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“Kids’ Table” STEM Centerpiece: Thanksgiving Catapults!
- Gabrielle Fischer Posted On Oct 28, 2022 | STEM
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Tagged with 'STEM'
Botley Bobsleigh Free Printables!
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Nov 15, 2021 | Printables
It’s a Botley bobsleigh adventure! It’s time to celebrate winter sports, and Botley is getting into the spirit with this free printable black-line-following course shaped like the track used by world-class athletes. Just print it out, connect the pages, and set Botley to black-line-following mode, then watch him go for the gold!
Parents: help your little one color in the gaps between the track pieces with a black felt-tipped marker to make sure that Botley has a smooth trip along the course. Download your free printables by clicking the image below and you're ready to start your Botley Bobsleigh coding adventure!
Botley Bobsleigh Free Printables!
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It’s a Botley bobsleigh adventure! It’s time to celebrate winter sports, and Botley is getting into the spirit with this free printable black-line-following course shaped like the track used by world-class athletes. Just print it out, connect the pages, and set Botley to black-line-following mode, then watch him go for the gold!
Parents: help your little one color in the gaps between the track pieces with a black felt-tipped marker to make sure that Botley has a smooth trip along the course. Download your free printables by clicking the image below and you're ready to start your Botley Bobsleigh coding adventure!
Coding with Botley Printables
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Aug 25, 2021 | Printables
Shelter-In-Place STEM Education!
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Mar 30, 2020 | STEM
Move & Learn: DIY STEM Forts!
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Mar 26, 2020 | STEM
Even when you're learning at home, you still need recess! That's why we're coming up with lots of activities that get kids moving and learning at the same time. Today's activity adds some extra STEM fun to the classic art of fort-building.
Gather Materials
Everyone's house is filled with different stuff, so everyone's STEM Forts will look a little different. As you gather your fort-building materials, ask your kids what they think each item might be used for in the building process. Your final item lists may vary, but we recommend some or all of the following: couch cushions and pillows, bed sheets, twine or laundry line, small furniture items (chairs, coffee tables, ottomans), poles (yardsticks, mops, brooms).
Get Creative
Once you have your materials, it's time to start daydreaming about what kinds of forts you're going to build. This is a great opportunity to encourage your kids to stretch their imaginations. Ask them about their vision for the fort; are they building a moon base, or a castle, or a superhero hideout? What kinds of pretend features or creatures might the fort contain?Build STEM Skills
Building any kind of fort helps your kids strengthen their early engineering and design skills, but you can add even more learning to the fort-building with the following challenges:Shape Forts: Can you build a fort in the shape of a square, or a rectangle, or a triangle? What about a circle? How does the process change for each shape?Tallest/Longest Fort: How high can you make your fort before it topples over? How long can it get before the walls start to sag? What reinforcements can you make to keep your fort standing?
Multi-Room Forts: If you've mastered the single-room fort, can you design a fort with a second or third room? What will you use for the passages?
Simplest Fort: Who can build a fort with the smallest amount of materials? How does the process get harder or easier with fewer pieces?
Fort Race: Have builders take turns selecting from materials they want to build with. Once all the materials are selected, have a race to see who can build their fort the fastest. Our Digital Timer is the perfect tool to help keep track of race times!
At Learning Resources, we’re here to help you make the best of this challenging time. Stay safe and healthy, and check back with our blog for more tips and learning ideas as the situation unfolds.
Move & Learn: DIY STEM Forts!
READ MORE
Even when you're learning at home, you still need recess! That's why we're coming up with lots of activities that get kids moving and learning at the same time. Today's activity adds some extra STEM fun to the classic art of fort-building.
Gather Materials
Everyone's house is filled with different stuff, so everyone's STEM Forts will look a little different. As you gather your fort-building materials, ask your kids what they think each item might be used for in the building process. Your final item lists may vary, but we recommend some or all of the following: couch cushions and pillows, bed sheets, twine or laundry line, small furniture items (chairs, coffee tables, ottomans), poles (yardsticks, mops, brooms).
