STEAM / STEM educational activities for kids featuring science, engineering, art, and mathematics teaching children through hands on, activities, learning through play
One of my most popular kids learning activity series is Art History for Preschoolers. Kids love exploring grown-up topics, like Art, and the works of the masters, are incredible creative inspiration for them. One of my personal favorite artists is Claude Monet. If you loved my Monet Inspired Water Lillies…
Channel your child’s enthusiasm for the night sky with these 30+ learning through play, constellation activities for kids. “Mommy, look – I see stars!” There’s something truly magical to kids about the night sky. Maybe it’s because they aren’t often out after dark. Or maybe it’s because the night sky…
Expand your study of Art History for Preschoolers with more hands-on exploration featuring 15 Matisse art projects for kids. When we first started our exploration of Art History Kids, we began with Matisse. His use of vibrant colors and large geometric shapes – whether in his early years painting or…
Welcome to STEAM for Kids Week! For my regular readers, this week I am the host for the 12-week Summer Camp at Home series, hosted by Wunder Mom. For those joining from the Summer Camp series, welcome to the Playground Parkbench. This week I am sharing kids learning activities you…
Do you have a project you did as a child that really stayed with you? For me, this is it… one summer, I went to a summer art program my mom was teaching and we made Japanese Fish Art, or gyotaku. It was the summer after second grade, I was…
My girls are OBSESSED with accessories. We cannot make it out of the house without bracelets, necklaces, headbands, you name it. So when I saw these adorable button bracelets from Meaningful Mama, I knew they would love them. When I discovered a box of assorted buttons in varied shapes and…
One skill preschoolers are expected to master before entering kindergarten is shape recognition. My 3 year old is a much more active learner than her older sister, so I often have to get a little creative with more active, hands-on play activities to hold her attention. This simple activity, re-purposing an…
I received complimentary product from The Innovation Press to facilitate this post. As always, opinions remain 100% my own. My little kindergarten scientist discovered a kindred spirit in Zoey, the main character in the latest series from The Innovation Press, Zoey and Sassafras. Seizing on her enthusiasm and to encourage her…
“Never discuss religion, politics or money in polite company.” Maybe that makes for polite etiquette, but not talking about money with your kids is doing them a HUGE disservice. If they can count, than it’s time to start teaching money, its value and how to be financially savvy for life. Here are…
What would happen if the face value of a coin was worth less than the metal in the coin itself? Over the history of our country, this has happened several times: first with silver in dimes, quarters and half dollars, and later with copper pennies, in the 1970s and early…
Our preschool is teaching the kids about money this month with it’s no cost fundraiser, Coin Wars. So we have had coins sorted and lying around all month, waiting to be donated. To reinforce what the girls were doing at school, we have been playing and learning with the coins at home…
Nothing represents Easter more than planting a seed and watching it come to life. It is a season of rebirth, renewal, and growth – whether you subscribe to the religious story of Easter or a more secular celebration of Spring. If you are looking for Easter gift ideas that truly capture the meaning of…
Like most preschool fascinations, I’m not entirely sure how it began. It might have been the Star Gazing Discovery Bottles I made last month, or the fact that they are in bed before they actually appear in the sky every night. Whatever the cause – studying stars has become the…
This month at my daughter’s preschool, we have been teaching the kids about money with the annual Coin Wars fundraiser. And since we had the family coin jar out and readily available, we’ve been doing all sorts of fun preschool STEM activities with coins this week. First up? A simple test…
Would it surprise you to learn that the world’s first computer programmer was a woman? And a woman born more than 100 years before the first computer was ever invented? Ada’s Ideas is an amazing, picture book biography of Ada Lovelace, documenting her life and creativity in mathematics that far…
We are well into week two of illness and sub-freezing temperatures here. But that hasn’t stopped us from enjoying the beauty of winter from indoors with an endless supply of snow and snowflake crafts! Today, we add another one to the mix – Marshmallow Snowflakes! Grab your printable snowflake templates…
This month for my guest contribution on Pre-K Pages, I shared a Peppermint Science activity, exploring the effect on temperature on sugar. With an abundance of peppermints and candy canes this time of year, we continued our holiday STEAM activities for kids with some simple, but instructive activities for measuring…
My oldest daughter has been begging for ‘Real LEGO’ toys for a while now. She loves building and construction sets, but had really outgrown her larger building blocks, and I knew she would love them… I just wasn’t sure the rest of our house, including her 14 month old baby brother,…
I received a complementary copy of The Bubble Gum Girl to facilitate this post. As always, opinions remain 100% my own. If your girls are fans of Pinkalicious and Lady Bug Girl, they are going to love The Bubble Gum Girl. Katie, the real-life Bubble Gum Girl, empties all the money in…
With a 3 and 4 year old in my house, I get a preschool question about the universe on an almost daily basis. And more often than not, their insatiable curiosity about the world around them, leaves me just as curious about the answer as they are. This week, as the leaves…