Family Pet for Elementary (Grades 1-5) ESTEAM® Design Challenge Kits

Innovating for Our Furry Friends

This activity teaches students that the best inventions start with a simple question: "How can I help someone else?" (even if that "someone" has four legs!)

In the Family Pet challenge, elementary students become entrepreneurs for the animal world. By focusing on the daily needs of pets and their owners—from feeding and grooming to play and safety—students use the design thinking process to create new products or services. This challenge turns a topic kids already love into a powerful lesson in empathy, engineering, and the "business of caring."

What’s Inside Your Design Challenge Kit?

This all-in-one kit provides everything needed to lead up to 30 students through 30 mins to 2+ hours "paws-on" innovation journey:

• 15 Pre-made Material Bags: Individual kits packed with versatile "maker" supplies (pipe cleaners, foil, craft sticks, etc.) to build physical pet products.
• Easy to use Facilitator Guide: Step-by-step instructions and discussion prompts that help students identify real problems pet owners face.
• 4 Extension Activities: Tools to expand the challenge into app prototyping (wireframing), market research, and business modeling.
• 12 Entrepreneurial Mindset Posters: Bold classroom visuals to reinforce habits like grit, empathy, and curiosity.
• 1 Deck of Mindset Cards: Interactive prompts to spark entrepreneurial thinking throughout the challenge.

Core Creative Adventures:

• Empathize & Solve: Thinking like a pet owner (or a pet!) to find a problem that needs solving, like a better way to exercise or a smarter food bowl.
• Rapid Physical Prototyping: Building a 3D model of a new pet toy, grooming tool, or habitat using the provided materials.
• Digital & Service Innovation: Choosing to wireframe a "Pet Care App," storyboard a pet-sitting service, or create a visual guide of how people use their new invention.
• Pitch & Reflect: Sharing their designs with the "community," gathering feedback, and reflecting on how their ideas can improve the lives of animals.

Transformative Building Blocks for Early Learners:

✓ Empathy-Based Design: Learning to identify needs in others and creating solutions that truly help.
✓ Creative Problem-Solving: Using limited materials to build functional, imaginative prototypes.
✓ Communicating Ideas: Practicing storyboarding and pitching to explain how a service or product works.
✓ Entrepreneurial Curiosity: Discovering that any passion—including animals—can be the start of a meaningful business.

Perfect for:

Afterschool & enrichment programs • Makerspaces & innovation labs • Summer camps • Elementary classrooms • School counselors • Homeschool Co-ops • Youth leadership initiatives • Gifted & Talented Programs

This isn’t just a kit. It’s your direct way to fuel VentureLab’s mission: ensuring every child—especially those in underserved communities—gains the entrepreneurial tools to innovate and lead. By choosing this challenge, you’re helping close the opportunity gap and teaching kids that they have the power to design a better world for everyone.

Check out the ESTEAM® Design Challenge Program Deck to see what it looks like for both youth and instructors.