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

Milk The Cow STEM Challenge: Can You Mimic Nature?

At our house it has been all about farm animals latey. So I was happily surprised when I got some materials out for her and it evolved into learning how to milk a cow! She was just 3 at the time so was not overly involved in the design process. However, she did observe how I kept making mistakes as I tried to create the most efficient milking device aka cow udder. She was the one in charge of testing the device and we talked about how good/bad it was. I perfected the design and when I explain it to you you will see just how easy it is!!! But it did take me a couple tries to get the water flowing properly so it’s a great engineering experience for older kids! For younger ones, just being involved in the process and then playing with it will be enough. So keep reading to find out how you can create your own milking device.

STEM Challenge: Can You Mimic Nature?

Mother Nature is the number one designer. With years of evolution behind her she carefully selects what works and what doesn’t. Engineers and scientists often try to replicate nature’s designs to be used in everyday items and processes. This is called Biomimetics and it is so interesting! The most obvious example is flight. Birds inspired inventors to find a way so that we could also cruise the skies. Here you can find some other cool examples. With this in mind, I created a fun activity that can introduce older kids to this concept and that can also be used for play with younger kids.

Introduction to the Activity

In my case it was easy to get my kid involved. I put a bucket full of water out and told her we were going to learn how to milk a cow. As she is loving farm animals, this was enough to get her curious enough to do the activity. As I worked on the design, she helped me try it out each time and she was happily playing with the water in-between tries. If your kids are older you can challenge them: can you make a device that will replicate “milking a cow” so you can fill up a cup in less than a minute. You can later time them and see who’s design is most efficient and who can “milk” the fastest! At the end of the post you will find more fun ideas to play with your new creation.

Preparation And Design Suggestions

Lay out all the materials and place a bucket full of water for testing out your design. There are different levels of design:

Your kids do all the designing, creating, testing and improvements. This is perfect to give kids a feeling for the engineering design process
You give some tips/suggestions to help with the designing, they create, test and improve by themselves
You give tips and help with the creation, let them test by themselves and suggest improvements

I will now explain materials and preparation starting from level 1. If you want to give it a go without suggestions just check out the materials and then skip to the follow-up games and activities!

Materials

Balloons
Rubber bands
Toothpicks
Masking tape
Funnel
Bucket for water

For toddlers you will basically be making the device yourself but can involve them in little tasks like putting the scotch tape on or wrapping the rubber band around. Talk to them about the process and then you can test your device together and redesign if necessary.

Suggestions:

You will need to make sure that the connection between balloon and funnel is a sealed as possible to prevent water from leaking
The placement of the holes is important! Don’t make random holes in the balloon
Learn where to hold the balloon before squeezing to get as much water out as possible

Step-by-Step Milking Device:

Step 1: Using the toothpick, make holes in the balloon. Make the holes at the bottom at the balloon so the water squirts out well enough to keep the flow of water. Make enough holes to keep the water flowing properly.

Step 2: Insert the funnel into the balloon and make sure to seal it with scotch tape or/and a rubber band. The deeper you insert the funnel into the balloon the better.

Step 3: Fill the funnel with water and learn how to “milk”. Place your hand on the funnel-balloon connection and squeeze down. Is it better to squeeze fast or slow?

Follow-up Games and Activities

Here are some fun suggestions of how you can play with your new milking device! These are definitely activities you can do outside when it’s hot and you don’t mind getting a bit wet. It wouldn’t be fun to stay dry anyway 🙂

Milking Race: set up a race to see who can fill up a container faster
Timed Milking: can you fill up a cup before the timer runs up?
Who can squirt water the farthest: make a line on the floor and see who can reach it
Color Mixing: Prepare a color mixing station and experiment
Animal Cleaning Station: give all your animals a shower and wash them off (make a competition out of it?)

To finish up you can talk with your kids about their new creation. What could you use your new design for in real-life? From washing the car/dishes with it, giving the dog a bath, painting with it… it could have many applications! Let your kids think of some fun uses that their new invention could have!

So there you go! A fun activity for the whole family that encourages children to think like an engineer. Create and explore through play and most important of all… have fun with it!

