Whether you're a facilitator, educator, or event organizer, if you are planning a STEM club, afterschool program, or community event, you will need flexible, hands-on, high-quality activities that are easy to set up and run. We created YES STEM Event Activities to take students ages 6-12 through multiple cycles of designing, testing, and improving their solution to a real-world problem, even in short, flexible, or drop-in settings. Children as young as age 4 can participate with help from a caregiver. Each kit includes all materials, signage, and facilitator prompts you need to run an engaging, memorable STEM experience, whether participants drop in for 10 minutes or stay for an hour.
Young learners and families engineer solutions during a community STEM event
What are YES STEM Event Activities?
YES STEM Event Activities are standalone, facilitator-ready activity kits designed for informal or out of school settings such as libraries, recreation centers, homeschool cooperatives, parent teacher associations (PTAs), and parent teacher organizations (PTOs). These activities are designed for easy setup by busy people and maximal engagement for a wide range of ages and grade levels.
Each activity guides participants through the Engineering Design Process using:
• A brief comic that introduces a relatable problem.
• A poster highlighting the phases of the engineering design process.
• Signage that indicates where participants are in the process as they flow through the activity.
• A testing station that encourages iteration and redesign.
Inclusive by design
These activities are designed so that ALL participants—and the adults supporting them—can succeed. Each challenge includes differentiation options for all ages and abilities.
Depending on your needs, you can have kids slow down and sketch out a plan, or jump right into building.
When youth are ready to test their designs to see if they solve the problem, the testing station includes multiple options, allowing all to feel that success is within their reach. Youth are encouraged to observe results, refine their designs, and retest—reinforcing persistence and problem solving.
“The signage and guides helped parents feel more comfortable assisting their kids. We saw lots of persistence, collaboration between families, and tons of laughing and smiling. . .” –Carol Luthar, Da Vinci Science Center, Allentown, PA
Why we created YES STEM Event Activities
At the Museum of Science, our mission is to inspire a lifelong love of science in everyone. For more than 20 years, the YES program (formerly EiE) has delivered engaging, open-ended, hands-on STEM experiences to learning spaces outside the museum.
While we continue to work to bring long-term, deep STEM experiences to students in schools, we know that time for STEM in school, particularly in elementary grades, is often limited. Last year alone, we reached over 800,000 students and 29,000 educators across the U.S. in in-school and out-of-school time settings through our YES curriculum products.
Through this work, we heard a consistent need from parents, teachers, and STEM coordinators: schools and community organizations need high-quality STEM experiences that can work outside of traditional classrooms.
We created YES STEM Event Activities to meet that need and to help more young people build confidence and positive “I can engineer” identities in those settings where flexibility matters most. And we wanted to create a product that could help the trusted adults in those young people’s lives feel more comfortable engineering, too.
Flexible Event Formats
YES STEM Event Activities work for both open, drop-in events as well as more structured group programs. As the facilitator, you can shape the activity as needed for your event:
Option 1: Drop-in activity at a larger event
Ideal for family nights, Maker festivals, or other community STEM events.
Participants can come and go as they please and engage in as many cycles of redesigning and retesting as they wish. In this type of setting, YES STEM Event Activities are best facilitated by two adults: one to welcome new participants and introduce the activity, and another to facilitate at the testing station.
“... This station at our event was by far the most popular! Students really appreciated the ability to free-build using a variety of different materials. Having the testing area available nearby encouraged families to modify and retest designs... ”
Option 2: An event with a set start and end time
Well-suited for afterschool clubs, homeschool co-op gatherings, or library workshops.
STEM Event Activities work well in situations where participants start concurrently. A single facilitator can introduce the challenge and then circulate, asking participants questions provided in our teacher guide, and managing the testing area. Youth work at their own pace as they imagine, plan, create, test and improve their solutions; iterating their designs as many times as they wish.
“... Multiple students remained at the station for a long time, and two families remained there for the entire two-hour event!” –Carol Luthar, Da Vinci Science Center, Allentown, PA
Designed for busy educators and STEM facilitators
Each kit is built to be truly “open the box and go.” YES STEM Event Activity kits streamline preparation so facilitators can focus on delivering an engaging experience. Every YES STEM Event Activity Kit includes...
• instructions for event setup and facilitation
• hands-on materials that encourage creativity and designing multiple solutions
• event signage
• stickers for each participant.
When we tested this concept with community organizations, facilitators told us they valued having all supplies and materials included in one complete package, freeing them to focus on engaging with young engineers rather than worrying about gathering materials.
We are excited to provide more youth with positive STEM experiences through YES STEM Event Activities. Our first kit, Engineering a Park Cleanup, is available for purchase now; with another, Engineering a Toy Rescue, coming soon.
Learn more in our free live webinar on Thursday January 15th.
👉Register here: YES STEM Events Webinar
The development of YES STEM Event Activities was generously supported by the Dorr Foundation and the Overdeck Family Foundation.
