Simple DIY Scale For STEM And Nature Play

A simple STEM play setup with natural materials that you can leave out and come back to throughout the day. This activity is a lovely way to create something with your kids. Something they can later on use to explore and understand the world a bit better. Keep reading to find out how you can make your own DIY scale for STEM and use it to explore scientific and mathematical concepts through play.

Materials

These are the materials we used to create or simple DIY scale for STEM and nature play:

Hanger
Baskets
String
A place to hang it (we just attached a stick to our railing and hung it on there)
Natural materials
Optional: Clothespins with numbers on them

We tied the string to the baskets and found a place to put our hanger. We love involving our kids in this part of the process too. By modelling this DIY attitude, we are cultivating a their own “can do” attitude. They are problem solving, they are creating things they can play with. It doesn’t just magically appear, or is bought from a store. We use the resources we have at home and make something with it, developing resourcefulness. Somethink key in STEM and life in general.

STEM skills

Once the set up is complete, you can explore the scale togethere. Here are some examples of what you can talk about while you play:

Scientific concepts: weight, materials
Categorizing: find out what objects are heavier/lighter, use different combinations and compare
Observation: what happens when objects are heavier?
Math: how many shells do we need to balance a stone? What is heavier 4 shells or 2 pinecones?
Conversations: Talk and wonder about what you see and the materials you are using

Play around with it together, maybe you just end up piling everything into the baskets like we did, trying to fill all the spaces.

Check Out These Other STEM Activities With Natural Materials:

Playful And Colorful Water Play For Kids

Color mixing is such a great way for kids and toddlers to experiment! They choose colors, observe what happens, and try out different combinations to see what comes out. It nurtures their curious mind and develops their thinking skills. And they are able to do it by themselves which is always so much fun! The set up requires some help from an adult but you can also involve your kids in the design process and foster some DIY engineering abilities. We kept trying out the angle of the bottles together to see if we had to position them in a “more vertical or more horizontal” way. Keep reading to find out how we set up this water play for kids:

Materials

3 plastic bottles with their tops
A big container to collect the water
3 containers to mix primary colors
Something to scoop and pour water (we used measuring cups with handles)
Food coloring (red, blue, yellow)

Water Play For Kids Set Up:

Cut off the bottom of two of the bottles and cut the other one in half
Fix them to a tree, wall, corkboard… we used nails to fix ours to a big pine tree
Mix water and food coloring
Experiment with colors

That’s it! A simple set up, loads of color mixing fun.

For Similar Water Play For Kids:

Check Out Parenting Tips And Inspiration For STEM At Home:

Ultimate Holiday STEM: Christmas Indoor Game For The Whole Family

With Christmas around the corner we decided to try a fun themed STEM activity. This Christmas indoor game turned out to be so much fun! This game is a great way to fire up the brain and get those little minds working and learning. Recommended ages: preschool ages from 3 to 5. Once they get older you can go for real circuits, this one is just pretend.

Christmas Indoor Game

Materials

2 x Egg cartons
Paint for coloring the egg cartons
Pipe cleaners: we used Christmas style pipe cleaners that were red, green, yellow and blue colors, 5 of each color
Bells for extra decoration (optional)
2 x LED battery-operated lights with a switch
Fun squeaky toy that can act as a buzzer
Paper/markers/scissors to make the cards

Preparation

To prepare the activity you will need to:

Turn the egg cartons around and paint each row
Once the paint has dried, poke a hole in each colored circle
Prepare playing cards: We cut out card-sized pieces of paper and drew a color code on them: a line for the pipe cleaner color and two circles for the colors that it connects on the egg carton

Christmas Indoor Game Set up

Once you have all your materials it’s time to set up the game. Place the egg cartons on the LED lights and the buzzer between them. Cards can be placed on the table too.

How To Play The Christmas Indoor Game

We pretended we were connecting wires to see if we could get the lights to work. There are two playing modes:

Mode 1: Follow the code and connect the wires

2 players: Each player draws 1 – 3 cards depending on age and tries to connect the wires correctly. Once done, each player takes a turn to hit the buzzer and the other player switches the light on if the cables (pipe cleaners) are correct. If the lights don’t go on, then it’s time to take a look at what went wrong and try again.