Happy STEM learning!

String Rainbow Art Project: Explore Shapes With String

String art is such a great way to practice fine motor skills and sneak in some math skills. It is also a lovely project that involves creativity and can keep your kids entertained creating something beautiful. Using rainbow colored yarn/string gives it that extra touch of color! But unfortunately we did not have this at home which gave us the perfect chance to expand the project and practice some DIY and color mixing! Replacing materials with stuff you have at home is a great practice for resourcefulness and modeling this for your kids is a great way to teach them to work with the resources they have. So in this post I will explain how we prepared some rainbow colored string and will then describe the string art project itself.

Rainbow String Preparation

We didn’t have any rainbow colored yarn or string at home, but we did have food coloring so I thought we could try and color some string with it. The results were not exactly the same as the store-bought one but it added a new layer to the project and it was also fun to do!

Materials

Food coloring
Plastic cups or containers
Water
String or yarn

Coloring String

Prepare the cups with water and food coloring. We poured about 2-3 fingers of water into the cups and squirted some food coloring into it until we got a color we liked. Perfect time to practice color mixing! We ended up with seven cups: blue, purple, green, red, orange, yellow and black. Next we added the string to the cups, we kept the string connected and just used each color once. You could probably go back and forth, feel free to experiment! Then leave the string to soak up the colorful water. In our case we left it a couple of days, our string took a very long time to soak up the water, but we kept checking it once in a while. This is how the preparation and what the end result looked like:

Once the string was out and drying we used the colored water to play a bit, stretching this project out even more! We combined colors and poured them into different containers which is quite entertaining for toddlers. Once the rainbow string is dry you can start the string art project!

String Rainbow Art Project

Materials

Some sort of base: wood, corkboard…
Nails, toothpicks (make one side blunt if they are both pointy!), or straight pins
Rainbow string or yarn
Hammer if you use nails and wood

String Art Project

**Younger children should be supervised around pins, toothpicks, and nails, which have sharp points and are choking hazards.**

The first step in this project is to create a grid. Grab your base and place the nails/toothpicks/pins to make a grid. If you are using a corkboard you might want to double it up if it is too thin. We actually used an old corkboard that we didn’t want to cut up and just placed it over open boxes to give the toothpicks space to go through. Find what works for you.

For the grid, depending on your child’s age you could let them measure and mark the grid points themselves or mark them beforehand. Have your kids place one nail/toothpick/pin on each grid point. Use a smaller grid for younger kids and increase the size for older kids. My daughter enjoyed placing the toothpicks more than playing with the string!

Once the grid is set up, allow some free play. Explain to your kids how to weave the string and give them some time to experiment weaving the string and see what happens. You might need to help toddlers and guide the string with them a bit. It is the perfect time to talk about shapes that appear as they play with the string. This is definitely enough for toddlers. They practice their motor skills and you can talk about the shapes they create as they experiment.

Sneak In Some Math

For older kids, you can try to sneak in some geometry. Start off by asking your kids to create as many different shapes as possible. Then you can challenge their mind a bit! Here are some suggestions:

On a 3×3 grid, how many (same size) triangles can you fit into a square? What about a 4×4 grid?
On a 4×4 grid, how many (same size) rectangles can you fit into a square?

Divide a shape up into smaller shapes (check out the photo below) and then ask your kid how many squares/triangles/rectangles they see. Ask them to do the same for you.

Playing around with shapes like this is great to give kids a feeling for geometry and even fractions!

Time For Creativity

Once your kids have played around with the string and explored the world of shapes, you can ask them to create their own design if they are still interested. To do so, draw the grid on paper first and ask them to draw something (a heart, a star…). To replicate the design with string use nails/toothpicks/pins to create the outline of your design. Then weave the string through them. Experiment with different designs and create some beautiful string art!

Hope you can spend some quality time together as a family discovering string art and exploring shapes!

More Fun Activities and Games:

Make sure to Bookmark the Stay At Home STEM post which will be updated with all our fun STEM activities that are perfect for doing at home.

Happy STEM learning!