People have always been fascinated with the world around us and the cycles it goes through, and one of the most famous examples of that is Stonehenge. Stonehenge is an ancient monument in England, and it consists on a ring of large standing stones. There are around 160 of these stones, each about 13 feet high and 7 feet wide.

For decades, archaeologists and historians have debated why Stonehenge was built, but there’s no denying that there is a relationship between the seasons and this prehistoric site. Every year, on both the winter and summer solstices, thousands of people gather at Stonehenge to watch the sunrise. On the days of the solstices, the path of the Sun lines up with the stones, suggesting that the ancient people who built this monument may have had some sort of ritual relating to the changing of the seasons.

Today, we’re challenging you to recreate a scale model of this engineering marvel!

We’re spending the week looking at the planets, and this week’s Saturday STEM challenge is about just that: looking at the planets!

For as long as people have been on Earth, they have been observing the night sky. This week, we’re challenging you to make like ancient civilizations and watch the sky. Using the given information and tools, try to track the planets. Since the sky never looks the same two nights in a row, you can try this challenge for as long as you want, trying to see as many different planets as you can.

This week we’re looking at different aspects of flight and ways that we can explore those at home.

This week’s STEM challenge: folding a paper cargo plane. Using a sheet of paper, you want to fold a paper airplane that will glide ten feet (i.e. you can’t just throw it that distance) while carrying as much weight as possible.

Using a few office supplies and recyclables, we can simulate the physics required to land on the Moon. So here’s this week’s STEM challenge: using three index cards, two pieces of cardboard (each about 4 inches by 5 inches), some tape, and a small cup (you can make this yourself, if necessary), create a landing module that will safely land an astronaut (here, represented by a marshmallow, ping pong ball, or other small, light object) on another planet.

This week’s Distance Learning offerings are focusing on optics, light, and the electromagnetic spectrum.

You’ve probably seen a rainbow outside before, and this week, we’re learning why we see rainbows in the sky and challenging you to find as many rainbow-makers as you can!

In honor of National Wildflower Week, this week’s Distance Learning offerings are focusing on the plant world.

This week, we’re challenging you to flex your creativity! Learn about Earth’s biomes, and then imagine a distant planet and what it’s environment is like, and then create an alien plant that would grow on that planet.

Dreaming of summer trips to the beach? This week we’re exploring different aspects of aquatic systems.

We need to give our fish enough weight so that it will sink more into the water of its tank, but not so much that it’s stuck on the bottom. Help your pet fish while learning about neutral buoyancy in this hands-on STEM challenge!

For New Hampshire’s April school vacation week, when none of us is actually going anywhere, we decided to focus on things we could do if we did have some sort of wild vacation adventure and ended up on a deserted island.

We’ve been stuck on this deserted island all week and have been learning lots of survival skills. We learned how to make a compass, how to use the sun to cook food and make drinkable water, how to use our senses to get a better idea of our surroundings, and how to use the stars for navigation. But now, we’ve had enough of island living and we want to get back home. To get off this island, we’ll need to build a raft.