3 players: Same as before but one player is in charge of the lights and the other two have to connect the wires correctly. The one in charge has to check that the wires are correct before turning on any lights.

Mode 2: Design and replicate

Each player takes a turn to become a creator and designs their own circuit. The other player then has to replicate it. Once it has been replicated, the player hits the buzzer and the creator (or a third player) turns both lights on if it is correct.

STEM learning

This activity is a great exercise for the brain!

🚥 First, it has children using a new language, a code, to follow instructions. This helps develop cognitive abilities.

🧩 Second, children have to compare and make sure that everything is correct or find out what went wrong, which is great for problem-solving, critical thinking, and logical reasoning.

⚡Third, it is pretend circuit play so you can start introducing very basic vocabulary like wires and electricity. Look around the room and talk about what needs electricity to work

❤️ Fourth, it is quality time spent together. Creating positive emotions surrounding STEM experiences is key for kids motivation for STEM.

If both parents are playing this with their kids, which we definitely recommend you do, let them be in charge of the lights and play against each other. This really gets their brains working. Once they figure out the code and have followed it a few times, being in charge of overseeing the lights is a great way to boost brain activity. They don’t just follow instructions but they have to check that everything is correct. A crucial aspect of any STEM profession.

Hope you enjoyed this fun Christmas set up. We wish you a lovely holiday!

More Fun Family Games:

Check Out Parenting Tips And Inspiration For STEM At Home:

Spoon Ding Challenge: Engaging Ramp Activity For Early STEM

Ramps, or inclined planes, are a great way to explore physics concepts. Trial and error, gravity, hand-eye coordination, motor skills, critical thinking, problem solving, are some of the skills that are developed when playing with ramps. This challenge is based on an activity I did for physics class when I was in high school. It involved a lot more precise measuring and math but we have simplified it so that even preschoolers can enjoy it! The activity is pretty simple, it involves building a ramp out of recycled materials and then experimenting with it. Check out the process below.

STEM early years STEM for kids Building together Engineering for kids

1. Materials

Cardboard boxes
Paper towel or toilet rolls
Masking tape
Scissors or other cutting tools
Marbles or balls of different sizes
Containers
Spoon

2. Build Your Own Ramp

This part is open-ended. Gather your recycled materials and build a ramp. If you need an example check out ours in the images.

We just taped some kitchen rolls together and then created a base by cutting a hole out of some cardboard to put the rolls through. We also added some stability to the bottom by adding another piece of cardboard. It really doesn’t have to look amazing, the important thing is that it is steady and doesn’t fall when you roll marbles down it.

3. Spoon Ding Challenge

Set-up

Now for the fun part!! Place the ramp up high so that objects will roll off a table or chair. It also should be at the edge so that when the objects leave the ramp they go into free fall. We secured it with more tape so that it wouldn’t move. This is important for the challenge.

Position is important. Once an object is in free fall, it is only pulled by gravity. This means that its trajectory is determined by the distance to the ground (which we are keeping constant) and the speed at which it leaves the ramp. The speed might vary slightly because our ramp might not be perfectly smooth or because our kids throw the ball in instead of just dropping it. But most of the time the trajectory will be similar enough and the marble will mostly hit the same spot on the floor, which is quite cool!

Give your children time to explore and play, place containers on the floor and try to catch the marbles. Make small changes to the setting and see what happens. Our kids had lots of fun with this.

Challenge

After playing with the ramp you can add a challenge. It’s time to see if you can hear a “ding”. Have your kid watch the spot where the marbles hit the ground and have them place the spoon there. Time to see if they got the spot right! Let some marbles roll and keep your eyes closed to see if you can hear the “ding”. Keep going, it will happen quite often and it is very satisfactory to hear how you hit the target!!

