Now these are no ordinary school holiday activities. No, these puppies are fuelled by a superpower known as STEAM, which stands for Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship or Engineering, Arts, and Maths. Basically, it’s a learning approach that encourages students to think about the connections between these five key disciplines through creative thinking, problem-solving, iteration and inquiry. If you’re already familiar with STEM, you might have noticed an extra letter floating around in the acronym here, which we assure you is not a typo: CIS incorporates the arts into its teaching methods, based on research showing this is key to fostering creative thinking and ultimately, innovation.
What’s all this got to do with the school holidays? There are loads of opportunities to apply the thinking and recognise STEAM connections with your kids at home, so CIS Primary School Design teachers and STEAM ambassadors Andrew Deir and Ben Cooperman have kindly recommended some fun STEAM activities you can try together. But first, a few things to keep in mind:
- The learning doesn’t stop when the activity does. Once you’re done, reflect with your child on what went well the first time and what could be improved, then try it again.
- Experiment! It’s hugely beneficial for kids to see adults learning too, as they see that learning is a life-long process and that it’s okay to fail.
- These activities support the ‘learning through play’ concept, allowing students to connect their learning through knowledge and life experiences as they get older.
Right. Let’s get to it!
Activity 1 – Making paper airplanes
- Check out this quick video together for step-by-step instructions to make an airplane.
- After making your paper airplane, test how far it can fly and how many ‘loop de loops’ it can do.
- Now make another paper airplane but this time try and tweak the design – experiment with the wing flaps and size of the wings – to make the plane fly further and do more loop de loops.
Activity 2 – Baking cookies
- Look at this site for some good cookie recipes and try to make sense of the similarities and differences between the recipes. For example, why do some ask for butter and others shortening? What’s the difference between using brown sugar instead of white sugar?
- Bake a few cookie batches following the different recipes and see what you can learn from them. Are the cookies too chewy or too crispy? Too soft or too hard? Too sweet?
- Now choose the best cookie recipe and see how you can tweak it (experiment with the ingredients) to make your perfect cookie.
Activity 3 – Make a musical drum
- Grab a large empty water bottle (or drum) and a spoon. What sound does it make when you tap it? Fill the bottle with different items (e.g. water, rice, lentils), experiment with the bottle and see how you can make the sound louder, softer, a higher pitch, and a lower pitch.
- Once you’ve worked out how to make a range of different sounds and pitches, why not make an entire drum kit? Go on, you know it’ll be fun.
Activity 4 – Start a mini herb garden on your balcony
- Head to a garden shop and purchase a variety of different herb seeds.
- Plant them in pots and place them in areas where they’ll receive different strengths of sunlight. Give each pot a different amount of water each day. Watch them grow and record the results. What’s the ideal amount of sun and water the herbs need for them to grow successfully?
- Once your herbs have grown, pick them and use them in a recipe. How does it taste?
Activity 5 – Take-apart activities
- If you have some broken mechanical items around the house (e.g. fans, clocks, phones), don’t throw them away. Instead, give them to your child to take apart and then put back together again. The activity helps children explore how pieces work together to make a larger whole.
- A basic set of tools (especially a flat head screwdriver) to start with is a good idea. Most can be purchased relatively cheaply from a hardware store.
- Make sure the item you’re taking apart is safe. Be aware that you may come across glass, sharp objects, and potentially powered electrical devices once you open up the case.
CIS’ STEAM approach is integrated across its curriculum from pre-kindergarten to Grade 12, as well as in co-curricular programs such as robotics, coding and Lego leagues. The CIS campuses have amazing makerspace rooms filled with state-of-the-art equipment such as 3D printers and a newspaper styxx rolling machine, all designed to inspire kids to experiment, build and invent! If you’d like to see STEAM in action, give CIS a call.
This post is sponsored by Canadian International School.