Here’s a super fun science activity that really gets kids thinking! Children will explore balance and center of gravity by creating a balancing robot!
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This balancing robot science exploration has always been a huge favorite among my students! In this science activity kids will place two pennies in various locations on a paper robot until they’ve discovered how to make the robot balance. This post contains affiliate links.
See it in action here!
Science for Kids: Balancing Robot
Materials for Balancing Robot Science Activity
- White cardstock
- Scissors
- Two pennies
- Removable poster putty (or scotch tape)
- Markers, crayons or colored pencils (optional)
- Robot printable
How to Make the Balancing Robot
Print out the free printable on a sheet of white card stock, and color the robots if you’d like. Cut out the robots.
To make the robot balance you’ll want to stick two pennies onto the hands of the robot. (You can use tape to do this, but removable poster putty gives kids a chance to explore balance by moving the pennies to various locations on the robot.)
Here’s how we did it:
Flip your robot over to the back. Place a small piece of poster putty on the hands of the robot.
Press a penny onto each hand. (You can leave it just like this, but we like to attach the second robot to the back so you can’t see the pennies!)
Stick some more poster putty on the pennies.
Press the second robot onto the back. (To keep the top part of the robot from opening up, you can also place a small piece of putty between the two robot bodies to hold them together.)
Now you’ve got your balancing robot!
Exploring Balance and Center of Gravity
Here’s the fun part! Show the students a balancing robot in action on your finger, but don’t let them know how to make it just yet.
Now, give each student one of their cut out robots (they can attach the second robot to the back once they’ve figured out how to make it balance), 2 pennies, and some removable poster putty.
Give them time to try out sticking the pennies to different parts of the robot to try to get the robot to balance on their fingers. I love watching them explore and discuss with their friends all the various ideas they come up with! Many will figure it out on their own. For those that don’t, you can show them the correct placement of the pennies or invite other students to help them.
Once all the students have their balancing robots built correctly, let them explore balancing the robot in different places. We tried ours out on our nature table.
Lucy’s favorite place was her nose!
This is a such a fun science activity for kids to do any time of the year! Hope you enjoy it, and please let me know how it goes!
Other Resources for Exploring Balance and Center of Gravity
- Balancing Utensils Table Trick from Steve Spangler Science
- Gravity Episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy
- How to Find the Center of Gravity from The Exploratorium
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Ana says
June 2, 2014 at 7:04 amI LOVE this!!!!! Pinned and I made whole new pinterest board just for robot crafts, that’s how much this inspired me 🙂
darshana says
June 4, 2014 at 2:36 amso interesting my kids are going to enjoy this activity
Vicky @ Mess For Less says
June 5, 2014 at 4:02 pmJust stumbled. Can’t wait to try this with my kids. So clever!
Eric B. says
August 16, 2014 at 3:10 pmYES INDEED!! Very great. Thanks for making this available.
mandi says
May 15, 2015 at 5:02 pmThank you so much! My 3 boys LOVED making these and are still playing with them 🙂
Chelsey says
May 15, 2015 at 5:50 pmYay! I’m so glad, Mandi!!! Thanks so much for sharing!
Debs says
August 25, 2015 at 2:19 amLove this! Might have to make some for my son’s upcoming Robot birthday party! Thank you so much for sharing the printable. I’ll have to save this one for my students as well!
Ms. T. :) says
January 2, 2016 at 10:14 amHi, thanks for the template & detailed directions! I am going to use this with my second graders, but I have one question – in your tutorial, you describe using both robots (two halves) with putty to hold the two parts of the body together. But in the video it looks like just one robot body was used?
Chelsey says
January 2, 2016 at 10:18 amHi! So excited for your students to try out the robots! They will work without backs too- they just look more finished with both sides and are a bit more stable. 🙂
Eliza Thomas says
January 27, 2016 at 9:45 amGreetings,
I’m doing presentations this summer and would love to share your balancing robot. Have seen it with clowns, popsicle sticks,etc, but I love the robot. I am not selling it, merely having folks mess around w/ STEM. I saw it had a copyright on it, but may I have permission to use it???
Thanks so much for considering.
Chelsey says
January 27, 2016 at 12:24 pmHi Eliza! Thanks for asking about our balancing robot- the kids love it! As long as the printable itself is not uploaded online, you are definitely welcome to use it during the presentations!
paul says
January 29, 2016 at 10:32 pmcute
Melissa Ryan says
February 24, 2016 at 5:29 amAwesome activity!! We are trying to do balancing with paper birds, but this looks equally great! Thank you so much for the resource!!