Get Creative
Once you have your materials, it's time to start daydreaming about what kinds of forts you're going to build. This is a great opportunity to encourage your kids to stretch their imaginations. Ask them about their vision for the fort; are they building a moon base, or a castle, or a superhero hideout? What kinds of pretend features or creatures might the fort contain?Build STEM Skills
Building any kind of fort helps your kids strengthen their early engineering and design skills, but you can add even more learning to the fort-building with the following challenges:Shape Forts: Can you build a fort in the shape of a square, or a rectangle, or a triangle? What about a circle? How does the process change for each shape?Tallest/Longest Fort: How high can you make your fort before it topples over? How long can it get before the walls start to sag? What reinforcements can you make to keep your fort standing?
Multi-Room Forts: If you've mastered the single-room fort, can you design a fort with a second or third room? What will you use for the passages?
Simplest Fort: Who can build a fort with the smallest amount of materials? How does the process get harder or easier with fewer pieces?
Fort Race: Have builders take turns selecting from materials they want to build with. Once all the materials are selected, have a race to see who can build their fort the fastest. Our Digital Timer is the perfect tool to help keep track of race times!
At Learning Resources, we’re here to help you make the best of this challenging time. Stay safe and healthy, and check back with our blog for more tips and learning ideas as the situation unfolds.
Gears! Gears! Gears! Mini Lessons
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Mar 19, 2020 | STEM
Discover the possibilities Gears! Gears! Gears! brings to your early STEM curriculum. Aligned to CSTA standards, these printable classroom activities from STEM.org will help your little learners discover the world of engineering games as they discover endless building possibilities.
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson One
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson Two
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson Three
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson Four
Gears! Gears! Gears! Mini Lessons
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Discover the possibilities Gears! Gears! Gears! brings to your early STEM curriculum. Aligned to CSTA standards, these printable classroom activities from STEM.org will help your little learners discover the world of engineering games as they discover endless building possibilities.
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson One
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson Two
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson Three
Click here to download your STEM.org Gears!Gears!Gears! Mini-Lesson Four
At Home Overnight Science Experiments
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Mar 17, 2020 | Science
Each family in the United States has found themselves at home…for a while. All this time has afforded us precious hours to do things we might not otherwise do. At Learning Resources, our minds turn toward STEM, and all the long-term experiments we might have put on the back burner simply due to a of lack of time.
Below are a few overnight experiments that take a while. But hey – time is on our side!
The Naked Egg
How can you make an egg stay fully intact without its shell? The answer is (to this and many things): science!
You will need:
- Eggs
- Vinegar
- Cups
- Corn syrup (for later)
All you have to do is drop the eggs in, one per cup, and pour in the vinegar. The egg should be completely covered with the liquid. It’s okay if the egg floats a bit.
A chicken egg shell is made up of calcium bicarbonate. The acid makeup of the vinegar begins to react with the calcium of the egg shell. After just a short while, you will see bubbles appearing on the outside of the egg. This is carbon dioxide gas as a result from that reaction.
But now comes the hardest part: the waiting. It can take 12-24 hours before a good portion of the shell is removed. More bubbles and froth will appear.
After the day of soaking, carefully remove the egg from the vinegar. The egg was soft, but still had a white, powdery coating. You can scrape it off, but with the egg being so delicate, it might break. Be careful!
We used a flashlight to find the yolk in the dark. The egg glowed something awesome, but the yolk was hard to pinpoint.
So we poured some fresh vinegar in the cup, and soaked it for another 12 hours.
The egg came out the next morning very rubbery and fragile. We slipped the naked egg into a cup filled with corn syrup and let that soak overnight. The results were amazing! Because the corn syrup has very little water content and the egg does, the water inside the egg begins to move across the membrane (“skin” layer) and starts to equalize. What’s left is a very baggy egg.
How to Make a Rainbow Bouquet
While you are grabbing essentials at your local big box store, why not grab a bouquet of fresh flowers? Creating your own rainbow bouquet can be turned into a fragrant scientific experiment over the course of a few nights. A trick often used by florists, dyeing white roses or carnations with colored water is actually an example of capillary action, or the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces against gravity.
