STEAM stories for curious kids and the adults who read with them.
PFAS chemicals are in everything from raincoats to nonstick pans, and they almost never go away. Researchers just discovered that intense UV light creates tiny particles called hydrogen radicals that can finally break them down, without needing any added chemicals.
Engineers in Birmingham, England spent three years welding 670 steel pieces together, then carefully lowered the massive Curzon 2 viaduct onto its supports above an active rail line. It will carry trains 131 feet in the air, as tall as a 10-story building.
For over a century, scientists thought the red marks on a cave wall in Wales were just stains from minerals. New imaging and dating just proved they're real Ice Age art, with parallel lines and dotted patterns that no natural process could make.
Most robots forget what they saw a minute ago. A new system from MIT lets robots build a memory of objects they pass, almost like how you remember where you put your backpack. It could change how robots help in homes, hospitals, and warehouses.
Mathematicians in Munich found two donut-shaped surfaces that look identical when you measure little pieces of them, but turn out to be different overall. It overturns a rule geometry teachers have used since the 1870s, and reopens big questions about how shapes work.
Researchers analyzed hundreds of recordings of pet parrots and found something surprising: many birds appear to use specific sounds as names, calling for one parrot and not another. It changes what we thought about animal language.
New evidence shows the six-ton Altar Stone at Stonehenge was deliberately hauled all the way from Scotland to England 5,000 years ago. Without wheels. Without roads. Engineers are still trying to figure out exactly how they did it.
An interstellar comet called 3I/ATLAS, which originally came from outside our solar system, just got its chemistry read by the most powerful space telescope ever built. It's the first time we've ever directly detected methane on something from another star system.
In a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists used a clever dating method to confirm that a single hand stencil on the wall is the oldest known art in the world. Someone pressed their hand against that rock, blew red pigment around it, and left a message that's still here.
SYNONYM is a STEAM organization built on a simple belief: every child arrives with curiosity, with the ability to solve real problems, and with something meaningful to contribute. The work is helping them see it.
Every child is born with the curiosity to explore.
Every child has the ability to solve real problems.
Every child has something meaningful to contribute.
Each STEAM subject maps to a core human capacity. Lessons activate multiple intelligences at once, so every kind of learner finds a way in.
Every SYNONYM lesson begins with a question, not an answer. Kids move through four stages, the same ones real scientists and engineers move through.
Observation, they notice the world. Wonder, a guiding question opens the door. Investigation, they build, test, and revise. Reflection, they connect what they made to what it means.
Aligned with Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. Grounded in Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Built on the conviction that process matters more than performance.
The library and community hub. Book collections, pop-up events at public libraries, family workshops, and the monthly book pick.
The curriculum and program engine. School partnerships, online classes, workshops, and professional development for educators.
SYNONYM was founded by Dwayne C. Cobham, a STEAM educator based in New York City with experience across charter, private, and specialized schools since 2016.
Capped at 8 students. Taught by experienced educators. Designed for K–8 with grade-band cohorts. Every class ends with something your kid made and can show you.
Kids learn TinkerCAD and Blender Junior to design real objects, characters, vehicles, contraptions. We send their files to be 3D printed and shipped home.
Logos, posters, zines, digital art. Kids learn the design choices behind everything they see, and start making things that look like they belong in the world.
Our signature program. Kids design a Mars colony, testing soil, engineering shelters, mapping food systems, presenting findings. STEAM as one connected story.
Using Scratch and Python basics, kids build a working game from scratch, characters, rules, levels, the whole thing. They walk away knowing they can make software.
Bridges, towers, paper airplanes, simple machines. Kids build, test to failure, redesign. We celebrate every collapse, that's where the learning lives.
Tessellations, fractals, the Fibonacci sequence in nature. Kids discover that math is everywhere, in pinecones, sound waves, and the patterns on their own fingertips.
We partner with K–8 schools across NYC for in-person curriculum, after-school enrichment, professional development, and full-year STEAM integration.
Request a partnership →Each month we pick one book that opens kids up to wonder, chosen by educators, tested in classrooms, loved by families.
From the creator of the Practical Engineering YouTube channel, this illustrated field guide reveals the hidden infrastructure all around us, power lines, water towers, traffic signals, bridges, pipelines, and more. Once you learn how it works, you'll never look at your neighborhood the same way.
Engineering is everywhere, but kids rarely get the chance to see it. This book turns every walk to school into a treasure hunt. Pairs perfectly with our Build & Break Engineering class or any neighborhood observation project.
Pick something you walk past every day. What do you think is happening inside it? Inside the wires, the pipes, the box on the corner, what's the job it's doing?
Who decided where everything goes? What do you think their job is called?
If one piece of infrastructure on your block disappeared overnight, power, water, traffic light, sewer, what would happen first?
What's something in your neighborhood you've never noticed before? Why do you think you never noticed it?
If you could redesign one part of how your city works, what would it be? Why?
