STEM Club Basics

This page is dedicated to creating STEM Club materials geared towards children in Elementary School. The intent with these materials is to take basic concepts and teach them to children in a fun way that also allows them to start thinking in a more methodical and scientific way. Each experiment is designed for the children to create a lab notebook entry, perform an experiment, discuss their observations and perform extension activities with their parents as they see fit. The materials are designed with the idea that a parent/teacher will be involved to teach the basic ideas behind the experiment, help the kids with their lab notebook and experiment, then discuss what they observed/learned through the experiment. Some of the labs will build off of concepts we have learned in other labs but do not worry these concepts will be reintroduced as necessary so you do not have to do the labs in any set order.

Background information

Lab notebook - a lab notebook is an essential tool for recording hypotheses, experimental observations, and conclusions. For younger kids pictures can be their most powerful tools. Look at this post for basic ideas on how to setup and keep a lab notebook for kids of any experimentation level (although we are gearing this towards elementary school children).

Lab Safety - All the materials that are being used in these experiments on this site are common kitchen and household materials that should not be dangerous, but to teach kids proper lab safety for when they are doing experiments in middle school and high school with more dangerous chemicals we have put together a basic lab safety protocol that we will have kids follow each time they are working on an experiment.

• General Glossary - With each lab we will be creating a basic glossary in order to help our students remember some of the key terms and hopefully remember the concepts that they have learned. This first glossary comes from the Lab notebook and Lab Safety posts.

Introduction to the Scientific Method - the scientific method is used when doing research and experiments. This method allows you to figure out how to go about doing your experiment and figuring out if your method can be reproduced and if you can draw any conclusions from the data that you have gathered.

• Scientific Method Glossary
• Scientific Method Demonstrations
• Introduction to the Scientific Method (for Parents/Teachers)

Writer/Teacher Bios - Here are our basic bios for anyone interested in learning more about who is creating and teaching these labs.