The Zoom, Fly, Bolt, Blast STEAM Handbook

Book excerpt: Rockport Publishing's creative engineering extraordinaire, Lance Akiyama, returns again with The Zoom, Fly, Bolt, Blast STEAM Handbook, featuring 18 STEAM projects to get kids doing, thinking, and building! There is new emphasis in education to introduce STEM and STEAM to children earlier in life, often in elementary school. Just take a look atschools' shifting curricula, the explosion of maker spaces around the country, and demand by parents to have their children engaged with STEAM acitivities. The Zoom, Fly, Bolt, Blast STEAM Handbook gives parents and kids ages 6 to 10 a selection of 18 engaging projects to build together. And when they're finished, they'll have personalized creations that fly, race, and blast off! Make an automaton, a pneumatic machine, a suspension bridge, a flexible hand, a crash-test car, a (working) vacuum cleaner, and a dozen more ingenious, kid-tested projects. This project book is the latest title by Rockport's creative-engineering rockstar, Lance Akiyama, (who you may remember from Rubber Band Engineer, Duct Tape Engineer, and Launchers, Lobbers, and Rockets Engineer) and was made in cooperation with Galileo Learning. Galileo Learning operates over 70 innovation camps in Chicagoland and California, where Lance proudly works as a curriculum developer. Galileo's curriculum is rigorously developed by a small team of project-based learning experts, including former classroom teachers, Stanford University grads, entrepreneurs, artists, and makers. Each project idea is created to support Galileo's mission of developing innovators who envision and create a better world.