With vibrant photos and cute, colorful illustrations STEAM Play & Learn provides a bunch of fun activities for preschool or early-elementary-age children. Whether it's making a colorful volcano out of a lemon, a battery out of a lime, or giant building blocks from lunch bags and crumpled newspaper, this book includes activities that encourage problem-solving and engineering, but many also involve creative and artistic elements too.

The activities are grouped based on difficulty: easy, medium, and difficult. Some involve a lot of adult prep including hot-gluing and using tools (though the "Newton's Cradle" out of popsicle sticks does seem pretty cool!), but fortunately most fall into the "easy" category, and some can even be done with common household items. Food coloring is a common ingredient, as well as marbles, clay, baking soda, etc.

I've already gathered some inspiration on making building materials out of cardboard tubes with holes punched in them and straws (though we used pipe cleaners instead), and the "goop" recipe looks like it will be a fun thing to do outside in the summer.

It looks like there will be something here for everyone with young kids, whether you just want something quick and easy for preschoolers, or feel like tackling a multi-step activity for older kids, and each one includes some information about the particular scientific principles that are at work, plus each one looks like it would be a lot of fun.

(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)

Scrounged From: NetGalley

Format: Kindle
Author: Ana Dziengel
Pages: 80
Content Advisory: None

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