Change the position of the ramp and repeat. See how many times in a row you can hear that “ding”!

early years STEM build a ramp fun with ramps

STEM Concepts

This activity is great for all ages. For toddlers, you are encouraging fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, object permanence and basic vocabulary. For the preschool ages you can further enrich vocabulary and work on critical thinking, problem solving, trial and error, and basic physics concepts, such as gravity. Going one step further, you can use this simple setup for elementary-aged kids and get into a bit more math by measuring distance and height, letting them be more involved in the process of building the ramp, working on engineering design skills and so much more!

To experiment with the concept of free fall and the different variables (speed and distance), here are some suggestions:

Mark the spot
Move the ramp back or forward. Is it easier to predict the spot if the ball rolls off the table instead of directly from the ramp? What changed, speed or distance?
Try with different sized/weight balls. Do you have to move your mark forward/backwards? What changed?
Put some books under your ramp, or change the slope (make it steeper or more flat). Where does your mark go now? What changed?
Can you predict where it will land? Measure how far your mark is and recreate somewhere else

Build Or Create More Fun Things Together:

Check Out Parenting Tips And Inspiration For STEM At Home:

Early years STEM ramp activity fun learning

early years STEM ramp activity fun learning for kids

Gardening With Kids: Beautiful Math And Art Activity

Kids enjoy getting their hands dirty and helping out in the garden is a great way to put that love of dirt to good use. And gardening with kids is actually a great way to help their development. Planting seeds and helping them grow gives kids a sense of purpose and responsibility. The tasks of tending to a garden, such as adding soil and seeds to a pot, or watering plants helps with motor skills, body management and object control. In addition, the sensory experience of feeling the soil, the water, seeds or any natural material is very engaging for little ones.

There is also so much to talk about! And conversation is a great way to develop young minds. So to bring this all together, we have prepared a simple activity that will help kids develop math skills and creativity in an environment that is already nurturing their minds. This is a lovely activity you can set up and do regularly when you want to do some gardening with kids and observe different results. So next time you are out in the garden, take a moment to do this simple yet fun garden math and art activity.

Materials

Seeds: we used “cat grass” seeds as they grow pretty easily
Mix of natural materials and loose parts: we used stones, leaves, sticks, string, and colorful stones which we had from a local shop
Pots with soil
Scissors

Preparation

Gather natural materials by going on a nature walk or use previously collected treasures
Prepare the pots with the soil
Bring out all the materials

Gardening With Kids: Math And Art Activity

The math part mainly consists of working on numbers, shapes and patterns. Pattern awareness is key to child development. The ability to recognize and reproduce patterns as well as the ability to predict how a pattern will continue is a skill that positively affects future mathematical understanding and thinking. How to do this:

Start by drawing numbers in the soil
Trace with natural materials and work on shapes and patterns as you trace

For example: Draw number 1 and make patterns of 1, draw number 2 and make patterns of 2, or make a circle around number 3 and a triangle around number 4

Fill the numbers with seeds
Draw more shapes and fill with seeds
Cover up
Decorate and play

For the decoration part we used a different pot with soil and let the kids do their thing in a more unstructured way to let them explore at their own pace

Optional: make a number/shape map. As you will read below, our numbers didn’t come out quite as clearly as we had hoped for so we had to guess. Drawing a sketch of your pots and having your kids write in the numbers and shapes is a great way to cross-check and also perfect for tying up this educational activity.

Gardening and Math Talk With Kids

Gardening with kids is good for the body, soul, and mind of everyone involved. It also opens up a whole lot of conversation topics. It is so important that you talk, talk, talk to your kids during activities like this. Observations lead to connections, which lead to discovery. Help them along by giving them the vocabulary they need to express their thoughts and questions. You can also ask some open-ended questions about what they think will happen and why. When gardening with kids there is so much to talk about and this activity also offers you the chance to add in some math talk. Here are some suggestions and conversation topics:

What do you think plants need to grow? (water, sun, soil)
Talk about the parts of the plant (roots, stem, leaves, flower, seeds)
How do you think the plant “drinks” water?
Measure the grass as it comes out
Count the sprouts as they come out, which pot has more/less?
Can we identify the numbers/shapes/patterns? (use the map if you have one)

gardening with kids numbers shapes patterns for preschoolers hands-on activity

Follow-up Activity

We tended to the grass on a regular basis and were quite excited to see it sprout! Unfortunately, the numbers were not as clear as we would have liked them to be, so we had to do some detective work. First we talked about the activity and tried to remember which numbers we had drawn and then we tried to guess by the markings in the soil. It was a good way to reflect on the activity and ask ourselves if there is a better way of doing this. We decided next time we would make a number and shape map and mark where everything went so we could cross check once the grass grew. We also used the chance to work on scissor skills by cutting the grass which was fun and engaging in itself.

