STEAM boxes
A collection of 36 STEAM boxes for students aged 6 to 12, covering various subjects and including storytelling tools. Each box will be accompanied by a tutorial on how to create them and pedagogical sequences that teachers can use to perform the activities in class.
This box is designed to introduce the concept of force in an interactive way. Students will learn about types of forces, especially gravitational force, with reference to space. Through practical activities students will be able to measure the impact of objects falling to earth and build a measuring instrument.
This box explores air and its properties. Its primary purpose is to have the students understand and perceive air as something real that is all around us, and not just as a theoretical concept. For older students, it also offers an opportunity to understand air pressure.
What makes an object float? Use this box to explore that with your students in an interactive and engaging way. Apart from the experiments, the box also offers a fun game and a story that will illustrate the concept more clearly, making it understandable even to the youngest of students.
Are all red flowers the same? Students will investigate whether the pigments in one red flower are the same as those in another red flower. How can a flower’s pigments help attract pollinators such as bees, butterflies or hummingbirds? Through practical activities students will be able to observe concepts and understand simple phenomena found in nature.
To better explain to the students how we are able to see use this box. It offers fun experiments that show how light reflection and refraction work, and how they impact our eyesight, sometimes creating optical illusions. The students will also learn about Braille through an engaging story and have a hands-on experience using it.
Although the students know waves are fun, with this box they will be able to learn how they are form, and what their importance to the oceans, and by extension our whole ecosystem. Following the instructions, the students will create a model of a transverse wave.
This box is designed to introduce pupils aged 6 to 12 to the various groups of musical instruments, the production of sound and its diffusion through different materials. A teaching approach that combines theory and practice for an in-depth understanding of acoustic concepts. Among the hands-on activities, making a pan flute allows students to experiment with sound creation and explore how design changes affect sound diffusion.
This box offers a practical introduction to botany through the specific study of moss cultivation. It aims to familiarise students with the conditions necessary for plant growth, focusing on the specific needs of moss. Activities include growing moss under different environmental conditions, allowing students to observe and compare the effects of these variables on moss growth.
This box provides the tools needed to explore the principle of communicating vessels and understand how a river flows in nature. Through hands-on experiments, students discover how water moves and balances between connected containers, a phenomenon that illustrates the conditions under which a river flows towards the ocean. By building a scale model of a river, they will be able to observe these concepts first-hand, fostering an in-depth understanding of river systems and the underlying physical principles.
This resource is designed for pupils aged 6 to 12 to help them discover and understand the different states of water – solid, liquid and gas – and their unique properties. Through a series of hands-on experiments, students will have the opportunity to observe the transitions between these states and identify the characteristic properties of water in each of them.
This box offers an immersion into the fascinating world of palaeontology. Participants will be introduced to the scientific approach typical of palaeontologists, including the importance of formulating hypotheses based on clues. Practical activities include building an excavation field, giving hands-on experience of palaeontological research, and projecting and drawing dinosaur silhouettes, encouraging students to imagine these creatures of the past.
This box offers differentiated educational sequences for the 6-9 and 10-12 age groups, enabling an in-depth exploration of the water cycle. Including a hands-on experiment to simulate the formation of a cloud and storytelling material, it is designed to facilitate understanding of water’s changing state.
Designed to introduce your pupils to the fundamentals of spatial orientation and algorithms, this box combines theory and practice through hands-on activities. Activities include learning how to find your way around a map and creating a chess board, which encourages the development of problem-solving and logical thinking skills.
This educational box focuses on learning about primary and secondary colours, recognising cool and warm colours, and understanding complementary colours. Practical activities include creating characters in primary colours, which, when superimposed, reveal the secondary colours, assembling a colour wheel, and creating works inspired by Loretta Grayson and Hundertwasser.
This box is designed to introduce the concept of magnetism interactively. Students will learn to distinguish between magnetised objects and those that are not and understand how magnetism influences the world around us. A key manipulative included is the construction of a compass, allowing students to put their knowledge of magnetism into practice and explore its application in navigation.
This box is designed for pupils aged 6 to 12 and offers an in-depth exploration of the world of plants. Focusing on art and science, pupils will develop their skills by creating a scientific drawing inspired by Maria Sibylla Merian, understanding how to use a determination key to identify different species, and artistically representing a plant. Practical activities include making anthotypes and creating a small herbarium containing both anthotypes and drawings in Merian’s style.
This educational box introduces students to the concept of time measurement through the creation and exploration of sundials. Students will engage in hands-on activities like building their own sundials learning how shadows and sunlight can be used to tell time. Alongside practical tasks, the box includes storytelling elements that trace the historical origins of sundials, linking science with history and culture. The box fosters critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, making it an exciting way for students to explore ancient technology and its modern applications.
This resource is designed for students aged 6-12 to help them discover and understand the role and importance of DNA to living organisms. Through hands-on experiments, students will have the opportunity to extract and observe DNA from fruits and build a DNA structure themselves.
