Dyson, yes, Dyson who manufactures vacuums, has put together 44 engineering challenges for young people to undertake during this time of quarantine.
Designers from the James Dyson Foundation have come up with a series of challenges to help kids learn at home during isolation.
Comprised of 22 science tasks and 22 engineering activities, the Challenge Cards can be completed by children using common household items such as eggs, string and balloons.
Gamestar Mechanic is an online application to allow people to build a digital game. It also teaches students how to build a game in their application through the playing of a game. The exclusive educational package is priced at $2 per student.
Teachers using this utility can register their students using a false name (I prefer the term game name). When I was teaching, I used the student’s first name, and then a portion of my school’s name for the last name (all my students had the same last name). The only reason Gamestar even asks for names is to assist the teacher in tracking their students within the tracking features.
Examples of names could be Aidan Grandview or Tessa Fox.
Using a well-known character from a series of children’s books, PBS has created a fantastic set of lessons to spark curiosity in young learners. The lessons in Curious George STEM include measuring, building and simple machines. Students are asked to think critically, predict outcomes, share observations and formulate theories to build the habits of mind that lead to academic success.
Class Playground offers a number of online, free, digital math manipulatives that may prove valuable in our math classrooms. Algebra tiles, fraction circles, area, perimeter… it’s all there!!