National STEM Day is a great day to do a STEM Challenge in your classroom!  This year it is celebrated on November 8th!

For this challenge, you just need 20 assorted straws and a 21 cm. strip of tape.  We do this challenge in pairs!  I use assorted straws for this challenge, some wide, some thin, and some bendy.  It is a great way to use up those extra straws!

I take a picture of each finished tower and we post the pictures and lab sheets on a bulletin board.  Our school encourages every classroom to do a STEM Challenge on the National Day of STEM!

Buy this STEM challenge today!

Building coffee cup stacks are a really challenging STEM activity!  Each group gets 25 cups, no other supplies are needed.  Students can really build in creative ways in this challenge.  The cups are so light that building with them can be tough!

The kids had about 25 minutes to build their free-standing towers.  They all pretty much started with the pyramid idea, then began trying different construction ideas.

Stacking cups was a great way to add some weight to the cups.  Grab this challenge individually or as part of my September Calendar STEM Challenges!  Click here to check out this challenge in my tpt store!

Grab a few packs of cups and try this challenge in your classroom this week!

We read a fun book about the perfect square this week in class.  Perfect Square by Michael Hall is about squares of paper that get transformed into other things like fountains, rivers, and flowers.

In this STEM Challenge, students get nine squares of colored paper.  We used origami paper sheets for this challenge.  They can be found on Amazon!

Students worked in teams for this challenge.  They had to come up with nine different items.  They also had to use the WHOLE square of paper for the item they were creating.

My students came up with some really amazing ideas!

Students put all of their designs on one sheet of white poster board.  Click here to buy this STEM Challenge!

Have your students create their own perfect square challenge and discover their creativity!

You will be amazed by their thinking!

Building a Paper Box is a lot harder than it looks!  In this challenge, students were given a sheet of colored cardstock paper.  They had to build the largest possible box with just one sheet of paper.

We discussed using nets to build three dimensional figures BEFORE we started the challenge.  We used this challenge as we were studying VOLUME in math.

The students came up with many differen shapes of boxes.  Once the boxes were made, students had to find the volume of their box.

Grab this Paper Box STEM Challenge by clicking here!  It is just $2!  Materials are cheap and easy to find.

Engineer a Paper Box in your classroom!

Celebrate International DOT Day in your classroom this week!  This holiday began with a book - The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.  You can read the book OR you can find a read aloud of the book on youtube!  The book tells a great story of a child learning to value their own art.  At the end of the book this child passes on what they have learned to another child.

For this challenge, you need very few materials.  The STEM challenge is:

Can you create the largest paper dot from a sheet of paper?

Use any size paper you want and any color of paper.  I give my own students assorted colors of 8.5 x 11 cardstock.  These look great hanging on a bulletin board.  

You can also use white cardstock paper and have students paint dots on the paper BEFORE they make the largest dot. 

This pack also contains an informational page about Dot Day!

Click here to grab this pack.  It can be bought on it own, or within a pack of 5 September STEM Challenges based on different holidays celebrated in this month!  Click here to grab the larger pack.

Celebrate International DOT Day this year!

Did you know there is a holiday to celebrate Play Doh?  It is one of those supplies that kids absolutely love, EVERY time you get it out!  

Celebrate play dough all month with some fun activities!

1.  Make your own play dough!  There are SO many recipes out there, even edible ones!  The one with marshmallows may be one of my favorites!  Click here to go to the blog with the recipe and directions.

2. Build structures with play dough and spaghetti!  Balls of play dough at the corners work best to create these fun structures!

3. Write your name in play dough!  It is tougher than it looks, and a lot of fun.  For an extra challenge, write it in cursive!

4. Make a monster with play dough and some art supplies!  These are so funny!  Kids can write about their monsters, too!

I have a Play Dough STEM pack in my tpt store with some other fun things to do with play dough.  Click here to check it out!

I also have a STEM Fast Finishers pack that goes with play dough!  I put the cards in a pocket chart for the whole month!  The kids love working through the cards!

Click here to see this pack!

No matter what you decide to do, it is always a good idea to give students a chance to PLAY!  Any type of play dough will work!

Celebrate this holiday in your classroom!

Engaging families with STEM challenges at home is an important part of our school year.  It is a great way to get families talking about the things going on at school while having fun!  

Most of the time these family STEM challenges coordinate with challenges we are doing in the classroom.  The August Family STEM Challenge is one of my favorites!  Just send 10 balloons home with each student in a baggie.   Click here to buy this pack!  You can also send a ruler in the bag.  I just print paper rulers!  

