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You are here: Home / By Age / School Age / Wire and Wood STEAM Building

Wire and Wood STEAM Building

By Shaunna Evans Leave a Comment · This content may contain affiliate links.

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We’ve been introducing a new STEAM building each week as an after school activity here at home. Most of them involve simple materials, and I give little instruction to the girls. Instead I invite them to use the materials to create whatever they think would interesting given the materials provided. This wire and wood invitation turned into a collaborative project, and the girls seemed to like creating DIY toys similar to winding bead mazes.

wire and wood STEAM Building-great for maker space activities, collaborative projects or after school activities

Materials

Affiliate links included.

  • Large wooden beads 
  • Assored length wooden round dowels we received from CraftProjectIdeas.com
  • Floral wire
  • Wire cutters

materials-for-wire-and-wood-steam-building

Make Your Own

Before the girls got started I showed them how to use the wire cutters to cut the wire. Then they started creating. They quickly realized this is better done as a collaborative project, and the three of us worked together. Most often one person would hold the dowels in place while another wrapped and secured the wire around them.

wire-and-wood-tower

In the end they came up with some neat structured. Above my 5 year old created a tower with winding beads. The beads along the dowels and on the wire move back and forth sort of like a bead maze. She was thrilled with how it turned out.

triangle-steam-creation

My oldest started by making a musical instrument. When you shake it the beads make a fun sound.

diy-winding-bead-toy

Then she went on to create her own version of a bead maze. She liked adding waves into the wire so that the beads would move up and down as she rotates her toy.

A Few Tips:

Floral wire is sharp, and so are wire cutters. This project is best done with school age children. Watch kids closely and have a few bandaids nearby in case there are a few minor finger pricks. (They are small and similar to learning to sew with a needle.)

More STEAM Activities and Resources

Styrofoam STEAM Sculptures

Paper and Straws STEAM Creations

Craft Stick STEAM Challenge

 

fb-wire-and-wood-steam

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Filed Under: Invitations to Create, School Age, Science Tagged With: STEAM

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Hi, I’m Shaunna!

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