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Kids’ Invention Ideas Built By Real Engineers

Kids are inventive – there’s no denying it. As adults we are often inclined to focus on the barriers to new ideas; why something can’t be done, or the classic line “if it was possible someone would have done it already”. Primary school children tend not to think like this. Their ideas aren’t restricted by perceived barriers in the same way as adults’ ideas and this often allows them to be hugely inventive.

We started Kids Invent Stuff to get more primary school kids interested in engineering and to show that engineering relates to every aspect of society (not just cars and washing machines!). Every month we set a different themed Invention Challenge and invite kids to send us their ideas for inventions.

Here‘s a little taster of some of the things we’ve built to date:

From a superhero suit that fires custard to a fire and water shooting piano, we’re consistently blown away by the inventive brilliance of the ideas we’re sent. Picking one specific invention to build and test is often really hard to do, but we have a stupid amount of fun doing it.

Mail_Attachment-3_0e6d3e4f11a0928351d11281abefe1997c49ec73.png Lucy (age 7) invented a custard-firing superhero suit for our Superhero Gadgets Challenge.

Mail_Attachment-2_bc76aa0733ab8d32f7fb410d4cc8522abec83256.png

Radin (age 8) invented a fire and water shooting piano for our Crazy Musical Instruments Challenge.

For our next Invention Challenge, we’ve teamed up with RS Components to help tackle something that many parents will be dreading this summer … Long car journeys.

Throughout the summer families across Europe will be setting out on long car journeys, often spending hours in cars with limited sources of entertainment and hearing the dreaded “are we nearly there yet?”. So we’ve decided to harness the power of kids’ inventions to see if we can use engineering to address this challenge.

We’re looking for kid’s ideas for In-Car Entertainment – inventions to liven up long car journeys and to help pass the time. The crazier the better!

Submitting invention ideas is easy – they can be sent in as either drawings or videos of children explaining their idea. These can be uploaded to the Kids Invent Stuff website (www.kidsinventstuff.com) and for schools and educators, we have an optional worksheet for the challenge which you can download from the site.

Want to follow the progress of this month’s challenge?

The Kids Invent Stuff team will be blogging frequently on DesignSpark over the coming months as the challenge progresses and as the invention is brought to life. To follow the journey, why not sign up to the DesignSpark newsletter and get updates from the team as soon as they are posted. Click below to register.....

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The challenge closes on July 28th and on August 5th we’ll showcase some of the best ideas and announce which invention we’ll be making.

If you want some more inspiration why not check out our YouTube channel to see some of the other things we’ve built so far in 2017:

Keep inventing!

Ruth & Shawn

About us

Ruth Amos and Shawn Brown co-present Kids Invent Stuff; a new YouTube channel where 5-11-year-olds get their invention ideas prototyped and shown to the world. The pair are both engineers and inventors and passionate about tapping into kids’ creativity.

Hey! We are 'Kids Invent Stuff', a youtube channel that brings to life kids' invention ideas. Run by Ruth Amos & Shawn Brown, we set a different invention challenge each month and 5-11 year olds submit their invention ideas at www.kidsinventstuff.com as picture or videos. We then choose an invention to bring to life and film the process of building and testing it. We then upload the videos to our channel www.youtube.com/kidsinventstuff
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