STEM Activities for Families at Home

With the rise of COVID-19, many families have transitioned to working and learning at home. OneNet wants to help families with STEM activity resources that can be completed at home, for all ages. The organizations listed here offer a wide array of activities for families to choose from to encourage their children’s interest in STEM.

Oklahoma’s Geological Survey

Oklahoma Geological Survey offers a series of publications that concentrates on geosciences for families and students to learn at home. Students in grades 7-12 are introduced to a variety of lessons about fossils coming alive, making of a landscape, and many more topics related to the STEM field. The lessons include easy experiments to do at home such as making p waves and s waves with a slinky, DIY fossils, and an earthquake detection seismometer. Learn more at  Geological Survey Distanced Learning – Oklahoma Rocks!

Engineer Girl

EngineerGirl is a web-based program run by the National Academy of Engineering designed to help students, especially girls, explore the many opportunities available to them in engineering. The website is full of fantastic resources to help inspire the next generation of engineers, including profiles of current women in engineering, a place to submit questions to engineers, hands-on design challenges, and more. EngineerGirl also offers an annual writing contest and the EngineerGirl Ambassadors program. Learn more at Engineer Girl.

OKCollegeStart

OKCollegeStart provides a list of career exploration tools for young adults, teenagers and their families to learn more about different careers. They offer career clusters, such as education and training, STEM programs, business management and many more. Allowing students and their families to search for careers that match their personality, goals and future plans. They also offer resources to find internships, financial aid, and tips to develop a portfolio. Learn more at OK College Start 

NASA STEM Program

The NASA program offers a variety of STEM activities for all grade levels. For kids who are grades K-4, NASA has games, such as building your very own Mars helicopter. Children between grades 5-8 can complete activities such as building a spectrograph and asteroids you can eat. For high school students, NASA offers lessons on how to become an astronaut and WebVR on Mars. They also offer STEM learning opportunities for students from middle school to college. Learn more at NASA Stem Engagement.

NASA Kids’ Club

NASA Kids’ Club offers a safe and educational space for children to learn about space, science and math. Students in grades K-4 can play STEM games such as building rockets, reorganizing space stations, addition blastoff, timing airplanes, and more. All games follow national education standards such as the Next Generation Science Standards, International Society for Technology, Common Core State Standards Initiative and more. Learn more on NASA Kids’ Club webpage.

Sam Noble Museum STEM Activities

Sam Noble Museum is Oklahoma’s Museum of Natural History. The museum has STEM activities that include experiments, crafts and games. They have activities for children from ages 5-11. Not only are there spring activities, there are summer activities as well for children and their family to do together. One option they offer is a distance summer camp in your home with special videos from the educators and museum. They also offer activities such as Mission Possible and Wild about Science and help with recommended reading. Learn more at Sam Noble Museum STEM Activities.

The Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is a public learning laboratory located in California with online programming. They offer low cost and teacher tested activities for students in grades 6-12 that can be done at home. These STEM experiments follow Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with topics in STEM, electrics, physical, artistic, environmental, and more. Learn more on the Exploratorium’s Science Activities webpage.

Griffin Museum of Science and Industry

The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry based in Chicago offers online resources for activities at home as well as online games. They offer hands on science experiments for all grade levels with topics in STEM, meteorology, forensic science, investigation, environmental, and physics. All experiments are non-toxic. Learn more on the Griffin Museum of Science and History’s Science at Home webpage.

Oklahoma Educational Television Authority

The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) provides free games from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which have been developed by the Boston University School of Education. These games are for students in kindergarten through first grade and are accompanied with tips for parents to bring the learning home. These STEM activities follow CCSS and ISTE standards and build upon students’ background knowledge, vocabulary, and math skills. Learn more on OETA’s Kids Lab webpage.