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Tomorrow is “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” and to celebrate the occasion we have come up with three simple and inexpensive STEM activities that we know will get students enthusing about STEM subjects.
To find out why this is so important, click here and read our blog “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day – 22nd February” from earlier in the month.
Making Slime (Category: Science)
For this activity, you will need:
A 500ml bottle of white PVA glue
50ml of Formil washing detergent (from Lidl)
Food colouring
Method:
Empty the bottle of glue into a bowl. Add some food colouring and mix it into the glue. Add more until the desired colour is achieved. Add 10ml or so of the Formil and stir the mixture. Keep adding 10ml at a time until the mixture firms up. Once thick enough to handle, remove it from the bowl and knead it between your hands. It will gradually become less sticky and more stretchy.
Oil Spill Activity (Category: Engineering/Science)
This activity is great because it links to the real environmental issues that arise when oil spills occur on our oceans.
In it, you simply mix oil and water in a large container and add a few feathers into the mix to represent the wildlife affected. Once the problem has been studied, discussed and understood, hand out materials and tools that may help your students remove the oil from the water, such as sponges, paper towels and small spoons to see how difficult the job is.
Once these options have been explored, hand out some washing-up liquid to see if this helps the situation. Discuss the pros and cons of using these chemicals for the wildlife.
You can also use this activity to talk about disasters that have happened, their clean-up operations, and the issues that were experienced. We have a great real-life example of someone working in this field. Read our blog here for the details.
Egg Addition (Category: Maths)
For this activity, you will need:
Several plastic eggs that split into two
Permanent marker pens
On one half of the egg write the maths problem that you want the children to solve; on the opposite half, the problem’s solution. Then, mix up the problems and solutions, so that questions and answers are mismatched.
The activity is simply to get your students to unscramble an egg and match each question with its correct answer.
Ideal for younger students as it is, the difficulty of the task can be increased by adding in a treasure hunt element, so that the eggs have to be found before the problems can be solved.
Looking for other ideas? Look no further than our STEM Lesson Plans Pack,which includes more lesson ideas, as well as worksheets for students to complete across a wide range of STEM concepts.