Well, as you can see, I was busy last year, since I haven't posted in a very long while. My quick summary of STEM Den is this: a dozen kids showed up for the first meeting in my not-nearly-big-enough living room. The boys were a wee bit distracted by the degus running around their cage, but enjoyed the color separation from the leaf color chromatography experiment.
The following month we moved to the school cafeteria for more room. Over the year, we built a catapult, talked about oil and water and made "bubble soap", tried to make vermiculture habitats (helpful hint, don't buy worms in Walmart in March), learned about cryptography, and levers. Plus I ran the school science night (30 minute wait for Galaxy Goop!!!). The best part was I was asked by our Scout Council to run a STEM Academy during April vacation. We had 4 days of STEM activities, cub scout belt loops and fun (I got to run on oobleck! it was awesome!)
I'll post an entry for each activity/experiment. I promise.
I'm trying to get ready for this year's STEM Den. I was seriously considering not doing it this year, as it was a lot of work last year. But, when my Pack said they're going to give me up to $10/kid this year for materials... well... I *had* just found that information on how to weld chocolate...
I started looking for more ideas. Keep in mind, I'm looking at stuff for kids ages 6-10, who are already interested in science. There's only so many times you can break out the baking soda and vinegar, or make ooblek or do the "at home science activities" which are really aimed at younger kids. I'm stuck in this weird spot, where I need activities that can be completed in an hour (or more, if I can do some of the prep work without killing the fun) for kids who have already burned through the intro level ideas. And, I don't want to pay a ton of money for kids from Steve Spangler (I love his work!)
I'm hoping I'm not the only one out there stuck in position, so I'm trying to get this blog up and running to get the conversation going.
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