What Happens When You Let Them Launch Things Across the Kitchen
One makes a light turn on. The other launches marshmallows across the kitchen. These are the ones that get carried to a grandparent's house for a demonstration. A coin battery, some lolly sticks, and twenty minutes.
These last two are the showstoppers. One makes an actual light turn on. The other launches marshmallows across the room. If you've been working through this series and your kids are ready for something that feels a bit more impressive, these are it.
The paper circuit needs a couple of cheap parts you might need to order. The catapult needs lolly sticks and rubber bands. Both produce the kind of result that gets carried to a grandparent's house for a demonstration.
Paper Circuit with LED
What you need: An LED light, a coin battery (CR2032), copper tape or foil strips, paper
The challenge: Make the LED light up by creating a circuit on paper.
This is the most "proper science" one on the list. There's a right way round for the LED and a right way round for the battery, and they have to figure out both. When it lights up there's a genuine thrill. It feels like they've done something real.
Your job: show them once which way round the battery goes. Or don't, and let them work it out. It won't break anything, it just won't light up until they get it right.
One thing: you do need to buy a couple of parts for this one. CR2032 batteries and basic LEDs are pennies online, and worth having in the house. Copper tape is ideal but strips of foil and regular tape work in a pinch.
Catapult from Lolly Sticks
What you need: 7–8 lolly sticks (or pencils), rubber bands, a bottle cap
The challenge: Build a catapult and launch pom-poms or marshmallows at a target.
Once the catapult is built (which takes maybe ten minutes with some fiddling) the aiming stage goes on indefinitely. Set up empty cups at different distances and let them at it. This is one of those activities where the build is satisfying but the playing is where the time goes.
Your job: set up targets. Move them further away when they get too accurate. Act impressed.
Don't use your good scissors. You know why.
The paper circuit works best from about age 7. Younger kids can do it with help, but the polarity thing gets frustrating fast if they can't read the plus and minus symbols yet. The catapult works from 5 upwards with a bit of setup help, and the aiming stage is genuinely ageless. I've seen a forty-year-old spend twenty minutes trying to land a marshmallow in a mug from across the kitchen. Not naming names.
That's all ten. If you've made it through the whole series, you now have a solid rotation of challenges that cost almost nothing, use stuff that's already in your house, and reliably buy you those twenty minutes you need. Keep the supplies in a drawer. Tape, straws, foil, spaghetti, marshmallows, rubber bands, a couple of LEDs and a coin battery. Your emergency boredom kit. About £5, all in.
And if twenty minutes turns into forty because they're redesigning for the fourth time, or arguing about whose catapult goes furthest, or trying to beat their own record. You're not being lazy by letting that run. You're encouraging independent problem-solving.
That's the line I use, anyway. And I'm sticking with it.
This is part 4 of the 20 Minutes of Peace series. 100 STEM challenges that use what's already in your house and don't need you standing over them.
