As summer winds down and your child heads back to school, they’re finding new ways to stay curious, and the fun is just getting started. Here at Port Discovery, we’re getting ready to open three brand-new exhibits, including two that feature exciting, hands-on engineering projects for you and your young learners to explore together.
To get ready for the excitement, here are a few challenges to try at home. Each one invites kids to tinker, test ideas, and think like real engineers. Along the way, they’ll spark creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving, helping your child build 21st-century skills to carry into the school year and beyond.
LEGO Brick Challenges
Materials: LEGO ® or Duplo ® Bricks
There are endless possibilities when it comes to LEGO bricks. Our LEGO Brick City exhibit will open on Saturday, September 27, 2025, and these challenges are a great way to get ready:
- Build & Switch: Each person starts a creation, then switch halfway through and finish each other’s builds. Have a conversation afterwards to see how you interpreted each other’s ideas.
- Mystery Bag Build: Put a handful random of LEGO bricks into bags. Each person chooses a bag and builds something creative using only those pieces.
- Name Building: Try to build the letters of your names (it’s trickier than it sounds)!
- Back-to-Back Build: Sit back-to-back. One person builds while describing it, and the other tries to copy it without looking.
- Tallest Tower: See who can build the tallest tower before it topples. Can you build an even taller one if you work together?
Cup Stacking
Materials: Dixie or Solo Cups (any size)
One of our most popular engineering activities is cup stacking. It’s accessible for children of all ages and can be made more challenging with cups of different sizes.
- Start with a line of cups upside-down on the table.
- Add a second row, bridging between the cups on the first row.
- Keep building higher or wider — challenge your children to make a cup colosseum, a tall, teetering skyscraper or a “Learning Tower of Pisa.”
- And when it’s done? Knock it down with dramatic flair!
Dots & Toothpicks Structures
Materials: Dots Candy, Toothpicks, Small Toy for Testing (plastic animals work great!)
Engineering with dots and toothpicks is a fun (and sticky!) way to explore 3D structures and their strength.
- Start by poking a toothpick into one Dot, then add another Dot to the other end.
- Continue adding Dots and toothpicks until you have the shape that you want.
- Begin with 2D shapes like squares or triangles, then build upward into 3D structures.
- Test their strength by placing toys on top. Which shapes held the most weight? How could you make your structure stronger?
Cookie Engineering (Yes, Baking = STEM)
Materials: Cookie ingredients and basic kitchen tools
An often-overlooked form of engineering is chemical engineering and one of the tastiest ways to try it is through baking!
- Pick a favorite cookie recipe and work together to mix ingredients.
- Younger children can help measure flour or count eggs, while older kids can try cracking eggs into a separate bowl before adding them to the mix.
- At the end, you’ll have a delicious experiment you can enjoy together.
Whether you’re stacking cups, snapping bricks, or baking cookies, these activities show that engineering is everywhere and it is always fun. We can’t wait to see what you and your young engineers create.