Book Review: 100 Easy STEAM Activities

There are so many great STEM and STEAM activities out there, and I love having books of activities around so my child can choose something she wants to do rather than me having to direct or suggest activities all the time (she’s 10, so she has a good idea of what sounds interesting or fun to her).

100 Easy STEAM Activities by Andrea Scalzo Yi of Raising Dragons is a great collection of low-prep projects that are lots of fun for kids and help them learn while keeping them entertained.

Some of the categories in the book include:

Simple science experiments
Achievable technology ideas (aka coding without computers)
Easy engineering challenges
Accessible art projects
No problem math activities
Toddler STEAM play activities
Seasonal STEAM activities
Sensory STEAM ideas

In all there are 100 different activities, a lot of which you can probably do with materials you have in your house or with a quick trip to the store. Most are great for elementary school aged kids, except of course for the toddler activities.

Each project is rated from one to three beakers in terms of difficulty, so it’s easy to pick things that are perfect for your kids’ skill level.

A few projects at random to give you a taste: Paint your name in binary code, Playdough maze, Calm down building block sensory bottle, Crayon resist leaf prints, Raised salt painting, Fraction animals, Magic pepper experiment.

While lots of these you may have seen before, the beauty of a book version is that you and your kids can flip through it at random when “I’m bored” hits, or if there’s something specific you want to focus on that day. It’s a lot of fun for little artists, engineers, mathematicians and kids in general.

Learn more about the book at her website.

About the book: 192 pages, paperback, 100 activities. Published by Page Street Publishing, suggested retail price $19.99.

Check out our Online store for special buys on Educational gifts We find bulk items and end-of-stock supplies to bring you heavily discounted items. (make sure you check our store often so you don’t miss out on new stock). We also have some free printable files, including a Science PDF for learning about Microscopes.

My brother went through a phase where he was obsessed with maps. He loved to look at maps and he would draw maps of places real and imagined. He even drew maps that followed our route when we’d go to visit our grandparents in another state!

I assume there are still kids who go through map phases, and kids with an interest in history and how things got to be the way they are. Both kinds of kids will enjoy the book Borders: Understanding the Lines that Unite and Separate Us by Karim Ressouni-Demigneux, with illustrations by Karine Maincent.

The book describes how the original borders were natural, such as oceans, rivers, mountains and deserts, and while some of those borders are still in use today, many borders are human made, decided by treaties or carved out by colonizers. It covers the history of people congregating in one place and how city-states evolved into empires, how maps are drawn and how human conflicts can reshape borders.

There are stories about walls that reinforce borders, how borders work in the air and at sea, how people cross borders with passports or as refugees and how climate change is altering the borders of some countries.

You’ll also learn some fun border facts like the fact that if you stand in the middle of the bridge over the Zambezi River you can be in four countries at once because that’s where the borders of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet. Or how there is only one border crossing between India and Pakistan that’s closed each night in an elaborate ceremony.

The book talks about time zones, border towns and places where countries and parts of countries are inside other countries and places where borders are less important such as the European Union.

While there are serious subjects in the book, it’s still a fun read that’s sure to interest those kids around ages 8-12 who like travel, maps and weird but true facts.

About the book: 72 pages, hardcover, published 2026 by Blue Dot Kids Press. Suggested retail price $21.95.

Have you read?

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