Introducing children to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) from an early age fosters critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills. The best part? You don’t need fancy equipment or a professional lab to spark your child’s interest in these fields. With a few household items and a bit of imagination, parents and kids can embark on fun learning adventures right at home.

Here are a few simple STEAM activities that families can do together to inspire curiosity and creativity.

Build a Balloon-Powered Car 

Turn recycling into a fun engineering project by designing and building a car powered by a balloon.

What You’ll Need:

• Small cardboard box (or plastic bottle)
• Four bottle caps (for wheels)
• Two straws (for axles)
• A balloon
• Tape
• Scissors

How It Works:

• Cut a rectangular piece from the cardboard box to make the base of the car or use the bottle.
• Attach the bottle caps to each end of the straws, then tape the straws to the underside of the car base to create your wheels and axles.
• Blow up the balloon, pinch the end, and tape it to the back of the car.
• Let go of the balloon, and watch the air propel the car forward!

What Kids Learn: This project introduces the basics of motion and force as kids learn how air from the balloon pushes the car forward.

DIY Lava Lamp 

Bring a little bit of colorful chemistry into your home by creating a DIY lava lamp that combines art with science.

What You’ll Need:

• Clear bottle or jar
• Water
• Vegetable oil
• Food coloring
• Alka-Seltzer tablets

How It Works:

• Fill the bottle about two-thirds full with vegetable oil and the remaining third with water.
• Add several drops of food coloring.
• Break an Alka-Seltzer tablet into smaller pieces, then drop them into the bottle.
• Watch as bubbles rise and fall, creating a mesmerizing lava lamp effect!

What Kids Learn: This activity teaches kids about density (why oil floats on water) and chemical reactions (how the Alka-Seltzer creates gas bubbles).

Create an Art Bot 

Introduce your child to robotics and creative expression by building a simple robot that can draw.

What You’ll Need:

• Plastic cup
• Markers
• Tape
• Motor (from an old toy or small fan)
• Battery pack

How It Works:

• Tape the markers around the rim of the plastic cup so they act as legs.
• Attach the motor to the top of the cup, and connect it to the battery pack.
• Turn on the motor, place the “Art Bot” on a piece of paper, and watch it create abstract drawings!

What Kids Learn: This project gives kids hands-on experience with basic engineering and robotics while allowing them to explore their artistic side.

Exploding Colors in Milk 

A colorful experiment that teaches kids about chemical reactions and surface tension.

What You’ll Need:

• Whole milk
• Shallow dish
• Food coloring
• Dish soap
• Cotton swabs

How It Works:

• Pour enough milk into the shallow dish to cover the bottom.
• Add a few drops of different colored food coloring to the milk.
• Dip a cotton swab into the dish soap and touch it to the surface of the milk. Watch the colors explode and swirl!

What Kids Learn: This activity teaches kids about surface tension and how soap breaks it, allowing the colors to spread.

Make a Rain Cloud in a Jar 

This weather experiment helps kids visualize how clouds hold water and why rain falls.

What You’ll Need:

• Clear jar
• Shaving cream
• Water
• Food coloring

How It Works:

• Fill the jar with water, leaving an inch of space at the top.
• Spray shaving cream on the surface to represent the cloud.
• Drop food coloring on top of the shaving cream, and watch as it sinks through the “cloud” and “rains” into the water below.

What Kids Learn: This activity explains how clouds form and release rain when they become too heavy.

Our after-school programs and summer camps are designed to incorporate hands-on STEAM experiences, allowing children to explore subjects like science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics in fun and engaging ways. 

Join us to inspire the next generation of thinkers, creators, and innovators! https://www.kidsinthegame.com/ 

Let’s talk green.

Take a look at a KING coach’s T-shirt, our website, our logo: we operate in blue and yellow. Blue for strength, stability and trust. Yellow for joy, energy and positivity. What is easily overlooked (by us too) is the result when we combine these colors. We get green. For KING, this means freshness, growth and life – three themes we are passionate about developing in the lives of our youth.

Holding our first annual Spring Break Camp this past week, our arts and STEAM projects were rooted in the theme: Growing Up KING in the Spring. We talked about the components needed to make life happen and growth happen, then brought those components into each day of programming:

Monday saw us with seeds; we gave them a place to put down roots – a pot for a home – and we gave them food, or soil.

Tuesday we focused on water, demonstrating the way water collects in the clouds by making shaving cream and food coloring rain clouds, then reusing the ingredients from the project and some white crayons to make rainy cards.

Wednesday was all about the sun. We made two forms of sun catchers to hang in our windows and help our plants grow with “extra light”.

Thursday, we got to see what springs up when all of the components work together: life forming out of the ground and into something stable, strong and vibrant. We used recycled Trader Joe’s bags and painted on them (after mixing our own hues of green from blue and yellow), cut out tree shapes, cut out leaves and flowers, making a varied and beautiful forest of creativity.

Finally, on Friday, we got to see how one strong and stable life can support the growth of other life; our strong trees are able to hold bird nests and provide baby birds a safe place to grow, and from which they can spread their wings and take flight.

All of these lessons about growth and life apply directly to our youth. As coaches, we’re committed to building ourselves and the kids we serve to reflect blue (stability and trust), yellow, (positivity and joy); and from these, seeing growth and life! More still, we – coaches and kids alike – strive to reflect strong, rooted trees that support and help spur one another to take off as leaders, dreamers and creators.

So as the week and our talks about seeing life came to a close, we asked some of our campers: What is your favorite thing about the Earth?

Here’s what we found…

Lena: The flowers, that’s what I love. Because they look pretty.

Simone: It makes trees. Because without the trees, the Earth would die because the car stinks and without the trees the Earth would stink.

Veronika: The grass. Because it’s green and it grows back and when it does it’s a shiny bright green.

Liam: Nature, because it grows and it turns beautiful.

Ryan: The sea, the Natural History Museum and the dinosaurs that are called fossils.

Graham: The ocean because we get to play in it and there are sea animals under it and I think that’s all.