HANDS-ON LEARNING: STEAM ACTIVITIES FOR

AGES 7 TO 12

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STEAM is an approach to learning that integrates science, technology,

engineering, the arts, and math to encourage kids to ask questions,

think critically, problem solve, and innovate. We’ve compiled hands-

on activities — excerpted from six awesome books for readers ranging

from 7 to 12 years old — to incorporate STEAM into children’s everyday

learning. Kids can do some of the projects on their own while others

will require adult assistance, but all provide fun and engaging experi-

ences that give kids the opportunity to design, build, create, and play!

Full STEAM Ahead!

Build a Gumdrop Towerfrom How to Be an Engineer by Carol Vorderman

My Childhood Bird Kitefrom Calling All Minds by Temple Grandin

How to Make a Brilliant Barometerfrom Maker Lab: Outdoors by Jack Challoner

Animate This!from Crack the Code! by Sarah Hutt, illustrated by Brenna Vaughan

How to Make Box Robotsfrom Out of the Box by Jemma Westing

Mega Milk-Bottle Raftfrom This Book Isn’t Safe by Colin Furze

Cover illustration by Penelope Dullaghan

Build a gumdrop tower When engineers build a tower, they need to make sure it will be strong and stable. To test their ideas, they often create small-scale models. You can do this using toothpicks and a few gumdrops.

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You will need Toothpicks Gumdrops

2

Your aim is to make the tallest tower

possible with your gumdrops. It must

not fall over! Start by building a base.

You may notice the toothpicks starting to bend as the tower gets taller.

Carefully poke the toothpicks into the gumdrops.

Put gumdrops at each corner of the base.

Now begin to build upward. How high

can you go before the tower falls over?

1

!

“Build a Gumdrop Tower” activity is excerpted from How to Be an Engineer by Carol VordermanPublished by DK | For ages 7-9 | ISBN 9781465470270

You will need Toothpicks Gumdrops

2

Your aim is to make the tallest tower

possible with your gumdrops. It must

not fall over! Start by building a base.

You may notice the toothpicks starting to bend as the tower gets taller.

Carefully poke the toothpicks into the gumdrops.

Put gumdrops at each corner of the base.

Now begin to build upward. How high

can you go before the tower falls over?

1

!

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, is made up of lots of triangles.

Triangles in buildingsDue to their strong shape, triangles are perfect for use in construction. They can withstand a great deal of force before they change shape, unlike squares.

Now try...Do you think your

tower can hold a book? Test it. If it can’t hold the book, change the design

of your tower to make it stronger.

Start again, but this time arrange the gumdrops in triangle shapes, instead of squares. You should find that the tower is now more stable.

Make the base a triangle instead of a square.

3

You should be able to make the tower stronger by arranging the toothpicks and gumdrops into triangles.

You’ll need:

• Scissors

• 1 letter-size (11½-x-8¾-inch) pocketless folder

• Marker

• Ruler

• Scotch tape

• Cotton thread

• Crepe paper party streamers (13/4 inch width)

To create:

1. Using scissors, cut your file folder in half. Each half can be made into its own kite!

2. Use your marker to make a dot in the middle of one of the long sides of the folder, right at its edge. This is now the bottom of your kite. Place another two dots on the edge of each of the short sides of the folder 6¼ inches up from the bottom. Draw three lines between the three dots so that you have one big triangle.

3. Create the bird’s “head” by marking two dots on the long side of your triangle, each 4½ inches from the short sides of the

folder. Draw a 2½-inch line upward from each dot. Connect the tops of the lines with a slightly rounded line to create the top of the bird’s head.

4. Using scissors, cut out the bird shape.

5. Fold the wing tips up by 90 degrees, 1 inch from the ends of the wings.

6. With a small piece of tape, fasten a 10-foot length of thread to the head. (When I was a kid, I attached this string to the back of my bike to fly my kite, but you can also run with it and even make this string longer!)

7. Attach an 18-inch length of thread to the rear of the kite. Try experiment-ing with the length of this thread.

8. Attach a 22-inch length of the crepe paper party streamer to the end of the thread at the rear of the kite. Try experimenting with the length of the crepe paper. Try different tail materials.