What you will need:
- White roses or carnations
- Scissors or knife (adults only!)
- Containers
- Food coloring and water
Remove all the leaves from the stem of the flower. The experiment is to see how the colored water will travel to the white petals, so you don’t want water diverted to the leaves.
Once the roses are clean, have an adult snip or cut them with a knife at an angle, leaving about 6-7 inches (adults only!).
Next, stir up the liquid your flowers will be drinking for the next few days. Decide on your colors and place about 10-15 drops of food coloring in each container. Add warm tap water until the containers are about halfway full. Stir well!
Place your flowers in their containers. Here, two were placed in each container.
THREE HOURS
Recently snipped flowers can be pretty thirsty. This is what the stem and bud of the blue flower looked like after just three hours.
12 HOURS
The next morning, the tips of the flower petals (and most dry part of the flower) were beginning to show color. How deep will the color be with each passing day?
DAY TWO
At the two-day mark, the colors were distinguishable, and the roses were thriving.
DAY THREE
By the third day, the flowers were just beginning to wilt, but the colors were the most vibrant, but still a pastel hue.
These roses were colored by capillary action. The colored water was pulled through the stem and made its way up to the petals. Transpiration occurs when the colored water evaporates from the flower petals.
Overnight Crystals
Some crystals take several days to grow, but here’s a simple overnight recipe to get some great crystals grown right in your refrigerator.
You will need:
- Epsom salt
- Food coloring
- Clear glass cup
Epsom salt is another name for magnesium sulfate.
In the clear glass, fill ½ cup really hot tap water, then stir in ½ cup of the Epsom salt. Stir for at least one minute. While some salt crystals will be not dissolved at the bottom of the glass, your stirring has created a saturated solution that’s ready to make crystals.
Then add food coloring of your choice. Place the glass in the refrigerator and wait until the morning!
Wow! By cooling this solution rapidly, it encouraged fast crystal growth due to the dense solution. Crystals grown this way will be thin and plentiful.
Happy Overnight Science!
At Home Overnight Science Experiments
READ MORE
Each family in the United States has found themselves at home…for a while. All this time has afforded us precious hours to do things we might not otherwise do. At Learning Resources, our minds turn toward STEM, and all the long-term experiments we might have put on the back burner simply due to a of lack of time.
Below are a few overnight experiments that take a while. But hey – time is on our side!
The Naked Egg
How can you make an egg stay fully intact without its shell? The answer is (to this and many things): science!
You will need:
- Eggs
- Vinegar
- Cups
- Corn syrup (for later)
All you have to do is drop the eggs in, one per cup, and pour in the vinegar. The egg should be completely covered with the liquid. It’s okay if the egg floats a bit.
A chicken egg shell is made up of calcium bicarbonate. The acid makeup of the vinegar begins to react with the calcium of the egg shell. After just a short while, you will see bubbles appearing on the outside of the egg. This is carbon dioxide gas as a result from that reaction.
But now comes the hardest part: the waiting. It can take 12-24 hours before a good portion of the shell is removed. More bubbles and froth will appear.
After the day of soaking, carefully remove the egg from the vinegar. The egg was soft, but still had a white, powdery coating. You can scrape it off, but with the egg being so delicate, it might break. Be careful!
We used a flashlight to find the yolk in the dark. The egg glowed something awesome, but the yolk was hard to pinpoint.
So we poured some fresh vinegar in the cup, and soaked it for another 12 hours.
The egg came out the next morning very rubbery and fragile. We slipped the naked egg into a cup filled with corn syrup and let that soak overnight. The results were amazing! Because the corn syrup has very little water content and the egg does, the water inside the egg begins to move across the membrane (“skin” layer) and starts to equalize. What’s left is a very baggy egg.
How to Make a Rainbow Bouquet
While you are grabbing essentials at your local big box store, why not grab a bouquet of fresh flowers? Creating your own rainbow bouquet can be turned into a fragrant scientific experiment over the course of a few nights. A trick often used by florists, dyeing white roses or carnations with colored water is actually an example of capillary action, or the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces against gravity.
