STEAM Activities Series – Page 4 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Mini Engineering Challenges

Today’s subject is: Engineering!

Becca LOVES to build, and create. We do little Engineering challenges all the time with her. But rather than put them all on individual posts that would take me years to end up sharing, I decided that once a month, I’ll do a post of our Mini Engineering Challenges, and load you up with several engineering ideas all at once. Most of them, the pictures speak for themselves, but I’ll give you some little descriptions below each picture just in case you need some hints on how to make this work.

A fabulous way to get your child with sensory issues or irrational fears to overcome their fear of small places and/or the dark, is to help them create an animal cave! Lay down a soft blanket, use some pieces of furniture, and create a covered space they can crawl through (don’t enclose if they have sensory issues/irrational fears!!), and have them think about various animals that live in a cave, and pretend they are one of those animals. (Suggestions: bears, bats, possums, armadillos, etc)

This activity is super fun and simple. If your child isn’t able to write large enough yet, you can do the glue for them. Then have them use marshmallows to build their name! Works great with the regular white ones, or you can use the seasonal ones like we did. You could use jumbo marshmallows for a younger child, or for better fine motor practice, use mini marshmallows!

Becca loves building towers with cups! These cute seasonal ones came as a set from Dollar Tree. Or you can use styrofoam or solo cups as well! there are just so many options for how to build with cups – and again, it’s great fine motor practice – stacking without knocking them over is HARD!

We love marshmallows around here! We originally did this with smaller, mini marshmallows and rounded toothpicks. NOT a good plan. I highly suggest using seasonal or jumbo marshmallows, and definitely use the pointed toothpicks. Remember – this isn’t about the final outcome product, it’s about the process, and not only does this encourage their little engineering minds, it also is great fine motor practice as well as fabulous for hand-eye coordination.

Duplos and Legos are all over our house. So it’s only right that I include some Duplos in our Mini Engineering Challenge post. This time, (as is typical with Becca) she was attempting to build a “Tall, Tall Tower.” We love her LEGO DUPLO My First Construction Site Building Set (aff link) because not only does it include some great bricks, it also includes some really fun trucks and construction guys. It’s super fun to build when you can really make the construction guys build it!

If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen this post a while back. Sometimes as a work-at-home mom, it’s so easy to get bogged down in work and housework and just making sure everyone is fed and clean, that it’s not easy to come up with activity ideas on your own. So… that’s where my friend, Colleen, has a great solution for you (and me!). Please do check out her book, Raising Creative Kids – it’s probably the best $5.99 you’ll spend for your own sanity. She has some fabulous activity starter ideas that will really help ALL ages of kids fill those minutes/hours/days when your Mommy brain is just DONE. You can purchase her book here, from my affiliate link, which is to the right.

For more great ideas like these, be sure to click “like” on my Facebook page, where I share not only my own ideas, but also ideas from other bloggers that will help you fill the empty hours of your day with fun activities that will get your kiddos thinking and moving! I also run a special series each day at noon where I share favorite books to help build your home or classroom library. Please note that the way Facebook selects pages to view on your timeline is based on your interaction with that page. Be sure to click on over to my page frequently to see what Facebook might not be showing you, and click “like”, “comment”, and “share” on my posts to ensure that Facebook will show you what’s going on on the page! The more you interact, the more that should show up on your news feed! www.facebook.com/butterbeesandbumbleflies

Geology 101: Rock Sorting

This week our STEAM subject is Science, specifically, Geology – the study of rocks.

I love blogging activities that I’ve come up with to do with our kids. But, I really love getting to blog about fabulous ideas Cody has come up with and done with them. I love watching him interact with both of the kids, but he and Becca definitely have a very special bond. This particular day was cold and just yuck… not a day for going outside. So Becca pulled out her rock box, and Cody suggested “how about we sort your rocks?”

They proceeded to study each rock. Here they are shown sorting them by size – and putting them in order. But they also lined them up darkest to lightest, sorted like color shades together, and found other ways to group them like “sparkly” vs “not sparkly” rocks.

If your child has a rock collection, this is a fabulous, easy activity that doesn’t require any prep! Just pull it out and use it when they are playing with their rocks the next time! Note: it easily killed 20-30 minutes if you’re looking for a FREE, NO PREP time killer! 🙂

Need an idea for what to keep your rocks in? Check out how Becca made her rock box here.

Crystal Snowflakes

Today’s STEAM topic: SCIENCE

Ok, so I’ll be perfectly honest with you that I got the idea to do these snowflakes from a post I saw on Facebook, but when I went back to try and find it, I can’t even begin to locate the source. (This is what Pinterest is for. Yes, I know that. But do I pin every wonderful idea I see on Facebook? No. I don’t have time for that. Shoot me now. HA!) Ok, so now that you’ve stuck around past my disclaimer, here’s a link to the post that I DID save from Playdough to Plato where she does an awesome thing of making letter crystals to spell the child’s name. That is so totally awesome, and I plan to do that with Becca later on this spring. But for now, we did snowflakes.

I just cut and twisted the pipe cleaners into snowflakes and then, we followed the directions on the Noirin’s post (linked above) to make our crystal snowflakes!! They turned out super awesome and Becca has really enjoyed looking at them over and over and touching them. Now I need to figure out what to do with them, because I don’t want to just throw them away…

Math Clips Addition Matching Game

Our STEAM Subject today is MATH!

