Here’s the top 5 home STEM projects that are easy, engaging and quite productive:
Invent-a-Wheel lead¬¬¬¬s to the creation of gravity-powered cars in grades pre-K through 1. Students go outside to a playground slide to explore what it takes to glide down. How does a towel, cardboard sheet or rubber map affect your trip? Back in the classroom, they experiment with cardboard ramps and sleds. How high does the ramp need to be for the sled to go down? One way to make it slide more easily is to add rollers, but the sled falls off when it gets to the bottom of the ramp. What if you attached the rollers to the sled, so they couldn’t fall apart? This turns the sled into a car and the rollers into wheels, which the students have invented!
Fantastic Elasticengages elementary students from 1st grade up in creating rubber-band-powered wind-up toys. Turning a stick twists a rubber band inside. Letting go of the stick lets the rubber band unwind, sending the wind-up across the room. Many variations are possible, such as wind-ups that go faster or slower; farther or not so far; in a straight line, circle or randomly.
Flip Toys consist of two wooden sticks, holding a little acrobat on top. Squeezing the bottoms of the sticks makes the acrobat do a complete flip. These toys are fun to make and illustrate concepts of force, motion, levers, tension and gravity. Often, they don’t work at first, so there are many opportunities to troubleshoot and to fix them!
Pop-upsare paper mechanisms found inside pop-up books and cards. Upper elementary students learn to make them by examining ones they find and then by doing some experiments. Their pop-up constructions gradually become more complex, beginning with simple rectangular strips, proceeding to mouths and monsters, and culminating a “twister” design that sends attached figures in four different directions simultaneously. Along the way they learn the language and secrets of “paper engineers” who make pop-ups professionally.
ElectroCityprovides an introduction to electric circuits for students in grades 4 and up. The first challenge is to turn on a LED from a coin battery. Next, students explore how many LEDs they can operate from a single battery. Do all the colors light up together? In everyday life, every circuit also includes a switch. What do switches do and what do you have to do to operate them? After creating simple switches from office supplies, students investigate hidden switches, which are operated by some other action, such as opening a door. Students create mystery boxes and electric puppets by making their own hidden switches.
These fun-to-make home STEM projects not only teach science concepts in a friendly way, but also make the world of science come alive.

About the Author:
Gary Benenson is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the City College of New York. Over the last 30 years, he has been working with teachers and kids to develop and test strategies for introducing engineering in the elementary grades. He is one of the founders of the City Technology Project, a collaboration of college faculty with elementary teachers who work in the NYC Department of Education. He has two children and five grandchildren, all of whom attend or attended public school. His daughter teaches kindergarten in Northern Manhattan.