We’re about 10,000 months into quarantine at this point, and as a parent, I’ll be honest: That clever, optimistic, “activity dad” in my house retired on week two. Don’t you dare look in my cabinets; there’s not a pipe cleaner to be found.
Luckily, Dyson—yes, the Dyson we know for vacuum cleaners and insanely engineered flat irons—has you covered. After releasing 44 science experiments to teach engineering in April, the James Dyson Foundation has followed up with more free curricula for kids. Now, you can download a Student Pack (pdf), which challenges kids to learn about pollution, air quality, and engineering.
The pack includes eight worksheets, and a series of experiments that you can follow along with on video. At the end of the work, children are challenged to build an air filter of their own.
If they fail at the task, I assume they are meant to abandon engineering, take up a whole other career, save their money, and eventually buy the real thing from Dyson. But if putting my kids to work on a cardboard air filter keeps them from shouting about, well, just about anything for 15 minutes, we’ll deem it a win.
