At-home STEM Activities: DIY Compass (We're going on a 'vacation' adventure...)

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- how could we problem-solve our way through being stranded and get back home again?

We’ll start by making a compass from materials we (hopefully) have lying around so that we can find north and the other cardinal directions- this is a pretty quick activity that touches on our magnetic field and the Earth’s core.