Football season is in full swing and the EiE staff is excited to root for their favorite teams—and to toss around the personalized football that we were happy to receive from our friends at Colorado STEMworks! If the middle schoolers in your afterschool program also have football fever, we have a timely engineering activity for you to implement. Our Engineering Everywhere unit Put a Lid On It: Engineering Safety Helmets introduces youth to the field of biomechanical engineering—a field of engineering that combines mechanical engineering and biology—as they explore the design and construction of helmets. We’ve found that youth are most engaged with engineering when they’re working on problems that connect to their own lives, and Put a Lid On It is the perfect opportunity to engage your kids with compelling real-world connections to football—one of the most popular sports in the United States.

We know that budgets at afterschool programs, camps, and schools can be tight, which is why the materials needed to teach EiE’s engineering activities are “inexpensive by design.” Our curriculum designers try their best to require supplies that teachers can easily locate at their local craft or hardware stores. If you are short on time and looking for an inexpensive afterschool engineering activity with easy-to-source materials, don’t be discouraged—Go Green: Engineering Recycled Racers, one of our Engineering Adventures units, is the perfect activity for you!

Have you remembered to “spring forward" yet? If you were up very early on Sunday morning, you might’ve noticed the clock on your phone suddenly jumped an hour into the future—don’t forget to reset your watch, too! This leap marked the beginning of Daylight Saving Time, the period from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November when clocks are set one hour ahead of Standard Time. While the extra hour of sleep gained during the return in the fall to Standard Time is quite popular amongst night owls and college students, this biannual time adjustment is also responsible for plenty of headaches. One of the complications it creates is also an interesting engineering problem—how do you make sure everyone is “on time”?

Here at EiE, we’ve found that kids are most engaged with engineering when they’re working on problems that connect to their own lives. That’s why we designed our out-of-school-time curricula, Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere, to guide them through the engineering design process as it applies to a real-world problem. We’ve already put together a list of additional real-world resources for each Engineering Adventures unit (Engineering Everywhere resources are under development!), but the EiE staff is always on the lookout for even more relevant content to help inspire your young engineers. Check out these compelling connections, share them with your kids, and show them that you can find engineering . . . everywhere!

In our afterschool curricula, Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere, we strive to emphasize real-world connections that make engineering feel relevant to youth. You can always find articles, videos, and books on each unit’s resource page, but our staff is constantly finding new viral videos and articles that relate to our units. Here are four resources that will show your kids that engineering is all around them, and is constantly changing the world.