I enjoyed this book and I think my kids will too! I will be using it in their home school. I think it will be fun for all and they will have fun learning!

This STEM book features 50 engineering projects for kids, most of which are very simple and use materials you probably have at home. While there are a few really interesting projects like making a scribble bot (electric toothbrush, pool noodle and pens put together to make a little moving scribbler that will draw as it wiggles around) and making a lemon battery, most of the projects are very simple.

Examples of the projects are building a house of cards, using 12 pieces of paper and masking tape to make as tall a tower as you can, making a marble run with cardboard tubes, using two cups and string to make a "telephone," cooking milk and vinegar to make a plastic that you mold and harden, making cars and boats out of materials like water bottles and CD wheels, making a musical shaker by filling plastic easter eggs with beads, using natural materials to make a dam and making a sundial with a paper plate and pen.

This book would really have benefited from far more photos. While most of the projects include one photo, they are often photos of the materials assembled in a pile. That does no good if you want to picture the end project, and in some cases step-by-step photos would have really clarified the directions, especially for kids who will be doing the projects on their own.

My rating system:
1 = hated it
2 = it was okay
3 = liked it
4 = really liked it
5 = love it, plan to purchase, and/or would buy it again if it was lost

I read a temporary digital ARC of the book for the purpose of review.

5 stars!

A great variety of fun and imaginative activities/ projects for kids.

I voluntarily read an advanced copy.

Great book for STEM activities with your kids! The intro was great and my 5 year old loved the different steps to make the race cars already. He even used those to bounce off to make other types of cars. He is excited to try the rocket ship next.

(Will post to Amazon and Goodreads once book is released.)

Awesome Engineering Activities for Kids is a STE(A)M tutorial with activities aimed at young readers and their resource people/guardians. Author Christina Schul is an educator and homeschooling mom/blogger has collected 52 fun labs for learning with kids 5-10 years old. Released 14th May 2019 by Rockridge Press, it's 256 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats.

Critical reasoning skills, planning, experimentation, and willingness to learn are basic necessary life skills. Children are naturally curious and willing to learn. These directed activities provide many hours of enjoyment and learning without being strident or preachy.

Each of the included activities includes a step by step tutorial, materials lists, and many have extension activities to refine or modify the results. Each of them includes a short sidebar explaining what relevance it has to the different branches of engineering.

There are some drawbacks. Though this book is admittedly aimed at an American readership, I was surprised to see that the measurements in the book are all in English (American) units; inches, feet, yards, etc. There is no conversion table included in the book. It's a small quibble, but for a STEAM book, it was surprising. The photography is limited, but the photographs which are included are clear and illustrative. I did appreciate that the young scientists pictured in the experiment tutorials were an inclusive bunch with children of many ethnicities and both sexes included. It may be a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but when I was being educated as an engineer, seeing -any- other girls/women represented was a big thing to me.

The ebook version includes an interactive table of contents Possibly worth noting for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is included in the KU subscription library. There's also an interactive resource links list (slanted toward readers in North America). The chapter subheadings are also linked for easily paging back and forth to other areas of the book.

This is a fun and worthwhile book. It would make a great classroom library book, resource book, homeschool resource book, or support text for a module on STEAM subjects for kids 5-10(ish). There's also a wide range of activities and most of the experiments use easily sourced materials.

Four stars.