Your little engineers will really enjoy these 12 creative engineering activities.

On a recent trip to Sydney, Australia, I spent a lot of time admiring (and photographing) the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge which is the widest and one of the longest steel arch bridges in the world. Quite the engineering feat! 

Between that and the world famous Sydney Opera House, I came back buzzing from my little getaway with lots of thoughts about engineering and just how important it is for our children to have opportunities to experience it and to learn more about it.

What is engineering? 

Engineering is the application of science, technology and maths to develop solutions to problems. Put simply, engineers are creators! 

They take the above disciplines and combine these with creativity and ingenuity to make something new. 

Engineers see a problem and solve it. They create and re-create products, infrastructure and solutions that make our everyday life easier.

Architectural engineers play a huge role in the construction of buildings like the Sydney Opera House (pictured above) and civil engineers work on things like roads and bridges like the Sydney Harbour Bridge (see pictures below). 

There are also many other types of engineers that are heavily involved in so many different projects and areas of production. 

From technology and the engineering of the mobile phones we use, to robots, computer games, chemical engineering, medicine, renewable energy, aircraft and much more. 

There are so many different avenues that engineers can put their skills and passions towards in this modern day and age.

Why is it important for children to learn engineering?

Allowing children to experience different forms of engineering helps them to understand more about the processes that go into making up so much of the world around us. 

Engineering encourages creativity, problem solving and cooperation. 

It allows children to think outside the box and to come up with solutions to problems through experimentation and trial and error, whilst putting into practice so many of the skills they are acquiring as they grow.

Continue reading...

In this activity, children are invited to learn more about gravity, engineering and architecture in a fun and hands-on way.

I'm not generally one to take pictures of buildings. Sure, I admire certain made-made structures but I've never felt compelled to take multiple pictures of non-historic buildings. Until I went to Dubai, that is. 

When I asked my family living in Dubai, "Why should families visit Dubai?" and one of the answers on the list was, "Architecture (Dubai has a mix of both Arabic and modern contemporary buildings which creates a unique and interesting landscape)," they weren't wrong. Out of the desert pops this quite amazing spectacle. I had never seen buildings like them. They appeared to rise out of the ground, often so tall that they looked like they were on a lean (perhaps some were?). A new shape and design around every corner. Everywhere that we drove I found myself constantly going, "Wow, look at that one!", "Woah! Check that out." and scrambling to take a photo before we drove on. You can see some great views of Dubai from the air in my earlier post.

When I got home, my kids thought the buildings looked fabulous. Going through photos together brought up all sorts of questions and discussions. Opportunities for learning.

How do they make the buildings stay up? Why don't they fall over? How do they get them so high? How did they make it that shape?

Continue reading...