Maker Lab: 28 Super Cool Projects

Supporting STEAM education initiatives and the Maker Movement, the National Parenting Publication Award-winner Maker Lab includes 28 kid-safe projects and crafts that will get young inventors' wheels turning and make science pure fun.

Each step-by-step activity is appropriate for kids ages 8-12, and ranked easy, medium, or hard, with an estimated time frame for completion. Requiring only household materials, young makers can build an exploding volcano, race balloon rocket cars, construct a lemon battery, make sticky slime, and more. Photographs and facts carefully detail the "why" and "how" of each experiment using real-world examples to provide context so kids can gain a deeper understanding of the scientific principles applied.

With a foreword by Jack Andraka, a teen award-winning inventor, Maker Lab will help kids find their inner inventor and create winning projects for school projects, science fairs, and beyond.

Jack Challoner is a former science and math teacher and educator at the London Science Museum, and author of over 40 science and technology books, including The Cell: A Visual Tour of the Building Block of Life and DK Eyewitness Books: Energy. He is based in Bristol, England.

Jack Andraka was just a fifteen year old Maryland high school sophomore when he invented an inexpensive early detection test for pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancers. Now, at seventeen, Jack's groundbreaking results have earned him international recognition, most notably a 2014 Jefferson Award, the nation's most prestigious public service award, 1st place winner in the 2014 Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge, the 2012 Intel ISEF Gordon Moore Award, the 2012 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Youth Award, a spot on Advocate Magazine's 2014 40 under 40 list, a fellowship as a National Geographic Explorer, and he's also the 2014 State of Maryland winner of the Stockholm Water Prize. He is currently a student at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.