What you will need:
- White roses or carnations
- Scissors or knife (adults only!)
- Containers
- Food coloring and water
Remove all the leaves from the stem of the flower. The experiment is to see how the colored water will travel to the white petals, so you don’t want water diverted to the leaves.
Once the roses are clean, have an adult snip or cut them with a knife at an angle, leaving about 6-7 inches (adults only!).
Next, stir up the liquid your flowers will be drinking for the next few days. Decide on your colors and place about 10-15 drops of food coloring in each container. Add warm tap water until the containers are about halfway full. Stir well!
Place your flowers in their containers. Here, two were placed in each container.
THREE HOURS
Recently snipped flowers can be pretty thirsty. This is what the stem and bud of the blue flower looked like after just three hours.
12 HOURS
The next morning, the tips of the flower petals (and most dry part of the flower) were beginning to show color. How deep will the color be with each passing day?
DAY TWO
At the two-day mark, the colors were distinguishable, and the roses were thriving.
DAY THREE
By the third day, the flowers were just beginning to wilt, but the colors were the most vibrant, but still a pastel hue.
These roses were colored by capillary action. The colored water was pulled through the stem and made its way up to the petals. Transpiration occurs when the colored water evaporates from the flower petals.
Overnight Crystals
Some crystals take several days to grow, but here’s a simple overnight recipe to get some great crystals grown right in your refrigerator.
You will need:
- Epsom salt
- Food coloring
- Clear glass cup
Epsom salt is another name for magnesium sulfate.
In the clear glass, fill ½ cup really hot tap water, then stir in ½ cup of the Epsom salt. Stir for at least one minute. While some salt crystals will be not dissolved at the bottom of the glass, your stirring has created a saturated solution that’s ready to make crystals.
Then add food coloring of your choice. Place the glass in the refrigerator and wait until the morning!
Wow! By cooling this solution rapidly, it encouraged fast crystal growth due to the dense solution. Crystals grown this way will be thin and plentiful.
Happy Overnight Science!
Stay At Home STEM: The Sorting Challenge
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Mar 16, 2020 | Math
The Best of Toy Fair 2020!
- Patria Lincoln Posted On Mar 9, 2020
We're finally settled back into the office after another exciting year at Toy Fair 2020, and we figured now would be the perfect time to share with you some of our favorite moments from our time in New York. From a big win for Coding Critters to Botley 2.0's adventures in the Big Apple, we had enough adventures to make this our best Toy Fair yet!
CODING CRITTERS WINS TOY OF THE YEAR!
You couldn't have coded a better start to this year's Toy Fair than the one we got on Friday night, when our own Coding Critters won Preschool Toy of the Year at the Toy Industry Association's annual Toy of the Year (TOTY) Awards! Released in 2019, "your first coding friends" have already helped thousands of kids as young as 4 take the first steps on their lifelong coding journeys."With votes coming from toy industry professionals, press, and the general public, this Toy of the Year award represents a big vote of confidence in Coding Critters' mission to teach preschool coding fundamentals through fun storybook coding adventures," said Marie LaPlante, chief marketing officer for Learning Resources. "They've helped solidify Learning Resources' place as an industry-recognized leader in early coding." The Toy Association TFNY20 Video
The win by Coding Critters represents our second TOTY win in a row, and third overall; in 2019, Botley the Coding Robot won Innovative Toy of the Year, joining 2016's Specialty Toy of the Year winner Tumble Trax in Learning Resources' trophy case.BOTLEY'S BIG APPLE CHALLENGE!
Speaking of Botley: our award-winning coding robot showed off some new skills as Botley 2.0 invited visitors to sharpen their coding skills with his Big Apple Challenge! During these multiplayer races, players coded their Botley 2.0s through a New York-inspired obstacle course featuring replicas of Central Park, the Lincoln Tunnel, and more. In addition to winning prizes, players also got to test out Botley 2.0's cool new features, including a night-vision light sensor, colorful light-up eyes, six-direction movement, and fun hidden transformations! 25 YEARS OF THE CALCULATOR CASH REGISTER!
