Electricity and Circuits STEM Unit
Our study of electricity and circuits was electrifying!! Seriously, we all learned SO much in this unit and did over a dozen hands-on projects! If your kids love STEM projects, you may enjoy our 30-page Electricity and Circuits Packet.
My kids are currently 8, 11 and 13 and they couldn’t wait to dive into science each day while we were doing this unit!
Some of the topics and terms we talked about included:
- The parts of an atom
- Electric currents
- Conductors and insulators
- Parts of a light bulb
- Batteries
- Volts, amps, ohms
- Electrical circuits: Power source, load, conductor
- Simple Circuits
- Direct and Alternating Current (DC and AC)
- Resistance, Resistors and How they work.
- Anode, cathode
- Electrical Symbols
- Open and closed circuits
- Short circuits
- How to draw basic electrical schematics
- Series circuits
- Parallel circuits
- Motors
- Circuit breakers and the power grid
The best thing about this unit, of course, was how hands-on it was! The kids begged to do science this past month or so! 🙂 Loved that! (My kids are in elementary and middle school this year. This unit worked well for all of them.)
In this unit, I organized things into daily plans. Each day has the worksheets, suggested hands-on activities and materials needed as well as any books we used. Below is a picture of Day 1 (left) and Day 2, (right). There are 10 suggested days (though to be honest, sometimes we took a little longer than just one day.) There are 10 Days of suggested activities and worksheets.
Here is a glimpse of some of the Electricity and Circuits Worksheets:
The kids learned a lot by making their own circuits and learning about terms like volts and resistance and then really putting what they learned into action! I can’t tell you the number of things *I* learned for the first time while doing this unit!! 🙂 It’s awesome to learn right along-side the kids!
As I mentioned above, this packet includes lists of what you need to have on hand to do these activities. And, it includes instructions for how to do each of the hands-on projects.
These activities are amazing to do on their own, but doing them in conjunction with learning terms like resistors, parallel circuits and so forth was really meaningful for the kids. (Their grandparents joked that they should join our homeschool.)
If your kids enjoy doing STEM activities they will definitely learn a lot from this unit! 🙂
Quick Preview – Electricity and Circuits Unit
To Make a Purchase: Once you pay for this packet, you will immediately receive a link to download this file (which will open in a browser window). You will also receive an email from Sendowl (the service I use) to your PayPal email address, which will have a link you can click on to download the Electricity and Circuits unit. (It will go to the Paypal address you provided and will say, “You can download your digital products…” with a clickable link. It may take a few moments to arrive.) Of course, if you have any issues just email me at — liesl at homeschoolden dot com. You can also reach me by using the contact form on the blog or by replying to the email from SendOwl.
Electricity and Circuits STEM Unit
Don’t forget to check your PayPal email address for the download link!
$6.99
(You might want to check out the Chemistry BUNDLE offer below.)
This is the third unit we did this semester.
- We started with a study of the States of Matter and Changing States of Matter.
- Then from there we talked about the Physical and Chemical Properties of Matter. Since we talked about metals and non-metals in quite some detail in that second unit, it made sense to follow that with this unit on Electricity and Circuits because we talked extensively about conductors (and insulators) in this unit.
- The next year, we did another chemistry unit. We did an in-depth study of the periodic table, valence electrons, Bohr diagrams and learned terms like ions, isotopes, isomers and more.
Chemistry BUNDLE purchase these 6 units together
- Introduction to Chemistry – Size of Atoms Mini-Unit
- States of Matter Packet
- Properties of Matter Packet
- Electricity & Circuits Packet
- Chemistry Packet
- pH Scale – Acids and Bases Worksheet Packet
Chemistry BUNDLE of 6
$27.99
See the Chemistry Page for more details and lot more pictures of each packet.
You can also purchase these packets separately. See the Chemistry Page for more details.
$2.99 Introduction to Chemistry – Size of Atoms Mini-Unit
$5.99 States of Matter Packet (50+pages)
$7.99 Properties of Matter Packet (now close to 100 pages)
$6.99 Electricity & Circuits Packet (30+pages)
$8.99 Chemistry Packet – An introduction to the Periodic Table (150 pages) – Learn how the periodic table is organized and find out more about the different groups of the periodic table (Alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, halogens). Learn what valence electrons are and do some fun activities to create Lewis structures. Learn about the first twenty elements as well as elements with unusual names. Plus, learn about electron configuration and more! (We did this primarily in middle school, but did electron configuration in high school again.)
$2.99 pH Scale – Acids and Bases Worksheet Packet (25 pages) – Includes material for younger students (elementary/middle school) and older (high school) students.
$7.99 Ions and Isotopes Chemistry Unit (125 pages) This unit is an introduction to ions (which have fewer or more electrons) and isotopes (which have fewer or more isotopes). This unit should be done after students have completed the Chemistry Unit. (middle school/high school) This chemistry unit is included in the Chemistry BUNDLE of 8.
$9.99 Organic Chemistry Unit (100+ pages) Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon-containing molecules. In this unit, we study many of the organic compounds that include carbon and hydrogen (hydrocarbons), carbon-carbon molecules and more! This unit covers hydrocarbons, functional side groups and the four classes of macromolecules: carbohydrates, proteins, fats and nucleic acids. *high school level unit This chemistry unit is included in the Chemistry BUNDLE of 8.
Click on the link to see more details about each of these units:
Introduction to Chemistry – Size of Atoms Mini-Unit
Properties of Matter Unit
Chemistry Packet: The Periodic Table
pH Scale – Acids and Bases Worksheet Packet
High School Chemistry Units:
Ions and Isotopes Chemistry Unit (Click here to see the full post!)
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~Liesl
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Happy Homeschooling! ~Liesl