9. Bend the bird’s head down slightly. This helps provide lift. Experiment with the angle of the head until you get the lift you want. Your bird kite is now ready to sail away!

Note: You may have to experiment to get it to work. The textured heavy art paper that I used as a child is not readily available, so I had to use file folders in-stead this time around. They have a smooth surface that may have an effect on flight characteristics.

MY CHILDHOOD BIRD KITE

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“My Childhood Bird Kite” activity is excerpted from Calling All Minds by Temple GrandinPublished by Penguin Young Readers | For ages 8-12 | ISBN 9781524738204

This is the bird kite that I made.

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My schematics of my bird kite that I drew when I recreated my childhood project (flat view and perspective drawing)

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1 Cut the neck off the balloon and throw it away immediately. This will make it possible to stretch

the piece of rubber over the jar's opening. There’s no need to blow up the balloon.

HOW TO MAKE A

BRILLIANT BAROMETERThis barometer is easy to make—you just stretch a piece of rubber cut from a balloon over the opening of a glass jar. As atmospheric pressure increases, it pushes the balloon down against the air trapped inside, and as the pressure goes down, the rubber relaxes. Tape a straw to the rubber and watch it rise and fall as the pressure changes.

WHAT YOU NEED

Colored card stock

Balloon

Sciss

ors

Straw

Pencil

Ruler

Glass jar

Colored tape

Rubber band

Time20 minutes

DifficultyMedium

2 Stretch the rubber over the top of the jar, trapping the air inside. Pull the rubber tight,

to get rid of any creases.

Make sure you have a

smooth surface.

3 Secure the rubber in place with a rubber band. No air should be able to escape from the jar.

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“How to Make a Brilliant Barometer” activity is excerpted from Maker Lab: Outdoors by Jack Challoner | Published by DK | For ages 8-12 | ISBN 9781465468871

4 Cut a short piece of tape and stick it to the end of the straw. Now place the end of

the straw across the middle of the rubber and attach it firmly.

Place the end of the straw in the center of the rubber.

5 To make the scale, neatly fold the piece of colored card stock in half lengthwise.

6 Using a ruler, draw lines ½ in (1 cm) apart across one side of the folded card stock.

The straw will be level at first, but over time it

will move up or down.

When the straw is level, it indicates that the pressure inside the jar is equal to the pressure outside.

7 Leave the barometer somewhere where the

temperature doesn’t change much, away from windows or heaters. If the air in the jar warms up or cools down it expands or shrinks, which will affect your results. Record the barometer's readings daily. Soon you'll be making your own weather forecasts.

What you’ll need: scissors, a pen,

a stapler, and staples.

One of the best-known forms of digital art is animation. Do you watch Saturday-morning cartoons, animated movies at the theater, or animated stop-motion videos online? They’re all made through digital animation. From the original art to the actual animating (which means creating the illusion of movement), almost all of modern animation is done with computers.

Yup! And the simplest form of animation out there is a flip book. Want to see for yourself?

Cut out the cards on the next page. Put all the cards with the shooting star on them facing up, and stack them in numbered order, with number one at the top of the stack. Then staple them together. There are smaller stars on the first card to show you where to staple them.

Notice how the star is in a slightly different place on each page? Remember that.

Now hold the book in one hand, put your thumb at the bottom corner, bend the book a little, and let the pages out from under your thumb one at a time. Look at the shooting star!

Now try to flip the pages faster!

You can even create a flip book yourself. Flip the book over and draw a stick figure waving or walking on a sunny day. Remember to make each picture just a little different by moving the position of the waving hand from one side to the other on each page. Then flip through, and see your stick figure come alive!

We’ll let you in on a secret: Animation is actually an illusion. Whether it’s digital or drawn by hand, all animation is just a series of images, one after another, that are each changed just a bit in order to create a sense of movement. Crazy, huh?

ANimateTHis!

9780399542565_GC_Crack_TX.indd 44 10/4/17 3:39 PM

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9780399542565_GC_Crack_TX.indd 45 10/4/17 3:39 PM“Animate This!” activity is excerpted from Crack the Code! by Reshma SaujaniPublished by Penguin Young Readers | For ages 10+ | ISBN 9780425287538

HOW TO MAKE

BOX ROBOTSTo make this fantastic robot costume, you'll need a big box for the robot's body, a square box for its head, and two smaller boxes for its hands. Make sure the boxes are big enough for you to wear. You'll be using cardboard circles and cups to add the robot's ears and eyes.