There are SO MANY times that I get frustrated. It’s really hard to be the mother of a gifted child who is VERY asynchronous in her development. I see all these adorable activities on Pinterest that are age appropriate for her, but they are color matching. Or they are shape sorting. And while those activities might be fun and totally appropriate for 98% of her peers, they aren’t appropriate for Becca. She doesn’t like to do things that are too easy. The girl wants to be challenged. A lot. And that’s fabulous. But, it does create quite a frustration on my part. She is super into math. She wants to add and subtract food from her plate (which we do frequently). She wants to add and subtract shoes from the shelf (which we also do frequently). But addition and subtraction activities without manipulatives usually equal a worksheet, which she HATES doing. And I don’t blame her. Worksheets remind her that she can’t write yet. And then she gets frustrated.

So, I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with some ideas for games that are similar to those color matching / shape sorting type activities, that cover the skills she’s ready for. Enter my

$math clips$

I had a bunch of little ocean stickers, so mine are ocean themed. You could do conversation hearts for Valentines day, or stars, or dinosaurs – whatever you have of the little tiny incentive chart stickers. Note: your child may not need the stickers to count. Becca doesn’t use them some of the time. But they make it more age appropriate and fun! Plus, it’s always good to have that visual reminder of what 8 starfish look like, what 7 turtles look like, etc. I also put a sticker on the end of the clothespin so that the answers for each card can easily be matched to the correct card if they are all stuck in a large Ziploc bag together. I did +2 and +3 with answers 5 and above. But if you have more stickers and use a larger sheet (I just cut one piece of card stock in half lengthwise), you could easily do larger numbers. Or, you could do much smaller numbers if your child isn’t quite ready for the big answers, and/or is still needing to sit and count each sticker to get to the total. I love how easily this activity can be modified to fit the needs of the child. And honestly, wouldn’t this be a fabulously fun activity for 1st graders learning addition as well?

Note: clothespins can be very challenging for a child who struggles in the fine motor department. Becca has had lots of practice and still has trouble – especially since these are on the right side of the paper and she is left-handed. If your child is struggling with the clips, it helps if you hold the card for them so that all they have to worry about is putting the clip on. They may also need you to hold their hand to help them squeeze if their pincer grip isn’t very strong.

Vinegar Science

What better way to start off our STEAM Thursday series than with some good ole vinegar science? Vinegar science posts are a dime a dozen, but hopefully some of what we did will inspire new ideas of how you can take your basic activity to extend it further.

A couple of basic supplies that we’ll be using in many of our STEAM activities are a set of plastic beakers, and plastic pipettes. I ordered them off of Amazon – here are your affiliate links to help you set up your science supply shelf!

Plastic Beaker Set – 5 Sizes – 50, 100, 250, 500 and 1000ml

Plastic Transfer Pipettes 3ml, Gradulated, Pack of 100

Some other items I recommend you picking up are some plastic trays (they are fabulous for any craft activities) – I got these cute heart shaped ones we’re using for this activity over at Dollar Tree. We also have some fabulous activity trays that I got from Lakeshore, and I’ve heard that some Walmart stores carry similar trays. If you’re looking for a quick order off of Amazon, here’s a great set.

ECR4Kids Flat Activity Trays Set of 5 (Non-Slip)

For this activity, you’ll also need vinegar, baking soda, and food coloring. We also used paper towels. The lab coat is of course optional – I used to sell Pampered Chef cooking products, so my chef’s coat is now her lab coat / painter’s smock. 🙂

You can make this as basic or as complex as you want. Here she’s doing the first steps – I put vinegar in two beakers, and she decided she wanted to make green, so we did blue and yellow. She stirred the coloring in with her pipette, and then squeezed some of each color over into the smaller one to make green. Talk about good hand-eye coordination and fine motor skill work! It took a bit of practice to get the colored vinegar to move, but she go the hang of it fairly quickly!

Then we took our tray, and made three baking soda mountains. She enjoyed squeezing the colored vinegar onto the baking soda and seeing the colored bubbles!

So that was where my intentions for the project ended. The rest is all Becca. And that’s the beautiful thing about having an open science experiment time with your kiddos. LET THEM LEAD. They’ll take you amazing places.

First, she decided that she wanted to dump ALL the vinegar into the tray. Talk about big bubbles and lots of giggles!!! The whole heart turned green, and she was super excited. Then, she drew in the remaining baking soda with a pipette. So suddenly we were doing art in our science experiment.

Then, she discovered that the pipettes float! But, if you fill them up and then put them in, they sink. And, when I used a paper towel to clean up a spill, she thought it was awesome that part of the paper towel was yellow, part was blue, and then where they touched, they were green. And then, the paper towel fell into the tray. And thus began the TRUE experiment portion of our science time. She loved watching the water soak into the towel, so we folded paper towels with different amounts of folds to see which would take the longest to soak up the water. And then we stood up a paper towel in the water and she learned the words “capillary action” in regards to how trees take water in through their roots and the water spreads upward through the tree like the water spread upward through the paper towel. I never expected my 2 1/2 year old to be able to repeat “capillary action” to her Daddy and explain it’s “like the trees getting water from the ground”… but ya know, I never expected lots of things when it comes to Becca. She’s definitely my little science expert. I’m so curious to see what career path she will choose some day. Whatever she does, she’s gonna be amazing.

I hope that this, the first of many STEAM activities for the year, will inspire you to get into the kitchen (or dining room as the case may be) and start experimenting with your kiddos. And don’t be afraid to let them lead you to a place you didn’t plan to go. Because they might just be ready to learn about capillary action, too. Or not. Let them lead… and be prepared to follow. (But don’t worry, if they lead you to a place where you don’t know all the answers… that’s what the internet is for!) 🙂