Our Work
Explore our collection of upcoming and past teaching materials designed by the Palos Verdes Youth STEAM Association. Here, you’ll find hands-on projects, fun experiments, and engaging lessons created by high school students to inspire curiosity and learning in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. Check out what’s coming next or revisit past materials to keep the creativity going at home!
Sunday, June 22, 2025
DIY Lava Lamp: Chemical Reactions & Polarity
Using water, vegetable oil, food coloring, and Alka-Seltzer tablets, students will make their own lava lamps in a clear bottle. This fun, bubbly display teaches concepts such as liquid polarity, density, and chemical reactions in a way that's engaging, visually stimulating, and discussion-opening on immiscible liquids and gas formation!
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Popsicle Stick Catapult Competition
Students will design and build their own catapults using popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and ping pong balls. After learning about basic catapult mechanics, they'll test their creations in a fun competition to see whose can launch the farthest. A small prize adds excitement to this hands-on engineering challenge!
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Paper Roller Coaster Physics
In this interactive STEM activity, students will build their own paper roller coasters and explore how gravity, potential energy, and kinetic energy work together to move a marble down the track. Working in teams, they’ll plan, build, and test their designs—then improve them through creative problem-solving and experimentation. It’s a fun, hands-on way to bring physics to life!
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Walking Water: Exploring How Water Moves and Colors Mix
In this fun and hands-on activity, students will watch as water travels along paper towels from one cup to another, carrying vibrant colors with it. This experiment helps students understand capillary action—the natural process that allows plants to draw water up their stems. As the colored water moves and mixes, kids get to see science and art come together in a simple, fascinating way that sparks curiosity and encourages teamwork.
Sunday, September 14, 2025
Dancing Corn Experiment
Students will learned about how mixing baking soda and vinegar makes corn kernels dance, exploring concepts of gas production, density, and buoyancy in a fun fall experiment!
Sunday,
October 5, 2025
Pumpkin Boat Race
Students designed and built their own miniature pumpkin boats, then raced them across the water to see which creations were the fastest, most stable, and best at staying afloat. Through this exciting hands-on challenge, students explored the science of buoyancy, density, water resistance, and boat design while testing how different shapes and modifications affected performance.
Sunday,
October 26, 2025
Cinnamon Slime Experiment
Students created their own cinnamon-scented slime using simple household materials to explore the science of polymers and viscosity. Through this hands-on experiment, students will observe how different ingredient ratios affect the slime’s texture, stretch, and flow. The activity connects to larger STEM concepts such as chemistry, material science, and the study of non-Newtonian fluids, encouraging curiosity and experimentation through real-world applications of scientific principles.
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Sunday, December 7, 2025
Snowball Catapult Competition
Students designed and built their own catapults using popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and cotton balls. After learning about basic catapult mechanics, they'll test their creations in a fun competition to see who can launch the farthest. A small prize adds excitement to this hands-on engineering challenge!
Sunday,
February 8, 2026
Dissolving Candy Hearts Science experiment
We dropped candy hearts into different liquids and watching what happens! Students predicted, observed, and compared results, learning how different liquids dissolve (or don’t dissolve) sugar. It’s a simple but surprising way to explore science and build observation skills in a playful environment.
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Sunday,
April 19, 2026
Earth Day Oil Spill Simulation
In this experiment we will be making a mini oil spill in the classroom. The goal of this experiment is to find the best way to clean the oil from our mini ocean and explore how to solve this in real life.
Sunday,
June 28, 2026
DIY Kaleidoscope
Using mirrors, colorful materials, and a little creativity, students transformed simple supplies into their own DIY kaleidoscopes! As they twisted and turned their creations, they explored light, reflection, symmetry, and patterns, then took home a colorful science toy of their own.
Sunday,
May 17, 2026
Fluid Dynamics Lab
Students created swirling bursts of color in milk using food dye and dish soap while exploring surfactants, surface tension, and fluid dynamics. As the soap interacted with the milk, the colors raced and twisted into unique patterns, which students captured on paper and took home as their own science-inspired artwork!
Sunday,
July 12, 2026
Ice Cream in A Bag Lab
Students shook, mixed, and froze their way to a sweet treat during the Ice Cream in a Bag Lab! By using ice and salt to lower the freezing point, students explored temperature, phase changes, and freezing-point depression while making their own ice cream—and enjoying the final experiment!
Sunday,
July 26, 2026
States of Matter Experiment - Oobleck
Was it a solid or a liquid? Students got their hands messy creating Oobleck, a strange substance that acted like both! By squeezing, poking, and letting it flow through their hands, students explored states of matter, viscosity, and non-Newtonian fluids while discovering how force can completely change the way a material behaves.
Sunday,
August 9, 2026
DIY Bottle Car Race
Ready, set, roll! Students transformed recycled bottles into their own DIY race cars and competed to see whose design could travel the farthest and fastest. Along the way, they explored forces, motion, friction, wheels and axles, and engineering design while testing and improving their creations before the final race!