In this multi-week STEM series, children will participate in a weekly experience chock full of STEM and artistic fun. They'll learn about electricity and magnetism, build and engineer, design and create, and play.

Kids will understand electricity, how it works, and how it powers our home appliances and devices. They'll gain exposure to concepts of switches, transistors, modulating electrons, and conductivity. Experimenting with bar magnets, learning about magnetic forces and poles, drawing magnetic field lines, and magnetizing ordinary objects is always a huge "attraction." They'll make wooden blocks levitate, use magnets to recreate classic paintings, build small pinball boxes, and much more! All materials provided.

Week 1: Intro to magnetism, learning about poles, permanent and temporary magnets, draw a world with a magnetic field surrounding it.

Week 2: Experiment with iron filings, see how a stronger magnet can accrue more iron filings in a clump compared to a weaker magnet; make paintings with iron-mixed paint so kids can observe how iron filings become held within the dried paint. 

Week 3: Make iron filing Jell-O that will be used the following week; make pendulums with magnets to learn about interactions between swinging magnet(s) and static placed ones. 

Week 4: Use balloons to build up an electric charge and then show how it can “bend” or attract water; discuss and learn about electrons, and how they are connected to both magnetism and electricity; dissolve iron agar and try to recover as much iron filings as possible, leaving them in water until the following week.

Week 5: Observe the new, rusty iron filings from the previous week and discuss what’s happened; make floating paper clips, attract bubbles with a balloon, make a piece of plastic float over a tube with static electricity, and remove magnetic attraction with heat.