STEM Apple Factory

The toy includes 12 apples and 6 station cards. Each of the apples split in half and have a unique number of seeds inside. Each of the station cards provides information about a different station in the apple factory such as washing, weighing, and sorting. Children are encouraged to use their imagination and creative thinking skills to use objects around their house to represent the different stations on the cards. Children are directly encouraged to brainstorm, design, and build each station in the factory. Each station card provides example ideas of what to use for the station.

A highlight of STEM Apple Factory is the open-ended nature of the toy, which encourages tons of creativity and allows for endless hours of fun. Because the box doesn’t come with the materials to build the factory, children have to think creatively to use what they have available in their homes (perhaps the box IS a part of the factory!). The cards encourage using items such as old boxes or buckets and other household items. The structure of the toy promotes the iterative design process by allowing children to change their design countless times. Children are encouraged to think about how to improve their design or how they could design differently. For example the apples can be sorted by color, or by number of seeds. The toy caters to a large age range because children can make their factory as simple or as complicated as they desire. Overall, STEM Apple Factory is a fantastic toy for children to exercise their creativity and explore the design process.

Framework Categories

Processes of Design (POD)

Moore, T.J., Glancy, A.W., Tank, K.M., Kersten, J.A., Smith, K.A., & Stohlmann, M.S. (2014). A framework for quality K-12 engineering education: Research and development. Journal of Precollege Engineering Education Research, 4(1), 1-13.