Our Calculator Cash Register celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2020, and we decided to mark the occasion by giving out a little cash of our own. During our 25th Anniversary Cash Register Cash Grab, visitors to our booth got the chance to pull a souvenir bill from the drawer of our iconic cash register; $2,500 of real money and Learning Resources gift cards! In addition to giving folks a little extra spending money for their time in New York, we also matched our giveaway with $2,500 in product donations to the Kids in Need Foundation!THE PRESS LOVES US!
Our booth was buzzing with members of the media during Toy Fair, with reporters from CNN, ABC, CBS, and more stopping by to chat about our new toys. Judging by their reactions, they liked what they saw; our Peekaboo Learning Farm was selected by POPSUGAR as one of 180+ Brand-New Toys That Your Kids WIll Want to Play With in 2020, and our Super Selves! Reward Capes were selected as a Fatherly Favorite Best Toys at Toy Fair 2020! With all of these great early reactions, we can't wait to see what's in store for the rest of the year!
The Best of Toy Fair 2020!
We're finally settled back into the office after another exciting year at Toy Fair 2020, and we figured now would be the perfect time to share with you some of our favorite moments from our time in New York. From a big win for Coding Critters to Botley 2.0's adventures in the Big Apple, we had enough adventures to make this our best Toy Fair yet!
READ MORE
CODING CRITTERS WINS TOY OF THE YEAR!
You couldn't have coded a better start to this year's Toy Fair than the one we got on Friday night, when our own Coding Critters won Preschool Toy of the Year at the Toy Industry Association's annual Toy of the Year (TOTY) Awards! Released in 2019, "your first coding friends" have already helped thousands of kids as young as 4 take the first steps on their lifelong coding journeys."With votes coming from toy industry professionals, press, and the general public, this Toy of the Year award represents a big vote of confidence in Coding Critters' mission to teach preschool coding fundamentals through fun storybook coding adventures," said Marie LaPlante, chief marketing officer for Learning Resources. "They've helped solidify Learning Resources' place as an industry-recognized leader in early coding." The Toy Association TFNY20 Video
The win by Coding Critters represents our second TOTY win in a row, and third overall; in 2019, Botley the Coding Robot won Innovative Toy of the Year, joining 2016's Specialty Toy of the Year winner Tumble Trax in Learning Resources' trophy case.BOTLEY'S BIG APPLE CHALLENGE!
Speaking of Botley: our award-winning coding robot showed off some new skills as Botley 2.0 invited visitors to sharpen their coding skills with his Big Apple Challenge! During these multiplayer races, players coded their Botley 2.0s through a New York-inspired obstacle course featuring replicas of Central Park, the Lincoln Tunnel, and more. In addition to winning prizes, players also got to test out Botley 2.0's cool new features, including a night-vision light sensor, colorful light-up eyes, six-direction movement, and fun hidden transformations! 25 YEARS OF THE CALCULATOR CASH REGISTER!
Our Calculator Cash Register celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2020, and we decided to mark the occasion by giving out a little cash of our own. During our 25th Anniversary Cash Register Cash Grab, visitors to our booth got the chance to pull a souvenir bill from the drawer of our iconic cash register; $2,500 of real money and Learning Resources gift cards! In addition to giving folks a little extra spending money for their time in New York, we also matched our giveaway with $2,500 in product donations to the Kids in Need Foundation!THE PRESS LOVES US!
Our booth was buzzing with members of the media during Toy Fair, with reporters from CNN, ABC, CBS, and more stopping by to chat about our new toys. Judging by their reactions, they liked what they saw; our Peekaboo Learning Farm was selected by POPSUGAR as one of 180+ Brand-New Toys That Your Kids WIll Want to Play With in 2020, and our Super Selves! Reward Capes were selected as a Fatherly Favorite Best Toys at Toy Fair 2020! With all of these great early reactions, we can't wait to see what's in store for the rest of the year!
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