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Free STEM-At-Home Activities Promote Learning And Having Fun

  Learn to make a flip toy from recycled or very cheap materials as an outcome of a STEM at Home Activity. Flip toys are widely available in Latin America, where they are known by different names in different countries: acrobata (acrobat), trapecista (trapeze artist) and salto de muerte (somersault, literally, jump of death). A flip toy consists of two parallel sticks, held upright, connected by a flexible pivot, and supporting a little figure suspended from a loop of string. When you squeeze the bottoms of the sticks together, the figure does a complete flip. The only materials you need to make one are two rulers, craft sticks or paint sticks, a strip of cardboard or a plastic bottle top, some tape and string, a clothespin and craft supplies. It might not work at first, but that’s where the learning comes in! There are troubleshooting tips showing how to address common problems. Once you’ve made one, you will want to know how it works. The operation of a flip toy involves scienc...
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Mechanical Engineering For Kids

    Here are three fun and easy Mechanical Engineering activities For Kids that can turn into home STEM projects, elementary school STEM curriculum or engineering science fair projects. MechAnimations develops engineering ideas about force, motion, structures, mechanisms, levers and linkages. Fantastic Elastic provides an engaging introduction to energy, showing that energy is conserved, and how it can be stored and then transformed from potential to kinetic energy. Flip Toys illustrates lever principles as well as concepts of tension and gravity.   MechAnimations are home-made mechanisms that can illustrate the actions of animals, people or scenes. Children make these devices from ordinary carboard, held together with paper fasteners. The first objects they create may not be mechanisms at all – instead these objects may be structures, which have no moving parts! As they begin to create mechanisms, they learn about inputs and outputs, pivots, levers and links. By op...
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Learn How To Make Simple Electric Circuits At Home

  Here are some easy STEM activities for elementary-aged kids. You don’t need to be a genius nor spend a fortune to help your child learn how to make electric circuits ! The parts for all these activities can be purchased for about $10, mostly for wire, LEDs, paper fasteners and coin batteries. You and your children will also learn how to make a switch from ordinary paper fasteners, and how to incorporate it into a switch-controlled circuit. Using a little bit of wire, a coin battery, two paper fasteners, cardstock and two LEDs, you and your child can create an Electric Puppet, whose eyes light up when you close the mouth. You’ll begin by exploring how to light up red, yellow, blue and green LEDs the size of jellybeans. How can you turn them on using a coin battery? How many can you turn on at one time? Which colors can you turn on together? After you have made and LED circuit, you’ll explore switches. Where can you find them in your home, what do they control, and what do you ha...
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