School is closed and summer is open for business! While one of the best places to be is outside and in the community, there will invariably be days when your children are stuck at home looking for something fun to do. If STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) are popular with your family, you’ll love my round-up of affordable (and some free!) activities for this summer.
#1 Break Secret Codes
Who doesn’t like to discover a secret? Breaking code is a fun and satisfying activity, and strengthens a child’s math and reasoning skills. Visit this Pinterest board for lots of free printable puzzles.
#2 Virtual Dissection Lab –
What if you could satisfy your curiosity without all the mess? Virtual labs reinforce science, biology and anatomy concepts and are 100% free. The Science Bank can hook you up to a huge assortment of vertebrate and invertebrate dissections.
#3 Build a Castle
The builders and creators in your family will love creating medieval masterpieces with this first in a new series of graphic building cards. Paul Farrell’s visually appealing primary colored slotted pieces can be used to construct 3-D castles, walls, ramparts and more.
Newly released this spring, it’s designed for ages 3 and up. Our young children got the hang of this very quickly and within minutes had created some impressive fortresses and towers.
The included 10-page guide contains basic instructions, project ideas and a cool glossary of medieval architectural features.
The 63-piece Build a Castle set has just been reduced to $12.17 so grab yours before they are all gone! You can follow the artist on Twitter and Instagram. Pavilion Publishers are on social media, too!
Twitter ♦ Instagram ♦ Facebook
#4 Cool Math Puzzles
If math is your thing, this new book by Tracie Young and Katie Hewitt will deliver hours of summer reading and problem solving. Cool Math: 50 Fantastic Facts for Kids of All Ages, also from Pavilion, is for ages 12 and up and packed with fifty engaging ways to advance your math skills using multiples, probability, division, statistics and formulas.
Bring math to life with practical tips like calculating the distance of a storm or figuring tips at a restaurant. What in the world is a Fibonacci sequence or Kaprekar’s Constant? With Cool Math, your children will find that it’s fun to learn and easy to remember, but difficult to forget!
#5 Build a Straw Rocket
Drinking straws aren’t just for lemonade and root beer floats. Young engineers will have a blast building these colorful, launchable rockets using Buggy and Buddy’s free template.
Screen Shot from BuddyandBuddy.com
This post was a sponsored collaboration with Media Masters Publicity
oh that is awesome! I would love to grab this toy for my son, not only it is entertaining, it helps expand the mind! Thank you so much for the recommendations!
These do look like fun! I’ll be trying these activities with my kids for sure when they get bored.
I’m hoping my girls might enjoy the cool maths puzzles. Not always easy to get hem to do work over teh holidays so I’m hoping the fun factor will entice them.
Kids will have so much fun while doing these activities! I’ll share this article with some of my mom friends! 🙂
These look like a lot of fun! Affordability is a definite plus!
My little is young now but I’m pinning for later. Great suggestions! I’m so happy STEM activities are becoming so prevalent.
haha this makes me want to be a kid again! looks a lot of fun and creativity, really good for the young ones!
These activities sounds so interesting for curious children, great work on the roundup..loved reading your thoughts….very helpful and useful to us parents!
Umm these are SO cool! I think my son would LOVE that dissection kit!
Great activities in such times when the kids are possibly going to be learning at home again!