Even though the results were not what we expected, this activity gave us the opportunity to talk, observe, and make connections about how our world works. And any activity that gives us the chance to do this is great for us!

For more hands-on number and shape activities:

For more nature activities:

Discover Color Mixing With This Simple Hands-on Activity

Always have food coloring at home. You never know when the perfect opportunity will present itself to use it for play. This activity was one of those moments in which looking around at what our kid was playing with the thought came to me. What if we added some color to this? We gathered the materials, added some food coloring and voilá, a fun and entertaining color mixing activity! This engaging hands-on color mixing activity to learn colors is so simple and yet very entertaining for little ones as they can see the effects of mixing colors all by themselves. They will also develop their fine motor and critical thinking skills as they try different combinations and observe the results.

hands on color mixing activity with water to learn about colors and develop fine motor skills and critical thinking

Materials For Hands-on Color Mixing Activity

Here are the materials we used but you can always adapt to whatever you have at home.

Plastic syringe
Plastic painting tray
Containers for mixing water and color (we used the Ikea ice pop maker which was great because it had a stand)
Paintbrush and thick paper for later

The plastic syringe was great for motor skills and it did add a level of fun that is different from just pouring from a cup. Also the plastic painting tray added a lovely pretend-play artist vibe to it.

Preparation and Color Mixing

This is how we did it:

We added water to three containers
Mixed in the food coloring (just red, yellow and blue)
Used the syringe to transfer water to the tray
Played and discovered what happened when mixing colors
Once the tray was full, our kid decided she wanted to paint with her beautiful palette so that is what she did

This hands-on color mixing activity is perfect for preschool-aged kids to do all by themselves. The only thing I oversaw was adding color because blue tends to be overpowering. Other than that you can sit back and observe or join in the excitement of color mixing!

fine motor skills development practice hands on color mixing activity

Color Talk For Your Hands-On Color Mixing Activity

As always, we encourage you to talk to your kids during these activities. This will help them enrich their vocabulary which is key when learning about new things. Some great ways to engage in conversation and some critical thinking in this hands-on color mixing activity could be:

Introduce the concept of primary colors and let them explore to see how many different colors they can create
I love that color, what primary colors did you use to create that one?
What happens if you mix…?
Can you try making…? (trial and error)
Have you tried mixing…? What do you think will happen? Let’s see if you were right
Talk about tone, what happens if you mix more of one color with just a bit of the other?

There are many opportunities for some great conversations about color and children seem to gravitate towards colorful experiences so this is a great activity for that. Also, playing with water is always so soothing for kids and a great sensory experience.

Explore more…

For more great activities to do with water:

Or more hands-on color mixing activties:

hands on color mixing activity develop fine motor skills critical thinking and learn about colors with water

Hands-on Engineering For Kids: How To Make A Wind Farm

There is something mesmerizing about pinwheels. The hypnotic patterns that are created when the colors and shapes turn and blend with the wind. Pinwheels are a great addition to any garden or terrace. They brighten the space up and kids love them! We have been collecting different pinwheels over the years and the other day we brought them all together for this fabulous activity. We created a wind farm and explored many concepts, enriching vocabulary together as we played. It is the perfect activity to engage in some hands-on engineering for kids. In the following post, we will explain how you can build your own wind farm and create a wonderful and playful learning experience.

Materials For Wind Farm

Pinwheels of different shapes, colors and sizes (the more different they are the more comparisons you can make)
Stable cardboard box (it needs to be stable enough so that even when you poke holes in it, it will not collapse)
Hair dryer or something that will create wind

Update: We discovered that you can also place the pinwheels in a pot with soil, it will also do the trick!

