Sail to the ground with a parachute activity! Kids construct parachutes out of household items and a toy figure, after brainstorming the best way to reduce drag. Once they test their parachutes, they can adjust their projects to...

Motion is the focus of ten hands-on activities that challenge scholars to build machines invented by Leonardo da Vinci. Following several steps, small groups work collaboratively to recreate machines including levers, pulleys, wheels,...

Drop a perfect project into your lesson plans. Groups use different building materials to create models of parachutes for food drops. After testing out their prototypes, they make improvements to their designs.

A parachute is probably a good idea. An engaging lesson has pupils brainstorm ways to slow the descent of a falling object to minimize the impact when it lands. They decide on a design, build a prototype, test it out, and then make...

This lesson certainly will not be a drag! Little engineers design parachutes that make use of air resistance and, as a result, slow the descent of the payload as much as possible. It is an opportunity to teach about many motion concepts:...

The classic egg-drop experiment gets a new bounce with an activity that asks pairs to design a lander similar to one used to land a rover on Mars within a fixed budget. The activity provides a great introduction to the idea of...

You have to crack a few eggs to make a good engineer! Working in small groups, young scholars design, build, and test devices that protect an egg from breaking when dropped from a ladder.

Watch out below! Future engineers come up with methods to ensure that a ball in a cup stays in the cup even after dropped from a given height. It might be prudent to include some kind of shock absorber in the cup. Parachutes are a good...

Get things moving with this elementary science unit on simple machines. Through a series of nine lessons including teacher demonstrations, hands-on activities, and science experiments, young scientists learn about forces, motion,...

Challenge small groups to build a structure that catches a raw egg without breaking—working collaboratively and applying mathematical and engineering principles. Pretending the frame was made by a business, scholars create a marketing...

Space diving refers to the act of jumping from outer space and falling through Earth's atmosphere before parachuting to land. Scholars learn about this extreme activity and study the layers of the atmosphere they must conquer in the...