Can you create the tallest free-standing tower with 10 balloons?

In the classroom we do the Balloon Tower Challenge as one of our first challenges.  Click here to purchase the classroom balloon tower challenge.

Stay tuned for more family STEM challenges!

  

It is so important for students to learn about different scientists.  Students often have a vision of a scentist in their head as an old man with white hair in a lab coat.  

There are so many different scientists in the world and they are from many different places.  These STEM packs gives students an opportunity to learn about some different scientists while they work through different STEM engineering challenges.

I include these STEM challenges as we are working through different topics in science.

While learning about fossils, we do this challenge and we learn about Mary Anning.  Students use a sheet of bones and try to construct a dinosaur.  They have to defend their choices, much like scientists do.  Buy this pack here.

We also connect these with our literature units.  While we read The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, we also learn about Dian Fossey and construct our own life-sized mountain gorillas.  Check out this pack here.

There are other STEM Scientist packs in my store!  You can browse through all of them in my tpt store, just go to my store and search for "STEM Scientists".

June 23rd is National Hydration Day!

This is a great time to teach kids about the importance of water!  This could include reasons why we need to drink water, the things we can do to help conserve water, and how people can make clean water.

We are so lucky to have access to clean water here in the United States.  There are so many other places on earth where this is a luxury.  Each person needs 30-50 liters of clean water a DAY - to drink, cook, and bathe.  That is like 15-25 2-liter bottles of water!

Students can do some research about the places where people need clean water.  This really opens their eyes!  

Students can also work on making dirty water cleaner by using things like coffee filters, pieces of fabric, paper towels, etc.

Plastic water bottles are not good for our environment.  We should all work on ways to reduce or reuse our use of plastic water bottles.  They can be used in many STEM challenges!  Think about some creative ways to reuse these water bottles in the classroom!

One of my favorite new picture books is We are Water Protectors, by Carole Lindstrom.  Click here to grab a copy of the book on Amazon.

What other things can you do to learn more about water?

Growing creatures are one of my favorite things to start the year with because the students are always amazed by them!  You can find smaller growing creatures at dollar stores or on-line, but I really love the bigger ones!  These can be found as alligators, lizards, or snakes.  Since our school mascot is the gator, I hunt for the alligators at my local Dollar Tree.  They usually have them in stock!

These things get HUGE!  One of the biggest challenges is in finding a large enough container to hold the creature as it is growing!  We have used clear aquariums, but we typically use a really large clear plastic tub.  The tub is about 4 feet long and 2 feet tall!  

You can grab a pack for growing the alligators from my TPT store for just $2.00!  Click here to check it out!

We have also used growing creatures as a schoolwide STEM challenge.  I give each classroom a growing creature and the lab pack shown below.  Click here to check out this lab pack.

The classrooms love to compete with each other to see who can grow the largest creature!  For these I use the smaller growing creatures, but you can definitely use the larger ones, too!  Grab the smaller growing creatures on Amazon, ebay, or Oriental Trading Company if you want to set this up as a schoolwide challenge.

Grow some fun in your classroom this year!

BUBBLES are a really fun way to learn some science, especially in these warm weather months!  They can be found at dollar stores, grocery stores, and other places inexpensively.

Students can practice measuring the diameter, radius, and circumference of circles with bubbles!  They blow bubbles onto a sheet of dark construction paper and when the bubble pops, you have a circle!  Just trace the circle and start measuring!

You can make up your own lab sheets or you can buy my pack here.

Students can also read all about how animals use bubbles!  This is one of our favorite books!   

This book is a wonderful read aloud and it shows kids all the different ways animals use bubbles to survive.  It is also a great way to review or introduce animal adaptations!  You can grab this book on Amazon!

Students can also create their own bubble solutions and wands in order to blow their own biggest bubbles!  Just grab dish soap, water, pipe cleaners, and a few other ingredients!

You can grab a set of five STEM challenges in my TPT store!  Click here to buy this set of challenges!

There are also monthly bubble challenges in my store and lots of other bubble related items!  Click here to check all of them out in my TPT store!

Get ready to blow some bubbles and learn a lot!

Today is National Milk Day!  Schools have one of the best STEM materials - MILK CARTONS!  Think about different ways you can use milk carton for small or large STEM projects.  

Here are some ideas of things to make with milk cartons...

- make an animal

- make your school mascot

- build a tower

- build a house

- make a roller coaster

- make a bug box

- make a 3D name (your name, the school name, etc.)

Check out this STEM challenge pack in my TPT store if you like this one!  Click here to buy the pack.

Celebrate this fun day and reuse those empty milk cartons!