Are you an afterschool educator? Thinking about the coming school year and planning afterschool activities for elementary students? We’ve got a suggestion: take your kids on an engineering adventure!

Engineering Adventures are hands-on engineering units designed expressly for kids in grades 3 – 5 in out-of-school time settings. India and Jacob, a globetrotting brother-and-sister team, guide your kids through the engineering design process to solve real world problems. Each unit consists of 6 - 8 adventures. 

It’s easier than ever to add Engineering Adventures to your mix of programming. Convenient and cost-effective materials kits are now available for all seven Engineering Adventures units. Each kit includes enough supplies for up 24 kids.

Recently on this blog we introduced a college professor who uses EiE curriculum units as textbooks for preservice teachers. Today, meet a faculty member who’s innovating with EiE in a different way: her students get experience teaching engineering activities in a local afterschool program.

Kim Case is a lecturer at California State University – Fullerton whose students do their observations and student teaching at Rio Vista and Melrose elementary schools in Placentia - Yorba Linda Unified School District; both schools have significant numbers of English language learners and students from low-income households. The story begins with Case’s students creating practice lessons for elementary students at the two schools.

Just in time for summer camp, EiE’s Engineering Everywhere curriculum has two new hands-on curriculum units designed for middle school-aged engineers:

• “It’s About Time” poses a mechanical engineering challenge: Design your own timekeeping device
• “Plants to Plastics” is a chemical engineering challenge: Make plastic from ecofriendly plant-based materials 

This post by Natacha Meyer and Tania Tauer was first published in Education Week on April 24, 2015. The authors are senior curriculum develpers with Engineering is Elementary.

Today's unprecedented push to train students in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) has been primarily motivated by the need to produce a workforce capable of addressing the 21st century's global challenges. Research suggests that engaging middle school-aged youth in interactive STEM activities does more than just prepare them for STEM careers. Hands-on, open-ended engineering challenges provide youth with a fun and meaningful way to develop the 21st century skills that are critical to competency in today's interconnected global community.

Here are the top four 21st century skills you can promote in youth by facilitating engineering activities in your out-of-school time program.

The school year is coming to an end. When I say “summer slide,” do you picture fun on the playground?  Actually, summer slide is a serious concern. Students can lose up to three months of learning progress over the summer, according to the National Summer Learning Association. They may return to school in the fall with academic skills significantly lower than when they left the previous spring. The risk of a slide is especially great in STEM subjects.

And students from low-income families are particularly at risk; they’re less likely to be enrolled in summer camps and other formal education activities, which can be costly. Out-of-school time programs that serve diverse populations are making fighting the summer STEM slide a priority, with programs like Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s "Summer Brain Gain" and 4-H's STEM Camps.