Wind Farm Tutorial: Hands-on Engineering For Kids

Here are the steps to creating your own wind farm. Depending on the age of your kids you can involve them in as many steps as possible:

Poke holes into your box and decorate (optional). Make sure the holes are far enough apart so that the pinwheels don’t bump into each other
Place the pinwheels in the holes at different heights and with different orientations
Let the wind blow and discover what happens
Change the pinwheels around and start over or find a windy spot and leave it there to observe when the wind blows

Explore Wind And Engineering Principles With Your Kids

Now that you have your awesome wind farm set up you can take the chance to explore with your kids:

Play with different orientations and heights and see how many pinwheels you can get moving at once
Observe the different movements of each pinwheel, which ones turn faster/slower, which ones are harder to move…
Change the pinwheels around, sort by size, color, number of blades, make patterns…
If your hair dryer has different power settings, explore what happens with more or less wind, move your hair dryer closer or farther away. Try just blowing or using another source of wind (hand fan)
Explore new vocabulary: talk about wind direction and strength, orientation, height, stability, number of blades and materials

This is such a great hands-on activity for young kids. They get to change small things, like height, position, orientation and observe the effects of these changes. Great for critical thinking and problem solving. It really is hands-on engineering for kids at its best. Remember to discover and find things out together. Wonder out loud and play. The language we use when engaging in educational activities like this one are key for learning.

Playful Question Time

Here are some suggestions for what type of questions to ask when playing together to maximize learning:

How many windmills do you think we can move at once?
I wonder what happens if we change the height/position/orientation of this one? Do you think it will move with this other one?
From where (what direction) do you think the wind should blow to get these windmills moving?
Try pointing your hair dryer and getting the pinwheels moving and then ask: I wonder what would happen if the strength of the wind changes now? Play with the settings.
Sometimes the wind is too strong (if you get too close with the hair dryer), is the windmill stable enough?
What is happening to the wind? Have your child put their hand between the pinwheels and the hair dryer to feel the wind. Now have them put it behind the turning pinwheels. Does it feel the same? Can they still feel the wind?

Real World Conversations And Reflections

There is so much you can do with this and children will find it fascinating! The great thing about it is that you can have conversations about the real world. Doing an activity like this can lead to challenging conversations about the science behind it and the real world applications. Depending on your children’s age you could try things like:

Why do you think windmills exist?
Do you remember seeing any? How big are they in real life?
Where does wind come from or how is it generated?
How does a windmill generate electricity? (research together!)

Here is a great explanation of the science and engineering behind wind turbines:

https://www.alliantenergykids.com/RenewableEnergy/WindEnergy

Other fun engineering activities for kids:

More fun hands-on activities:

Happy STEM learning!

Nature Puzzles: A Wonderful Way To Explore Shapes

When we go on walks in the mountains or to the beach we love to bring home little treasures. Stones, shells, sticks… Sometimes we use them right away and sometimes they just sit there waiting to be used for some awesome activity. If you are like us and have piles of treasures lying around your home, we have a wonderful and simple activity you can do with them. So go ahead and gather your materials for a round of nature puzzles. You can also do these puzzles while you are out and about!

Preparing Your Nature Puzzles

For your nature puzzles you are basically going to need to prepare a frame and then collect materials to fill this frame. It is pretty simple. Here are some suggestions for your frame and fillers:

Stick frame to be filled with stones/flowers/leaves
Drawing in the sand to be filled with shells/stones
Sidewalk chalk drawing to be filled with stones/sticks

Exploring Shapes And Spatial Awareness With Nature Puzzles

The great thing about this activity is that it is full of learning potential. Each time we created a new frame for our puzzle we talked about shapes and I guided (sometimes) with questions like:

How many sides do we want our frame to have this time? I wonder what shape that would be?

We built vocabulary and fostered spatial awareness, critical thinking and problem solving:

Do you think we can fill up that space with this piece?
I wonder which stone will fill that space up better?
Can we find anything to go in there?
Without overlapping, do you think we can first place big stones and then fill the spaces with the little ones?

