Host a STEAM Night!
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Any school site can host a STEAM Night! Getting families involved with hands-on activities is one of the best ways to get families engaged with their students' learning. Whether you are using LEGO kits currently at your site or checking out a Science Kit from the OrangeUSD Science Center, sites have the tools needed to host their own STEAM Night to engage and involve students with their families!
Please contact Rochelle Greenwald with any questions.
STEAM Night Documents
Here are some other ideas and links you can use for your STEAM Nights!
Integrating Art and Space Exploration - JPL Resource - show images of space, planets, stars, and more and have families use multiple materials and media to recreate the images in their own ways.
Moon Phases Calendar - JPL Resource - just some cutting and brass fasteners! Have families create a moon phase calendar for the year! There are low-ink printables available as well.
Main Site - JPL STEM Activities - There are a lot of great ideas in here that teachers can use in their classrooms - many ideas will take longer than you have for a STEAM night, but they could be useful for a regular STEAM Activity for your grade level or class!
Mobile Ed Productions - may or may not be able to work for a STEAM Night, but possibly for a STEAM Day! Check out their offerings for assemblies. The link has a list of prices and assemblies and links to their website.
Use those Legos! Your school should have BricQ STEM Kits - bring those out for an activity!
Have a Game Room! Collect board games such as Checkers, Chess, Monopoly, Sorry, Battleship and more and have a Board Game Room. Board Games are a great way for families to connect, and many of them use problem-solving skills, collaboration, cooperation, critical thinking, and more!
Got a microscope anywhere? Have a room with the microscope(s) and have students look at different objects through the lens!
Origami!
Rube Goldberg machines - gather lots of generic STEM room items (toilet paper rolls, paper clips, pom poms, Qtips, cotton balls, rubber bands, etc.) and have families create a Rube Goldberg machine.
dailySTEM has a few lists of STEAM activities for families: List #1 List #2 List #3
Other STEAM Night Activities
These are some familiar STEAM activities you could do with your families. We won't be providing materials from the Science Center, but you can still add these to your family nights!
Spaghetti Marshmallow Tower
20 sticks of spaghetti; 1 yard of string; 1 yard of tape (blue tape works well here); 1 large marshmallow
Challenge - build a tower to support the marshmallow at the top
Gumdrop Structure Challenge
10 gumdrops; 20 toothpicks
Challenge - Design a structure that can support the weight of a large textbook
This one can get sticky!
Mapping Your Tongue
Pretzels; lemon juice; cocoa powder; sugar water; Q-tips; copies of the Tongue Map page
Students can dip the Q-tip in each of the foods and put them on the different parts of their tongue to experience different taste buds, then label the tongue map.
Newspaper Table
newspaper, tape, ruler (to measure height), textbook
Challenge - using only newspaper and tape, construct a free-standing table at least 8 inches high that can hold a textbook.
Rock with some Robots!
Do you have other robotics in your STEM Labs? Use those at your STEAM Nights too!
Have a teacher lead families through a Bee-Bot course, an Ozobot story, play with Dash, or make Sphero roll around the room!
Get the LEGO Spike Prime and Essential Kits out too! Families can code the robots to see if they can go through old LEGO Challenge Missions, do short debugging programs, or just play and see what the LEGO Robotics kits can do.
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