Janice Vancleave's Engineering for Every Kid: Easy Activities That Make Learning Science Fun

We have plenty of supplemental reading passages about Careers in Engineering & Application of STEM principles to Engineering Practices. It seems that Doing an Engineering Activity has been often replaced by Watching Video Clips of such practices via curricula materials. On a shorter day, I ask if there's an experiment or activity students might suggest. One or two fast-finishers will ask for work on occasion; and, they have flipped through one of these books visible in the classroom, so they will suggest a simple lab for me or one of the kinesthetic learners to try.

This is a great book if you're looking for simple and quick labs to support engineering concepts related to structure, acoustics, stress, hydraulics, earthquakes, meteorolgy and more. Each section comes with a "What You Need to Know" that is very helpful for teacher background knowledge and vocabulary, and has been written in a very kid-friendly and teacher-friendly manner.

This teaches basic concepts by means of demonstration with household items, so you don't have to go buy a science kit to teach or learn science! This is not for standalone curriculuum, since it doesn't give enough info to the non-science person to thoroughly teach the concepts, but it's great as supplemental to a text. Mechanical engineering science is also great for teaching logic.