STEAM Learning at Home Activities helps parents transform an ordinary day into an extraordinary one.
STEM learning concepts do not have to be intimidating. You just need to gather a few materials around the house to learn fun facts about basic engineering concepts and the basics of optics with a DYI binocular activity.
What you’ll need
Binoculars, recyclable materials (toilet rolls) yearn, scissors, strings, crayons and your STEAM journal
How to do it:
1-) Begin a conversation by asking your child, “What would we need to help see far-away things more clearly?
2-) Allow your child to look closely at binoculars. Start a conversation about how they work and the materials.
3-) Introduce the word magnify to describe how we can make faraway objects look more real. Look up images or videos about binoculars to learn more about the engineering concepts behind the activity.
4). Plan and sketch your first design and then discuss materials to use to built your first binoculars.
5). Decorate your binoculars.
You are ready to go on your first imaginary safari expedition.
Can you see faraway objects more clearly?
This simple activity leads to many more questions to lead new learning adventures at home.
Here are some guiding questions to help you build 21st century learning skills, including collaboration, communication, creativity and problem solving, curiosity, and critical thinking,
Questions to keep your child engaged:
“I wonder what would happen if we tried different materials.”
How about we predict and make a hypothesis about what will happen.
Test the hypothesis by using different by using different materials and chart what you discover in your STEM Journals.
You can find more experiments like this one in our book Simple Steam, a book that helps Simple STEAM helps parents realize they don’t need to be engineers or scientists to support STEAM Learning at Home Activities.
Simple STEAM has won the Teachers’ Choice Award for the Family 2019, and Creative Child Magazine Book of the Year Award 201
