These questions or prompts will help to promote meaningful discussions individually and in groups. These questions will encourage discussion of the results and increase critical thinking skills. Use these reflection questions below with your kids after they have completed a STEM challenge. Make sure to include them in your next engineering challenge or project. Think like an engineer! Talk like an engineer! Act like an engineer! Get kids started with a vocabulary list that introduces some awesome engineering terms. Sometimes the best way to introduce STEM is through a colorfully illustrated book with characters your kids can relate to! Check out this fantastic list of teacher-approved engineering books, and get ready to spark curiosity and exploration! ENGINEERING VOCAB You may find it hard to understand how they are similar yet different. Is a scientist an engineer? Is an engineer a scientist? It might not be very clear! Often scientists and engineers work together to solve a problem. Learn more about the Engineering Design Process. There are many different design processes that all engineers use, but each one includes the same basic steps to identify and solve problems.Īn example of the process is “ask, imagine, plan, create, and improve.” This process is flexible and may be completed in any order. Each one of the resources below has a free printable! ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESSĮngineers often follow a design process. From the design process to fun books to key vocabulary terms…you can feel confident providing these valuable skills. Halloween Catapult More Engineering Resourcesīelow you’ll find various engineering resources to supplement the many engineering projects on the website. How about 6 or 10? What are the differences when tested?ĪLSO CHECK OUT: Easy Science Fair Projects You can also test out the number of popsicle sticks used in the stack to create the tension need to launch the catapult. What kinds of conclusions can they draw from the information gathered? Which item worked the best? Which item didn’t work well at all? Have your kids fire each material 10 times and record the distance each time. Additionally, you can encourage older kids to record the data from measuring all the launches. This is an awesome way to reinforce what the child is learning with a super fun activity. Why? Have fun setting up a catapult to test the theory! Can you design a different catapult using the same materials? Which item will go farther? I think xyz will go farther. Or you can build 2-3 different catapults and see which one works better or if one works better with different objects.Īlways start out asking a question to come up with a hypothesis. Adding a measuring tape encourages simple math concepts that my 2nd grader is just really starting to explore. You can easily set up an experiment by testing different weighted items to see which ones fly farther. Log your results with this free printable science worksheet for your catapult activity and add it to a science journal! Have your kids dig up a little history and research when the first catapults were invented and used! Hint check out the 17th century! Free Printable Catapult Activity When you release the stick, all that potential energy is released into energy in motion producing the projectile motion.Ī catapult is a simple machine that has been around for ages. You can talk about stored energy or potential elastic energy as you pull back on the Popsicle stick, bending it. To delve deeper into Newton’s Laws, check out the information here. Gravity also does its part as it pulls the object back down to the ground. When you pull down the lever arm all that potential energy gets stored up! Release it and that potential energy gradually changes over to kinetic energy. Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion state that an object at rest stays at rest until a force is applied, and an object stays in motion until something creates an imbalance. You can also learn about projectile motion. What is there to explore that has to do with physics? Let’s start with energy including elastic potential energy. This is a great simple physics activity for kids of multiple ages.
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