Yeast is most often used in the kitchen to make dough rise. Have you ever watched a pizza crust or a loaf of bread rise in the oven? Yeast makes dough expand. But what exactly is yeast and how does it work? Yeast strains are actually made up of living eukaryotic microbes, which means they contain cells with a nucleus. Being classified in the category of fungi (the same kingdom as mushrooms), yeast is closer to you than plants! In this experiment we will watch yeast come to life as it breaks down sugar, also known as sucrose, in a process called fermentation. Let’s explore how this happens and why!
Can you be a robot too? This box provides an opportunity for this. By going through fun tasks on themselves, younger students can understand why it is necessary to give precise orders. Older students, on the other hand, get an idea of the different professions and programming languages related to programming .
This box offers a practical introduction to renewable energy, with a particular focus on wind power. By building a pinwheel, pupils experiment directly with the principles of wind energy, understanding how wind can be converted into useful energy. To complement this, the construction of a crane illustrates the application of these mechanical and energy principles to everyday technologies and tools.
Designed for pupils aged 6 to 12, this educational resource aims to introduce the concept of water power and explain how a water mill works. By focusing on the sensory experience, it helps pupils understand the power of water and its use as a renewable energy source. The main experiment involves building a water mill, providing a hands-on experience that illustrates how the energy of moving water can be converted into mechanical work.
Aimed at pupils aged 6 to 12, this box offers a practical approach to learning about renewable energies, in particular solar energy. Pupils will discover the different sources of renewable energy, understand the principles of the greenhouse effect and albedo, and apply a scientific approach. The flagship activity, building a solar oven, gives pupils the chance to experiment with solar energy in a hands-on way, highlighting its potential as a clean, sustainable energy source. Ideal for use during the summer months, this educational tool encourages young minds to explore tomorrow’s energy solutions.
This educational box provides a practical introduction to the basic principles of electricity, including the distinction between conducting and insulating materials. The activities designed allow students to assemble and represent an electrical circuit while understanding the differences between an open circuit and a closed circuit. The experiments include a static electricity experiment culminating in the assembly of a booklet, as well as the creation of an electrical circuit.
This box aims to raise awareness of protecting the marine environment while teaching fundamental scientific concepts. Pupils will learn to differentiate between terms such as soluble, homogeneous solution, and heterogeneous solution through hands-on experiments showing what mixes and what doesn’t in water. Another key experiment will involve them ‘cleaning’ the water, illustrating the challenges of cleaning up the oceans.
In this box, 6- to 9-year-old students listen to the story of dividing stars into boxes, and based on this, they themselves create puzzles of stars, which are then also played in a group. The idea of the game is to find different ways to place up to 12 stars in two so-called boxes. As another activity, addition is practiced using domino bricks.
This box provides experiments related to the centroid and balance. The students will explore what is balance, using the examples from the real world, including their bodies. They will also create their own paper model, and determine its centre of mass, allowing them to balance it on the tip of their finger.
One of the most interesting ways to show children math in the real world is to familiarize them with Fibonacci in nature. The Fibonacci pattern is a series of numbers that follow a mathematical pattern so simple that even a first grader can understand it. This resource proposes activities for observing and exploring nature, designed in an instructive and playful way.
A fun story about Tiny Decimeters and a Giant Meter creates a mood for students to continue to act by converting units of length. A historical overview of how in the old days the human body was used to measure lengths gives an idea of what the introduction of the metric system was for. The learning box has everything you need to create your own fun length conversion board game.
Why round up? This is what students aged 10-12 can find out by acting on this box. Numerous vital examples are given, the rules of rounding are given, tasks are solved. In groups, writing commands for immersion in the programming language Python is practiced.
The activities of this box are to make an analog clock and use it to show the time, calculate the time passed. The main focus is on converting the digitally presented time to analog. The activities are enlivened by singing and movement games.
This educational resource aims to reinforce understanding and mastery of addition and subtraction through engaging, hands-on activities. Using the number line as a visualisation tool, students can explore fundamental mathematical concepts in a hands-on way. The main manipulation is the construction of a train, designed to integrate the story and encourage students to apply their mathematical knowledge in a narrative context.
The aim of this box is to make it easier to discover and learn multiplication tables. It offers a fun, interactive approach to help pupils understand and remember multiplication, an essential foundation in mathematics. Among the manipulatives on offer, the creation of a paper cootie catcher to revise the table of 7 allows pupils to revise in a fun and engaging way.
This box aims to introduce and deepen understanding of fractions in an intuitive and engaging way. It covers the introduction to fractions, their comparison, addition and multiplication through hands-on manipulatives and fun activities. Students will manipulate physical elements to visually represent fractions and assemble a fractions booklet that incorporates narrative elements to contextualise mathematical learning.
This box focuses on the study of the area and perimeter of solids through hands-on manipulations and the assembly of Plato solids. It offers an interactive approach to understanding fundamental geometric properties while developing essential mathematical skills.
This resource is designed to enrich pupils’ mathematics teaching, focusing on the recognition and manipulation of polygons. Through the activity of making a tangram, pupils will learn to use vocabulary specific to polygons, recognise various geometric shapes, create complex figures from simple polygons, and understand the concepts of area and perimeter.
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
(Project code: 2022-2-EE01-KA220-SCH-000099273)