Holiday STEM Ideas for Gadgeteers and Makers

Resources

We asked Newton parent and engineer Kevin Osborn for his ideas for STEM holiday gifts and activities during the holiday break. He responded with these ideas for gadgeteers of all ages (more details on his blog):

Instructables.com has thousands of cool projects, from the outrageous to the absurd — much of which is doable with kids and full of STEM.

EvilMadScience.com sells do-it-yourself and open-source hardware designs that originated from its blog, Evil Mad Science Laboratories.

  • Make cool designs on eggs, or anything round with the egg-bot, which also serves as an introduction to CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machines.
  • Or build an LED Menorah.

MAKE magazine, a quarterly magazine with lots of do-it-yourself projects , is great subscription gift for makers of any age.  They also have a lot of great stuff in their store and recently had a special issue on cool kits, and most of them are available here.

Radio Shack is now carrying the Arduino, which is an easy-to-use, open-source electronics prototyping platform for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. There’s a Getting Started with Arduino kit that includes has the Arduino board, a great introductory book, and some electronic components to do the projects in the book.

And of course, there’s Lego Mindstorms NXT — the Lego robotics system that allows you to make sophisticated robots and machines and program them in an easy-to-learn graphical environment. Used in schools and in First Lego League competitions, it’s best suited to Middle school students and above. Some people have difficulty getting started with NXT, especially if they don’t have an engineering background. Here are some great books to get you started: