STEM K’nex Car Racing

Activity for ages 5 and up.

If your kids are into cars, this STEM project is a must-try. Engineers in training will love designing, building and racing their own K’nex race cars!

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The DK series offers a huge selection of children’s science books including this one called “Car” that walks kids through the ins and outs of car design.

After reading a few key pages of the book together, I divided my summer camp students into teams and invited them to start building their own race cars.

After 30 minutes of designing and testing, they were ready to start RACING!

I had made two ramps out of a wide piece of cardboard by drawing a simple black dashed line down the middle. I securely taped each end to the top of a table and let the other end rest on the floor.

Two teams raced each other at a time. The first round, they competed for speed to see which car reached the bottom of the ramp first.

The second time, children competed for distance. They marked the spot where their car completely stopped rolling with a piece of tape. The team with the furthest tape mark won.

You can imagine the squeals of laughter {and sometimes disappointment} after each competition. The kids were surprised to find that their design made a huge impact on the car’s performance. One car might win for speed but fail miserably in the distance competition.

They eagerly huddled with their team again and started tweaking their design based on components of the winning cars.

Then it was back to the race track again for round two of competition!