How to Set Up a STEM Center at Home

As a parent, you want your child to succeed. Adding more STEM learning for your children is a way to help them become problem-solvers, innovators, and critical thinkers. That’s why learning how to teach stem at home can be invaluable for parents, especially homeschooling parents.

But if you want more STEM education than what your school provides, you can set up your own STEM center at home. Follow along with this guide on how to set up a STEM center at home.

You can set up your own science center at home. Follow along with this guide on how to set up a STEM center at home.

What is a STEM Center?

A STEM center is an area where children are allowed to explore the concepts of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) together as a unit to solve challenges or problems.

You’ll find many elementary teachers using STEM centers in the classroom, but parents can also create their own STEM center at home.

How to Set Up Your STEM Center at Home

If you’re ready to set up a STEM center at home, follow along with these easy steps!

STEM Center Station Ideas

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Finding a Location for Your STEM Center

Once you pick what your STEM center will be (ours is just a white table with wheels from Ikea), then you can find a place for it.

I recommend placing it in an area of your home that is accessible to your kiddos, but also in a place where you can keep an eye on things. Placing your STEM center in an area of the house with a hard floor is highly recommended.

We currently have our STEM center in our filming studio, because we use it to film the Jarring Science Club lessons. But before we started the Jarring Science Club, we had our STEM center in our breakfast nook off of the kitchen.

If you have a garage that doesn’t get too hot or cold, that also makes a good location for a STEM center. You want to pick a location with a good amount of natural light, and a place where you can leave projects undisturbed overnight.

How to Set Up at STEM Center

If you have the space, it works well to store your STEM supplies either by type of resource or by type of challenge.

We use the closet in our filming studio to store our STEM materials and we also have a large shelf in the garage where we store things. I like to store them by type of resource, so we have LEGOs together, science experiment supplies together, microscope stuff together, building materials together, and so on.

I bought little dish tubs to store our items in. You could also use stacking containers, but I found that when we stack supplies, no one puts them back, so we use open containers in just one row.

That way kids can just toss things back into the appropriate bin when they are done with them.

You also should have a cleanup station with tons of paper towels, rags, and a trash can. These STEM activities can get messy, so having some tools to make clean-up easier will help a lot.

Supplies for an at-Home STEM Center

You’ll want to stock your STEM center with age-appropriate STEM supplies. We like to use recycled materials for building, blocks and building tools for engineering challenges, Squishy Circuits for electrical engineering activities, and basic science supplies for science investigations.

You can watch the video below for some of what we include in our STEM center at home, or go here for a complete, printable STEM supply list.

Scientific Explorer My First Mind Blowing Science Kids Science Experiment Kit Learn & Climb Science Kit for Kids – 21 Experiments Science Set, Hours of Fun.4M Crystal Growing Science Experimental Kit – Easy DIY STEM Toys Lab Experiment Specimens, A Great Educational Gift for Kids & Teens, Boys & Girls UNGLINGA Kids Science Experiment Kit with Lab Coat Scientist Costume Dress Up and Role Play Toys Gift for Boys Girls Kids Age 5 – 11 Christmas Birthday Party Discovery Extreme Chemistry Stem Science Kit by Horizon Group Usa, 40 Fun Experiments, Make Your Own Crystals, DIY Glowing Slime, Fizzy Eruptions, Gooey Worms & More NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Mega Fossil Dig Kit – Excavate 15 real fossils including Dinosaur Bones, Mosasaur & Shark Teeth – Great STEM Science gift for Paleontology and Archeology enthusiasts of any age Scientific Explorer Disgusting Science Kit Crayola Color Chemistry Set For Kids, Gift for Age 7+Learn & Climb Kids Science Kit – Over 60 Experiments, Fun with Science!CIRO solar robot kit 12 in 1 educational STEM learning science building toys for kids age 8-12 Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Exploration Kit, Kids Building Projects Kits, Stem Engineering Toys for Kids 8+TELMU Microscope 40X-1000X Dual Cordless LED Illumination Lab Compound Monocular Microscopes with Optical Glass Lenses & 10 Slides