The amazing thing is that every time we created a puzzle it was different and beautiful!

nature puzzles square shapes natural materials

Important Notes On Guiding The Activity

I always make sure to not take over the activity and let my kid explore while I observe or engage at her level. It is so important for us parents to let the learning happen at their own pace and only offer occasional observations or questions. When I do ask questions, I make sure that the vocabulary I use involves me as a learning partner and not a teacher/student situation. If you go back to the questions you will notice that I use “we” instead of “you” even though my kid is the one doing the activity. Also, I wonder out loud instead of asking directly. In this way, our kids will get the feeling that we are playing and learning together and that we value their opinion. This has a very positive effect on motivation and learning.

Hope you enjoy this simple activity and do some nature puzzles with your family.

For other fun nature activties see:

Or for more shape activities check these out:

5 Brilliant Ways To Experiment With Oobleck

Making an experiment with oobleck is very easy and a lot of fun for kids (and adults too!). The name oobleck comes from a Dr. Seuss story and is used commonly nowadays to name a non-newtonian fluid made from cornstarch and water. A non-newtonian fluid is a fluid that does not behave according to Newton’s law of viscosity. In other words, it has a different resistance to flow. It is sensitive to pressure and will change from solid to liquid depending on how much pressure we put on it. Because it is so easy to make at home, and it behaves so differently from other things we know, it creates the perfect environment for sneaking in some STEM learning.

In our house, we love to add color to anything. So when we decided to make some oobleck the other day, we got out our food coloring and added it to the mix. The result was fascinating! Because of the special properties of the mixture the colors created beautiful curves and spirals before mixing. In this post, you will learn how to create rainbow art and more brilliant ways to experiment with oobleck. You will also find out how you can engage with your kids so that they can learn from this experiment.

Oobleck Recipe

All you need to make oobleck is cornstarch, water, and food coloring. We made it in a large oven tray so that we could spread it out before adding color. This way you will get the beautiful effects I was talking about earlier. You will usually need around twice the amount of cornstarch than water (2 cups of cornstarch to 1 cup of water). These would be the steps to follow:

In a large oven tray add 1 cup of water
Start adding cornstarch until you reach the desired effect (oobleck should feel hard when you try to make it into a ball but as soon as you stop it will flow through your fingers)
Once you achieve the right consistency let it settle and start experimenting

5 Brilliant ways to experiment with oobleck for STEM learning

Making Oobleck in itself is already an awesome and fun experiment. However, the experiment doesn’t have to end there! If we want learning to stick, we have to go beyond the initial experiment and allow our children to do some discovery on their own. Here are some suggestions for keeping them engaged and curious about the experiment:

Add drops of color and make some rainbow art. This was our favorite part! Yes… adults enjoy this too!
Play with loose parts. We used colorful tops and our kid made towers using the oobleck as glue!! Just collect some objects and leave them around the experiment area and see what your kids come up with
Use kitchen utensils and observe how different this mixture is to manipulate compared to water
Create droplets outside of the tray. We did this outside on our waterproof tablecloth we use for experiments so we didn’t mind the mess. We let some drops fall out of the tray and observed what happened when they dried out. We compared bigger drops and smaller drops and then we added them back to the tray for more fun effects
Make a ramp and let the oobleck flow down. We just put a block under our tablecloth, no fancy ramp needed for this but feel free to make one too. We talked about rivers and lakes with this and how different liquids flow

Check out how our rainbow art turned out in this video:

Experiment with Oobleck observations and conversations

If you are doing this with preschool-aged children it is great to just talk and make observations while you do the experiment. By talking with your kids you are helping them build vocabulary so that they can understand the world better. When we make observations, we help them reflect on what is happening and connect ideas. So here are some suggestions when making the oobleck:

Add cornstarch gradually and observe the changes: is it getting harder?
Try to make little balls with your hands: what happens? As soon as you stop trying to roll the oobleck into a ball it will flow across your hand
What happens if you poke the oobleck fast? What happens if you just gently put your finger on it? When poking fast the oobleck should behave more like playdough being poked and when going slow it will behave more like pancake batter

For older elementary school kids you can add complexity to your conversation by talking about the following concepts and asking questions:

Liquid/solid: when does it behave like a liquid/solid?
Viscosity: how does this mixture flow compared to water? You can use a ramp to compare
Pressure/force: when we apply pressure what happens? Does the amount of pressure change the consistency?
Color mixing: what happens when we add drops of color? Why do you think it doesn’t mix directly?