1 Place the square box over your head and mark the position of your eyes. Then remove

the box and draw around the dots. Cut this shape

3 Cut along one arm of the cross from the outside of the circle to the center. Cut short

slits across the other arms of the cross and fold

2 To create the ears, trace around a large plate on a piece of card. Mark the center of the

circle with a cross, then cut the circle out.

YOU WILL NEED

Use a ruler to draw your cross.

Paints

Cardboard boxes

PaintbrushesPencilStrong tape

Scissors

Paper cups

Ruler

Take your time when you cut

holes in the boxes for a perfect fit. Difficulty level:

Medium

Mark the position of your eyes with two dots.

Large p

late

You'll need cardboard sheets, a large box for the body, a smaller square box for the head, and two small boxes for the hands.

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4 Pull the circle into a cone shape. Secure the overlapping edges of the cone with strong

tape. Repeat steps 2–4 to make a second ear.

5 To attach the ears, tape the

tabs at the center of each cone to the sides of the box.

6 Now, make the eyes. Cut the base off two paper cups. Make slits

around the bottom of each cup to create tabs.

8 Stick the eyes to the head

by taping the

7 Fold the tabs outward so that you can easily stick the eyes to the robot's head.

Look at the position of the ears and

attach the eyes at a similar height.

Fix the ears to the robot's head.

Cut slightly above the bottom of the cups.

Keep the tabs at the center folded over.

9 Draw an antenna shape on cardboard. You can use the picture above as a guide

if you like. Cut the shape out.10 Make a support for the robot antenna.

Cut out a small rectangle with tabs on two of the sides as shown, and fold the tabs up.

13 Use a large plate to draw circles on the other two sides of

the box. Cut the circles out to make holes for your arms.

11 Tape the support in place on top of the robot's head, then tape the

antenna to the support.

14 Next, make the robot's hands. Cut out two rectangular pieces of cardboard, roll them

into tubes, and secure them with strong tape.

12 Now make the robot's body. Cut off one of the sides of the large box. Then draw

a U shape on the opposite side and cut it out.

Tape the longer flap to the head, and the antenna to the shorter flap.

Your antenna can be any shape and size.

Make the shape wide enough to fit

your head through.

Make sure your pieces of

cardboard are wider than your

small boxes.

15 Take one of the small boxes and draw around the tube on each shorter side near

the bottom. Then cut holes where you have drawn.

17 Finally, decorate each part of your robot. Paint a base coat

first and let it dry. Then paint on futuristic designs in bright colors.

16 Push a tube through the two holes to make handles you can hold when you wear them.

Repeat steps 15 and 16 to make the other hand.

NOW TRY THIS Why not make your robot even more high-tech by adding three-dimensional features to it? Try sticking on plastic lids, parts of egg cartons, and other cardboard shapes.

Paint the head and ears in contrasting

colors.

Give your robot big eyes using plastic lids.

Make your decorations look like buttons, dials, screens, and switches.

Plastic lids

Egg carton dividers

“How to Make Box Robots” activity is excerpted from Out of the Box by Jemma WestingPublished by DK | For ages 8-12 | ISBN 9781465458964

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WHAT WILL YOU NEED?Lots of empty plastic milk bottleswith handles! See the ScienceyBit opposite to work out the exactnumber you’ll need. Several pieces of wood. Turn overthe page and read the steps to seehow much you may need.Plenty of wood screws, probablyaround 30 and some cord.A pair of wellies.* (This is actuallyfor when you take the raft on tothe water after you’ve built it.)

When I was about ten, I made

lots of little rafts with my mates

out of wooden pallets and plastic

barrels tied together with rope.

It was awesome fun messing

about with them in shallow and

safe water – and they hardly

ever sank, which was a bonus!

I’m going to take you through

building your own simple raft,

and give you the chance to float

on water just like I did.

MEGA MILK- BOTTLERAFT

*TOP TIP!Don’t use your

Concrete-crusher Wellies,

cos they’re not very

waterproof!

