Skip to main content

The Egg Drop STEM Challenge

What is a STEM Challenge?
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. A STEM Challenge is a project that encourages children to explore, design, and test in the areas of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. 

STEM activities are a great way to add hands on learning to your homeschool or classroom. STEM education helps develop problem solving and critical thinking skills, increases science literacy, and makes mathematics fun.


The Egg Drop STEM Challenge:

The goal of this challenge is to design a contraption to keep an egg from cracking when dropped from a predetermined height like the top of the stairs or a low roof. 

There are two different ways you can do this challenge. You can do what we did and just let your kids have free range of supplies they can find around the house. Or you can give them a box of materials to work with. Some items you might include are:

Construction paper
Tape
Roll of toilet paper
Pipe cleaners
Sponges
Rubber bands
Box of kleenex

Or anything else you can come up with that your kids might be able to use.

When your kids are finished designing and building, test their projects. If it doesn't work, encourage them to go back to the drawing board and try something new.

A Look At My Daughter's Egg Drop Project:


Designing and building:

 Like I mentioned before, I let my daughter have free range of any supplies she could find around the house for her egg drop project. This is what she came up with:


She stuffed a giant plastic Easter egg with an old scarf, leaving just enough room to nestle a real egg inside.


The plastic egg with the real egg inside, then gets nestled into a basket filled with newspaper for cushion. 


Then she designed a homemade paracute to tie to the top of the basket. This took a few tries. She experimented with several materials and shapes until she got one she thought would work. She settled on the bottom half of a black plastic garbage bag with very lightweight string attatched at 4 places evenly spread out around the bottom of the bag. 

The string kept ripping the bag once it had weight under it so we had to reinforce the holes with duct tape.

The test:

After several test drops and a few minor adjustments to the parachute she was ready to test it with a real egg.



It was a sucess! Her parachute opened perfectly and her egg survived the drop.





If you enjoyed this post check out:

-Make a Simple Home Weather Station

-The Naked Egg Experiment




Follow me on:
Instagram
Pinterest
Facebook

Labels:

Comments

  1. SandraMay 29, 2018 at 9:37 PM

    So fun! I loved doing this as a kid - thank you for sharing this resource!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brandy NicoleMay 30, 2018 at 4:28 PM

      Thanks for reading! I never got to do this experiment asa kid but my daughter definitely enjoyed it.

      Delete
  2. UnknownMay 30, 2018 at 7:44 AM

    Great idea! I loved how you gave her free range of her choosing! Great experiment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brandy NicoleMay 30, 2018 at 4:29 PM

      Thanks! I try to give her a lot of freedom in creating and building.

      Delete
  3. UnknownMay 30, 2018 at 8:05 AM

    I LOVE this!! As an engineer, I encourage and appreciate parents who inspire imagination in their children and challenge them to come up with creative solutions - and if it doesn't work, go back to the drawing board and try again! With technology being such an easy go-to for children to entertain themselves, creative hands on activities like this are so so important!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brandy NicoleMay 30, 2018 at 4:31 PM

      Thanks for reading! Engineering projects are always a big hit around here.

      Delete
  4. AngelicaMay 30, 2018 at 8:15 AM

    Such a fun summer activity idea!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Water Relay Races For Kids

I don't know about your kids, but mine absolutely love games involving water and getting wet in the summer time. In  this post I share 5 of our favorite water relay races to play with friends. These are perfect for birthday parties, homeschool get togethers, and other group events. Sponge Relay: For this relay you will need: - 2 teams of several kids each -2 large sponges -4 small buckets or containers of some sort Divide your participants into 2 teams and have each team line up single file at a predetermined starting place.  Hand out a sponge to the first participant in each line. Set a bucket of water by each team. Set an empty bucket about 20 ft away from each team.  The two empty buckets should be the same size and should have a "fill line" marked half way up. On a count of 3 (or ready set go) the first participant in each line should dip their sponge in the bucket of water, run to the empty bucket, squeeze the water from their spo...
2 comments
Read more

STEM Art: 21 STEAM Project Ideas

My kids love STEM projects and we're always looking for ways to add more art to our homeschool days, so I decided I am going to try to dedicate one morning a week this year to STEM art activities. In this post I share some of the ideas we're planning to try, plus a few favorites we've done in the past. What is STEM Education? STEM education is a blended and often hands on approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which are some of today's fastest growing industries. STEM education offers students the opportunity to problem solve and work on real world problems and questions. Sometimes the acronym STEAM is used, to include the arts. Adding art to STEM education encourages creative thinking and problem solving skills. It can also help make the other included subjects more appealing to some students. STEM Art Projects  Penny Spinners-   Learn about centrifugal force and make your own spinning tops with this fun post from Teach Beside Me. Explo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Make Your Own Mineral Identification Kit

One of my family's favorite hobbies is rock hounding. We love collecting and trying to identify neat rock and mineral specimens that we come across. You can put together your own simple kit for identifying rocks and minerals with materials you likely already have around your home. In this post I will explain how to put together your own mineral identification kit and how to use it to identify rocks and minerals you find on your adventures. Making a Rock and Mineral ID Kit Grab yourself a printable Rock and Mineral Journal for recording your observations here:  Printable Rock and Mineral Journal ,  and then gather the following supplies: -A pencil -A coin -An iron nail -A piece of glass (an old pocket mirror works well) -A ceramic tile -A small watertight bottle or container -Some vinegar -A magnet  -A magnifying glass -A dropper (optional)  -Rock and mineral guide (optional)  -A small container or bag to keep it all in Fill ...
1 comment
Read more

Learning About Thailand: Activities and Resources

Thailand ended up being a really fun country to study. There are so many amazing Thai recipes to try and lots of neat buildings and monuments to learn about. My family's favorite part of this unit study was learning about Asian elephants, they are such interesting and intelligent animals!  Basic Information  Thailand is a country in southern Asia. It is boarderd by Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Andaman Sea. The northern region is mountainous while the southern region is hilly and forested. Capital- Bangkok Population- 69.6 million Size- 198,115 square miles Currency- Baht   Type of Government- Constitutional Monarchy National Anthem-  Phleng Chat Thai National Animal- elephant Flag Famous Places The Grand Palace- The Grand Palace in Bangkok was used as the official royal residence of Thailand from 1782 to 1925. It is still used today for ceremonies and state functions. The palace sits on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. It consists of many buildings and pavilio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning About The Human Body Part 1: The Skeletal And Muscular Systems

At the end of each school year, I sit down with my daughter to discuss what topics she wants to learn about the next year. One of her science topics she picked to study this year was the human body. Instead of ordering a boxed curriculum set, I decided to put together my own human body unit. In this post I share some of the resources we used for learning about the human skeletal and muscular systems, plus instructions for a couple hands on learning activities. You can find my post about the human respiratory and circulatory systems  here , and my post about the human digestive and nervous systems  here . The Human Skeletal System Our skeletons are the frame of our body. They give us structure, without them our bodies would be limp like noodles. They also provide places for muscles to attach so our bodies can move. Why Does Your Body Need Calcium? Experiment: This is a simple experiment you can do to explore why calcium is important for our bones. You will need: -sever...
5 comments
Read more