Engineering Design STEM Activities for Beginners – 50 Hands-On Missions for Grades 6–8

Help your middle-schooler think like a engineer. Engineering Design STEM Activities for Beginners packs 50 two-page missions into one printable 124-page PDF — each with a Look & STEM Idea page, a Try & Draw page, a mission goal and a materials list — for Grades 6–8.

What this book helps you do

Inside the book

• 50 two-page STEM missions for Grades 6–8 (ages 11–13)
• 7 sections, from The Engineering Design Process to Design Challenges & Communication
• Look & STEM Idea and Try & Draw pages with a mission goal, time, difficulty and materials list
• Key engineering design words: Design, Constraint, Structure, Material, Mechanism and Testing
• For Grown-Ups notes and a Certificate of Discovery
• Printable 124-page PDF — Level D “Innovators” of the Mathfa STEM series

Topics covered

The book moves through seven sections: The Engineering Design Process (8 missions, from The Engineering Design Cycle to Plan a Design Investigation), Problems & Tradeoffs (7 missions, from Criteria Versus Constraints to Redefine the Problem), Structures & Loads (7 missions, from Tension and Compression to Loads: Dead, Live, and Wind), Materials & Their Properties (7 missions, from Strength, Stiffness, and Density to Design a Material Test), Mechanisms & Systems (7 missions, from Machines Trade Force for Distance to Energy Flow Through a System), Testing, Data & Failures (7 missions, from What Makes a Test Fair to Analyze a Data Set) and Design Challenges & Communication (7 missions, from The Packaging Drop Challenge to Your Full Engineering Project). Every section opens with a mission plan, and the book ends with For Grown-Ups notes and a Certificate of Discovery for finishing all 50 missions.

Built for

Grade 6–8 students (ages 11–13); parents who want screen-light, purposeful STEM projects; teachers and homeschool families who need ready-made missions; and STEM clubs looking for investigations that end in something students can show.

Getting the most from it

Let students read the STEM idea and predict before they build or measure. Encourage them to record every result, even the surprising ones, and to explain what the evidence shows. Revisit a mission after finishing a section — improving a first design is where much of the learning happens.

Before you begin

For background on middle-school science and engineering practices, see the Next Generation Science Standards; for national education guidance, visit the U.S. Department of Education. On Mathfa, explore the Mathfa STEM hub, try Maker Engineering STEM Activities for Beginners, or browse the full Mathfa library.

Frequently asked questions