Key Takeaways:

• Keep students focused at the end of the year by integrating hands-on activities and experiments into your lessons.
• Hands-on investigations give students the opportunity to explore real-world phenomena—an essential part of implementing NGSS.
• These free and fun science activities from SuperScience magazine help students understand important science concepts.

As the school year winds down, we know you’re looking for ways to keep all your students engaged before summer break. As a thank you for all your hard work and dedication this year, we’re providing you with three of our favorite hands-on activities from SuperScience magazine for free!

Check out these free resources below from SuperScience and start a free trial for 2019–20!

Featuring truly unique and enlightening hands-on investigations that make learning science fun and engaging, these activities expand on exciting science and engineering stories that have appeared in SuperScience. These are our favorites:

Marble Painting

In this hands-on STEAM challenge, your students will investigate forces and motion by trying to paint a triangle with a rolling marble. It’s definitely not as easy as it sounds!

This activity is the perfect complement to our story, “Built for Thrills,” about how engineers design extreme roller coasters. Your students will love learning all the secrets engineers use to harness force and motion to create a stomach-dropping ride that’s not only fun, but safe too!

Lighter Than Air

In this “uplifting” engineering challenge, your students will design their own hot-air balloon prototype using tissue paper, a hair dryer and a few other household supplies! Then they’ll test it to see if it can fly for at least 15 seconds. It’s sure to keep your students’ interest afloat at the end of the year.

This hands-on activity pairs with our story “Balloon Bonanza,” which takes students to the world’s largest annual balloon launch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In it, they’ll learn about the different parts of a hot air balloon, as well as key science concepts such as air density and buoyancy.

Body Dwellers

In this eye-opening activity, your students will learn where microbes live on their bodies! They will use cotton swabs, plastic bags, and a potato slice for a petri dish to learn about what parts of their bodies have more microorganisms living on them. They’ll even get to compare their results with their classmates!

And don’t worry, the companion article “Surf’s Up for Science,” will teach your students that hosting these little body dwellers is totally normal. They can even take Cliff Kapono’s word for it. He’s the scientist and surfer profiled in this story who studies the microbial effects of spending long hours in the ocean.

For more engaging hands-on investigations and engineering challenges like these, check out SuperScience magazine. Each issue is packed with fascinating stories and activities that connect core science concepts to the real world. Perfect for STEM programs and Next Generation Science Standards, SuperScience also includes videos, lesson plans and powerful differentiation tools. Sign up for your 30-day free trial for the 2019–20 school year today!