Do you have kids at home looking for things to keep them busy this school holidays? Give them something fun, creative and entertaining that will keep them busy for hours with a STEM school holiday project. We've created a list of some of our favourite STEM projects to inspire and engage your children over the holidays.
Project #1 - Conductive Ink Cities
We love conductive ink as it combines creativity, science and technology into a super cool opportunity for kids to innovate and create. Conductive ink is essential ink (like you might find in a pen) with metallic properties meaning that it can conduct enough electricity to power small lights and fans as part of a simple circuit.
With a conductive ink kit, kids can design their own circuits and even create maps of cities, or outlines of buildings that they can bring to life. This video is one of our favourite examples.
If they're wanting to take their ideas one step further, they might also want to start experimenting with conductive thread for more complex circuits. Here is another awesome example.
If you're looking for kits, Circuit Scribe have some of our favourites!
Project #2 - DIY Augmented Reality Experiences
If something digital is more for your child, get them to create their own Augmented Reality experiences with ZapWorks Studio. This is an awesome tool that gets kids creating their own Augmented Reality experiences with drag and drop widgets, all the way to full text-based coding!
We love this tool as it allows kids to start at whatever level suits them the best and then work all the way up to coding fully customisable augmented reality experiences. With some templates and tutorials, kids can start by creating their own Augmented Reality posters, and they can work all the way up to creating their own Augmented Reality games!
Here is a showcase of some of the experiences they can build.
Project #3 - Indoor Gardens
If you have a green thumb in your house, an indoor garden might be the way to go! There are some super simple and easy kits you can buy that will get your students looking at the STEM side of agriculture and some of the exciting agricultural technologies out there.
To get started, we'd recommend the Grow Kit from Bunnings as it can grow just about anything and has some simple science for your kids to explore with light and nutrients and how they affect plant growth. There are also some more basic mini-greenhouses that your kids will love as well!
If you're looking for something to inspire your kids to think big on this topic, show them this video on the future of farming.
Project #4 - Create Your Own Hologram
Do you have a Star Wars or Iron Man fan at home? If so, they are going to LOVE this DIY hologram project. The holograms use some incredibly simple science that has been around since the mid 1800's and that is taught in most middle schools today, however with the emergence of screens, it's being used for some pretty exciting stuff.
With this tutorial, you'll need scissors, CD cases and some tape and you'll be creating holograms in no time!
Project #5 - 3D Printing Creations
Our final project recommendation would be the more expensive of the projects, but definitely our personal favourite! The cost of 3D printing and 3D printers has come down a lot over recent years, and one of our favourite 3D printers, the Creality Ender-3, is now available for about USD250.
We have one of these 3D printers ourselves and we love using it to print all-sorts of creations that we design in TinkerCAD or that we find on Thingiverse! This would be the ultimate tool to keep your kids busy over the holidays as they create, design and print.
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These are just a few of our favourite STEM projects to keep your kids busy over the school holidays, but if you're looking for more, make sure to have a look at our School Holiday Programs or explore some of our Digital Workbooks for hours of entertainment!
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