Subscription Boxes for Teens - STEAM World

Summer is a great time for homeschooling with more flexibility and fun! We incorporate many games and activities into the school year, but still try to remain true to our curriculum at the same time. When summer rolls around, we look for ways to continue learning from a different vantage point.

When I stumbled across STEAMworld, and realized that it combined most of the core subjects, plus art, I knew that this was something we wanted to try! (Quick brush-up: STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, ART, and Math.) The box comes with everything you need – and I do mean everything – to complete a series of projects about the featured country. Not having to hunt up supplies? Fantastic!

We decided to try out Morocco, based on the art projects featured. The box came with all of the supplies needed for math, science, art, and engineering, plus an activity book and country scrapbook. If you’ve wanted to try unit studies, this subscription is a great way to put your feet in the water – and they’ve done all the hard work of pulling everything together for you.

Depending on your personal style, the box could take anywhere from a couple of days to a week or two to complete. We like to dive into our unit studies, and so completed the box in two school days.

Our school is very history & geography centered, so we began by reading through the scrapbook and watching a few YouTube videos on Morocco. We also Google-Earthed our way through Morocco. If you’ve never done this, it’s a fascinating way to vicariously visit a country!

From there, we started on the activity book. I like that each subject has a hands-on project for applying the concepts once they have been taught. We supplemented this with spur-of-the-moment YouTube videos that the boys found to explore the concepts – particularly energy – further. They also looked up some real-world examples of the Moroccan tiles and patterns.

Science and technology are areas that the boys are very interested in, but mom is simply proficient at, so the STEAMworld boxes are wonderful for giving me a jumping off point. They provide ideas for hands-on projects in the areas that the boys want to study, but in ways that tie in with the things I am better at teaching. Because they are engaging, too, they promote further study on the topics. (And this could go the other way, too, if you are more science-focused, but want to incorporate geography into your units.)

Overall, the box was a hit with the boys. It’s a little disappointing to find that there are currently only two more countries available, but the company says that they are creating more as we speak, so I foresee greater options in the future. I like that they offer both one-month and three-month subscription choices. Finally, I LOVE that they provide the Duo Kit option.

What’s the Duo Kit? It’s a kit of extra consumable supplies for all of the projects in the activity book. Each box comes with literature and supplies for one student. If you have more than one student, however, and want each child to have his own supplies, you simply need a Duo Kit for the child – rather than a whole other box. And it’s affordable.

Just the Facts

• Site : STEAMworld
• Ages : 4th – 8th grade (flexible enough to tailor to other aged children)
• Cost : $39.95 / month – shipped to you
• $99 / 3-month subscription
• $9.95 for Duo Kit

Check out our other Subscription Boxes for Teens posts :  Adventurous Mailbox & Mail Order Mystery & Craftsman Crate