Foam Block Engineering Challenge

Children are natural scientists. They are natural engineers. They love to take things apart to see how they work. They love to come up with creative ways to solve problems. They love to create, destroy, and re-create. This is why it is so important to provide kids with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) activities early in life. STEM activities hone their natural curious instincts to make them think critically, hypothesize, create, and learn. When children engage in STEM activities they become more aware of science, technical, and engineering careers later on. Plus, STEM activities are just plain old fun!

Today I have a very simple engineering activity for you to try. We love to play with blocks and LEGO at our house. This was just a variation of an old theme.

All you need is shaving cream, foam blocks, and a creative mind! The shaving cream is the glue that sticks the blocks together, and it works like a charm.

Squirt some shaving cream into a plastic container. Color with food coloring if you wish. Grab a paint brush and start building!

You can give your kids all kinds of engineering challenges. Here are some that we enjoyed:

Tallest structure:

Most horizontal structure (the kids were amazed that they could build horizontally!):

Tool with which to destroy aforementioned structures (he is big into arrows lately):

I chose to do this activity in the bathtub since it was bath night anyway and I didn’t want to clean up a big mess elsewhere. It worked like a charm! Once they were done playing I filled up the tub and washed the blocks along with the kids! Although they were a little cramped in there, they had a blast 🙂
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Saturday Science

And now on to our Saturday Science linky party! Check out our wonderful co-hosts and link up your recent science activities:

Bubbling Cloud Dough Science from Little Bins for Little Hands

Dissolving Peeps: A Simple Fall Science Experiment for Kids from Lemon Lime Adventures
Grow Your Own Monster: Halloween Science from The Joys of Boys

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