We spent a Saturday at the Orleans Public Library doing paper circuits. About a dozen people came in. We had a variety of options of pre-printed cards to color and light up. These are the images. They were sized to take up half a sheet of paper, so it could be folded as a “card”… Read more »

Unionville Elementary School had to re-schedule there Earth Day Celebration/Carnival/Fundraiser for May. They have lots of games for kids to play and many booths from local organizations like me. I saw some geodes, there was a station to sift through a bag of “dirt” (like mining) to find cool rocks (that were placed in there)…. Read more »

We held a 4 day Vex Robocamp for 46 middle school kids. Some had 0 experience, some had been in competitions. One-third of attendees were girls. We borrowed kits from Binford, University and Tri-North and purchased a few IQ kits as spares and for future use in the Maker Van. We started with some design… Read more »

I am always looking for STEM/Maker ideas, especially for littles. I came across this “straw flyer” on Instructables ( https://www.instructables.com/Straw-Flyers/ ) It requires 3 or 4 straws, 2 strips of paper (different lengths) and some tape/glue dots. You could use card stock to give it a little more weight, but paper worked okay as our… Read more »

I am going to attempt to do tie dye with a STEM camp. Back in the old days, we used to make buckets of dye and dip them in. Nowadays, you use squirt bottles. Most of the instructions I found boiled down to : cotton/mostly cotton Prewash Dye wet wrap/fold/scrunch as desired Rubber bands squirt… Read more »

Linton Stockton launched their third balloon in May. They had 4 experiments attached. One with 3 color filters to see if a micro:bit detected any thing different. Another was to see how the atmosphere/environment affected yeast. Third was a bag of chips to see if it burst. Fourth was a partially painted, laser cut, wooden… Read more »

I was back at the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence County. This time I took stomp rockets. It was an exciting time for all, though you have to remind young ones to put their name on their rocket. Some colored their rocket, others got straight to building. I have a pdf with rocket and… Read more »

I got connected with a home school group that has an outdoor focus. We met at Winslow Woods park so they could take a short hike and pick up some natural elements to make/augment a fairy door to go along with a literature activity (reading the picture book Fairy Door ; they thought they might… Read more »

Linton Stockton had an Earth Day event, “Science Night in the Woods”. They have a small wooded area with a walking path next to the elementary playground, so they thought to showcase it. Over 200 people came! The FFA students had a table. There were about a dozen 5th graders that had presentations at various… Read more »

We partnered with one of our sponsors, ROI, to participate in the Grandview Elementary STEM Night. We had 3 things for attendees to do. There was the large sorting mat that has you simulate how a computer deals with sorting data, we had craft stick catapults to build and launch, as well as paper circuits… Read more »