We always suggest to wonder out loud with your kids instead of asking question after question. For example, “if I apply pressure I wonder what will happen?” or “what do you think will happen when we add color?”. It is always more fun to discover together than to be drilled.

Follow-up activity: Comparisons

Once you’ve explored oobleck, make something else. We mixed plain wheat flour with water to see how different the results were. It’s good for kids to have something to compare and as a bonus the entertainment lasted even longer!

This is definitely something you can repeat many times and it is always fun. And each time you do it you might find some cool way to play and experiment with oobleck. So make sure to always have cornstarch and food coloring available.

Happy STEM learning!

Check out other brilliant activities for young kids:

Fantastic Outdoor Game With Great Learning Potential

Jump the river is a fun outdoor game for children of all ages to which we can add a STEM learning twist! The game uses rope or anything you have at hand to make a river that children have to jump over. Each time the kids make it over the river, it gets bigger and bigger. It is perfect to do with a group of children and can be done anywhere. I recommend going outdoors and playing this game in nature because it offers many great possibilities to sneak in some STEM!

How To Prepare And Guide The Outdoor Game

First of all you have to create the river. If you are out in nature the best thing to do is to collect some sticks. Then arrange them in parallel lines and keep them close enough together.

Now you need a story! I use the following narrative:

“You live in a village on one side of the river and all the food is on the other side, so each day you have to cross the river to gather food and then cross it again to get back home”

You can even have things for them to collect on the “food side” of the river. Use your imagination to make it more exciting!

Once they’ve gone back and forth for the first time the river gets bigger! I use the following narrative:

“As everyone sleeps there is a big storm and it rains so much that the river grows!”

At this point separate the sticks so the river is wider and ask your kids if they are still able to gather food! I like playing around with the width of the river, making it narrower at some points and wider at others. You can have them find the shortest/longest route.

This continues until the river is far too wide to cross. Make sure to put the sticks, rope or whatever you are using far enough apart so that no kid can jump over. At this point, it is time to sneak in some problem-solving skills! It is time for some STEM learning!

Sneaking In Some STEM Skills

This outdoor game is perfect to encourage your kids to problem-solve and practice some engineering skills:

“Oh no! Nobody can jump the river and the current is too strong for swimming! How are we going to get food?”

Let the challenging task of crossing the river begin. This will get your kids planning, designing, testing and building to solve a problem. They will become engineers for the day! The great thing, if you are doing this outdoors in nature, is that you have so much material available!

Talk about the different options, the different materials you have available. Ask questions and then see where their mind takes them. If you can, bring some rope, it always helps.

How to cross the river:

Make a bridge out of sticks or stones
Build a raft
Other creative ways your kids might come up with

Just a heads up, your kid might come up with a sneaky apparently “easy” way to cross the river and avoid all the building you had in mind. My 3-year-old just went for a walk and came back with the biggest palm leaf in the park (it was double her size!!). She lay it over the river and there was no need to build anything, just walk over. We still had fun balancing and talking about what a great solution she had found! At the end of the day she worked through it in her mind and came to her very own conclusion that we needed something BIG.

Questions For Thinking And Vocabulary

However, if your kids are a bit older, they might have more fun creating something, so here are some questions you can ask as you plan your project:

What materials do you think are best for what you are going to do?
How are you going to do that?
Are you sure it will work? Why?

Explaining a project is a good way to deepen understanding. Communication skills are important in STEM to properly communicate your ideas and it is definitely a skill worth working on! So keep on talking and communicating with your kids while they engage in STEM learning.

I’d love to hear about some of the fun ways your kids came up with to jump the river! So please feel free to share in the comments. Hope you enjoyed this fun outdoor game.

Happy STEM learning!

Check out other fun STEM activities to sneak in some STEM learning: