Paper circuits can be really challenging!  We have been working throughout the year on the idea that failing is okay and that it just means you get to try again.  These paper circuits turned out to be a great way to fail and try again!

We started with the simple paper circuit.  We made it with a cheet of colored cardstock paper, one LED (light emitting diode), copper foil tape, and a 3V battery.  Click on each one for the link to purchase if needed.

We then moved on to trying to get 2 of the LEDs to light up!  This was REALLY tough to figure out!  The LED bulbs have a negative and a positive metal lead.  Place them on either side of the battery to figure out which is which!

These took about an hour to figure out!  I gave kids a lot of hints as we went, but I really made them struggle through it, which was TOTALLY worth it!

 We love pairing our STEM challenges with a picture book!  This challenge is paired with the book Billions of Bricks by Kurt Cyrus.  Click here for a link to the book.

The challenge was for students to make an actual sized brick using cardstock paper.  This required A LOT of measuring and was a great way to review some math.

Most of the bricks were really close to actual size.  Just a few were off.  I had the kids measure the bricks of their tablemates to determine which ones fit the size requirement.

This challenge requires really cheap materials and is still really challenging!  Click here to purchase the STEM pack!



Time to get engineering those bricks!

Whenever I can add a creative element to our writing, I do!  It gets the kids more excited about writing and they seeem to write better every time!  For this writing assignment we start by reading the picture book, Bug Zoo by Andy Harkness.  The book is about a kid who catches and keeps bugs for his own Bug Zoo until he realizes he should set them all free.  For the writing assignment, each student chooses an insect and does research in order to write a report.  They then get a plastic box container and they create a habitat using plastic flowers, grass, etc. and a model magic model of the insect.

I got the plastic boxes from Amazon.  Click here to grab those boxes!

Click here to purchase the Bug Zoo pack!

Kids absolutely love learning about bats!  We had a great time writing and doing science activities with bats!  The kids favorite part...THE BAT CAVE!

This was really easy (and cheap) to make!  Just a pack of plastic sheeting from the nearby Home Depot, duct tape, and a box fan!  The kids got to do research and read inside the bat cave.  They also got to teach younger kiddos all about bats while they brought them in the cave.

We also wrote reports on bats!

The kids had to do a lot of research to write these reports!  They learned a lot!

We also read a lot of books and found out a lot of information we did not know!

You can find these activities (and a lot more) in my Bat Pack!  Just click here to purchase the pack!

What animals do your students love to learn about?

My kids love it when we connect STEM to our other subjects!  It brings additional hands-on learning to these subjects as well as chances for the kids to work individually and together.  My kids LOVE reading Charlotte's Web by E.B. White each year.  With this book, we do quite a few STEM challenges.

We built spider webs (which was a lot tougher than it looked).  I got the spiders from the Halloween store.  They stick perfectly to the yarn web!

We also kept our own small pigs during the book.  The kids had to build a pig pen.  They absolutely loved taking care of their little pigs.  I found the pigs on Amazon!

Click here to purchase the Charlotte's Web STEM pack of challenges!  This pack includes 5 STEM challenges!  

If you need the Charlotte's Web literature unit, click here!

This was one of our ALL TIME FAVORITE challenges this year!  To start, the kids had so much fun with reading this book!  It is such a funny and cute story.

I got the rabbits from the Oriental Trading Company.  They were pretty inexpensive, so I was able to get one bunny for each student in our classroom.  You could also do this challenge as a pair so students can share a bunny.  The bunnies are durable enough to use for more than one year!  Click here for a link to the bunnies!

Students got a sheet of green cardstock paper, scissors, tape, and a permanent marker.  They had to design a pair of underwear for their bunny that could come on and off in one piece.  That was challenging!

This challenge really brought a smile to everyone's face!   The kids really had to do a trial and error approach to figuring this one out!

Click here to purchase this challenge for your own classroom!

Each quarter we ask the kids to do a STEM challenge at home.  This helps the families get involved in our school activities as well as giving them a chance to have fun together.  We first read the picture book Mechanimals by Chris Tougas in the classroom.  The kids loved the story.  We then told the kids they had to make an animal with only FOUND items.  They came up with so many creative ideas, but this crab was one of my favorites!

You can purchase the Mechanimal STEM challenge pack by clicking here!

We were also reading Charlott'e Web by E.B. White as we did this project, so it was a really nice connection between reading and STEM!

I was able to buy some Ozobots for my classroom this year and the kids love them!  These coding robots are a great way to have kids work together in class.  I have one ozobot for each group in my classroom.  You can fund them through a donors choose project!

Click here for the Ozobot link on Amazon.

I developed five different challenges for my students to do with the ozobots and the kids had a lot of fun trying to figure out each one.

We did one challenge each day for a week.  The kids got really good at coding their ozobots!

Click here to purchase the Ozobot Challenge pack!  (The challenges are also sold individually.)

My students are fascinated with squids!  We decided to do a quick study of squids towards the end of the year.  We began the study by learning about squid, octopus, and cuttlefish and comparing them.  We made a three section chart to show the information we found.

After doing research on these three types of cephalopods, we moved on to figuring out how big, and small, the different types of squids get.  Each team got one type of squid to focus on and they had to do additional research to find out about it.  Once complete, they made a life-size model of their type of squid in sidewalk chalk outside on the playground.

Some of these squids get BIG!  Students were really challenged when it came to measuring their type of squid as accurately as possible!

We also dissected fresh squid in class.  I found these at my local specialty market in their frozen food section.

Click here to purchase my squid pack!

What are your students interested in?

My students had a blast making and using their Balloon Racers.  We did this towards the end of the school year and the kits we bought worked great!  I gave time for the kids to build their racers, we did some labs testing different types of balloons, amounts of air in the balloon, etc.  They were so good at science labs they were able to do these labs in small groups as I moved around to facilitate as needed.

I grabbed the Balloon Racer kits from Lakeshore this year and they worked great!  Click here for the link to the kit!  There are 10 cars in each kit for $25.  Just add some tape!  We also added extra types of balloons for our labs.

Click here to purchase the Balloon Racers Lab pack!

These racers encourage kids to ask and test a lot of different questions.  They had a fantastic time AND they learned a lot!