SCIENCEY BITYou’ll be using empty plastic milk bottles as your raft’s buoyancy aid (the bit that keeps you on top of the water). The average plastic milk bottle in Britain is just over 2 litres in size. And 1 litre of air displaces 1kg of water.

ADULTSUPERVISIONNEEDED

To work out how many bottles you will need, follow this easy formula (and get a grown-up to double-check it for you):Your weight in kg ÷ 2 = Number of milk bottles you’ll needSo, if you weigh 30kg, it will look like this:30 ÷2=15 milk bottlesRemember to round up, not down, to be on the safe side.

Phew, that’s thescience bit over!

TOP TIP!If you can, use th

e same

style of empty plastic milk

bottle from the same shop

or supermarket. This means

the shape and size of the

handles will be the same

on all of them. And don’t

use ones with the handle on

the corner, like this:

STEP 1You need to make two rows of an equal number of empty plastic milk bottles – so, if you’re using twenty bottles, make two rows of ten. (See page 89 to work out how many you need.) Lay the rows of bottles on the ground handles facing up.

STEP 2You need pieces of wood long enough to slot through the bottle handles in each row. If you have a wooden pallet, you could take it apart and use the wood, or use two long pieces of wood from a DIY shop. Thread one piece of wood through the handles of each row. TOP TIP!

If the wood is slightly too thick

to slide through the handles,

you can sand the edges off it

using sandpaper. If you don’t

have any sandpaper, you can get

it quite cheaply from DIY shops.

To sand the edges, just rub the

sandpaper (sanded side down)

back and forth along the edges

of the wood.

STEP 3Place your two rows of empty plastic milk bottles (with the wood still threaded through the handles) firmly beside each other. Now measure the width of these rows. Saw two pieces of wood to the same length as this width.

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STEP 5Lay out two of your long pieces of wood and the two short pieces in a neat rectangle, as shown. Mark and drill two pilot holes in each corner, where the wood overlaps. Don’t make the holes too near the ends. Countersink the holes for a neater finish.

STEP 4Measure the LENGTH of the top of your raft, as shown. You will need three or five pieces of wood this length depending on the width of your wood. (See pictures in STEP 7 below.)

STEP 6Screw the four pieces together at each corner. This is the top of your raft. Check there are no sharp bits anywhere – this is the part you’ll sit on in the water! Next, measure and mark the middle of the end pieces.

STEP 7Fix a third long piece of wood to the middle of the rectangle, lining up to the centre marks you made. Then (if you need them) fix two more long pieces in between, as shown. Always drill pilot holes and countersink them. The raft top – or deck – is finished. Yay!

STEP 8Rest the deck on top of the milk bottles. The two long pieces of wood (pushed through the bottle handles) will stick out at each end. Mark where the deck ends on these pieces, and cut off the spare wood.

STEP 9Turn the deck upside down. Place the bottles on top of the deck and screw them to the underneath of the deck in each corner. Pilot holes! Countersink! I don’t need to tell you that again, do I?

STEP 10Are you done? Almost. Screw a big screw eye to the middle at one end of your raft. Firmly tie a good strong bit of cord to the screw eye. Then give your raft a name!

••RATING••STRENGTH:

DETAIL: DIFFICULTY:

TOP TIP!To test how deep the water is,

find a long stick or piece o

f

wood. Then, from a safe place

beside the water, careful

ly poke

the stick into the water. If you

can feel the bottom of the river

or lake with the stick, and it’s

not deeper than your waist, then

it could be a good spot to

test

your raft.

COLIN’S CHALLENGEIf you’re confident with your wood-cutting and measuring skills, you could make a pointy boat-like end on your raft as in the picture to the right.

ADULT SUPERVISION!You MUST, MUST, MUST have adult supervision whenever you take your raft out on to water. Don’t take it in water that’s deeper than your waist and stick to clean, quiet, shallow ponds and lakes.

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WHY NOT?Why not build a little wooden flagpole to attach to your raft? You could also paint the milk bottles to make your invention look even cooler!

“Mega Milk-Bottle Raft” activity is excerpted from This Book Isn’t Safe by Colin FurzePublished by Penguin Young Readers | For ages 8-12 | ISBN 9780451478764