One of my buzz words for the year is challenge.
Being my children’s mother and teacher, I hear “I can’t do it” way more than I’d care to hear. It drives me crazy as I’m not sure I can recall ever uttering that sentence. Nature or nurture, I’m not sure, probably a bit of both, but there’s not much I don’t think I can do if I really tried.
We’re trying to work through their mindsets by using language like “I don’t know how to do that yet,” “It’s O.K. to fail,” “I can do hard things,” etc. I believe the ability to try challenging things and not be undone by failure is one of the most valuable traits a child can bring into adulthood.
A fun and creative way that we foster taking on challenges is through STEAM challenges. It stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and math. Within the STEAM challenge, there isn’t a “right” way to do something. You have a task and you have to use the elements of the acronym to create a solution.
Here are a few of our favourite STEAM challenges you can incorporate into your own family night.
Egg drop: Put out a pile of random materials (newspapers, plastic bags, straws, tape, cotton balls, etc.) and have each team create a vessel to hold an egg. The goal is to protect the egg from being cracked. Then drop the eggs from a consistent height (we threw them from our second story).
Wind powered cars: Give everyone the same matchbox car and random materials. Have them add to the car to make it wind powered (think sails or a way to catch wind). We then used a hair dryer to make the wind and tested how far they would travel.
Freight boat: Using random materials, design a “boat” that will float in water. Systematically add weight to the boats to see which can hold more.
Teepee challenge: Build a teepee using only newspaper and tape.
There are so many awesome challenges that will promote critical and creative thinking as well as being lots of fun.
