Why does the apple fall from the tree? Why is the sky blue? Why does the sun rise from the east?
Your little ones’ question bank will always be full. Luckily there are many activities to teach daily wonders to your kiddo in a fun way. These are grouped under the category of STEM activities. The term STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Let’s first understand why it’s important to introduce STEM to kids early in life. Before we move, do go through the first part as well.
Benefits of STEM Activities for Kids
STEM activities polish children’s brains and prepare them for future hurdles. The benefits include:
Clear Concepts: Through STEM activities, you are building a strong foundation with the help of hands-on learning. Thus, your kid will have clear concepts.
Boost Creativity: This encourages kids to explore new things and bring innovation. It helps them to find their area of interest from the start. It also fosters their ability to think out of the box and develop new ideas.
Teamwork: If your kids start doing these activities with their friends, then in the future, they will be willing to work in teams. For them, team coordination & cooperation will not be new concepts.
10 Easy STEM Activities
1. Molecular absorption
This science activity will teach them how small molecules absorb liquids. To perform this activity, your children need 4-5 glass jars. Fill the jars half with water, and add different water colours jars. Now, take white roses and put one flower in each jar from the stem side. Leave flower stems around 7-8 cms long. Leave them for some time. After some time, your kids will observe that the petals of roses start turning into the colour of glass jars.
2. Make The Pair
For this math activity, take ten sheets of small paper, and separate them into two different sections which are five on each side. Now in one section, write simple math questions such as 2+2 or 7-5 and write their answers on the other section’s sheets. Now mix all of them and tell your kids to make a pair of question sheets with their correct answers. This will enhance their calculation power.
3. Guess the texture
This science activity will improve their texture-based object identification. Cover the eyes of the children, now put a rock, tile, balloon etc. in front of them and tell them to identify each of their textures by touching them. They will learn to classify objects based on their textures.
4. Codes & Decoding
This is a logical activity. On a paper, write ‘if A is written as K, B is written as F and L is written as N, then decode the term ‘FKNN’ This will help them to learn coding and decoding early on. Also, this will sharpen their brain functioning.
5. Put in the box
This is the math activity. Take a few boxes and write the number of them. For example, you take five boxes and write numbers from one to five. Put them in a line and put some marbles in a bowl. Now give the marble bowl to your children and tell them to put the exact number of marble written in the bowl, like, one marble in the box on which one is written. This will let them learn the numbers.
6. If he is she
This activity will increase your kids’ brain power. Take a piece of paper and write, ‘if the mother is brother, brother is the father and the father is grandmother, so go and tell your father and grandmother to eat the food.’ Observe how much time they need to solve it.
7. Plant structure
Take a piece of paper and draw different sections on it. Write Roots, leaves, stems and petals on each section respectively. Now give a flower to your children and tell them to put all parts of it on the given section. This will help them identify the parts of a plant.
8. Zero gravity
Take a paperclip and tie it with thread. Now take one ruler and put a magnet on it. When you put that ruler over the paperclip, then the clip will rise due to magnetic pressure by defying gravity. Kids will understand the magnetic pressure.
9. Use the colours
This engineering activity will enhance kids’ colour identification capability also. For this, you need building blocks of different colours. Now, choose a few blocks of different colours and give them to your children to make something from them which have those colours in real life. For example, if you give blocks of red, green and black colours, then the children are supposed to make a watermelon out of them. This activity will also help them to identify different objects.
10. Pom Pom creations
Take a piece of paper and draw different shapes on it. You can draw a circle. Now give it to your children and tell them to make the same shape by sticking pom poms together.
Conclusion
STEM activities are playing significant roles in the development of fresh brains. So many schools, playhouses grooming centres are doing these activities to enhance all five senses of children at an early stage. The early you cater to kid’s curiosity, the better thinking & problem solving they will have in the life. Do check out the first part of this article as well.
