At the start of each school year, doing STEM challenges is something that is new to many of my students.  Many of the kids are hesitant to try their ideas for fear of failure.  

Doing some COPYCAT challenges at the beginning of the year can help kids figure out ways to do STEM challenges!  This idea could be done with most existing STEM challenges.  Kids COPY something the teacher or other students have done.

Copying is not as easy as it seems.  There are a few Copycat STEM Challenges in my tpt store as well as my blog store, but you can do this with STEM challenges you already have in your classroom as well.

We start the year with some of the more basic STEM challenges, like cup towers.  You can use as many cups as your want for your challenge.  We use 20 cups per pair of students for this one most of the time.  I also try to stack the cups in unique ways so students can see some unusual ways to build a cup tower.

For these copycat STEM challenges, you just need to build a paper cup tower BEFORE the challenge.  Students need to COPY your design.  This gives students the opportunity to be successful and to see different ways to build a cup tower.  

Why not start the school year with a copycat challenge or two?  These are also great to use throughout the year, especially when students are really struggling to figure out a STEM challenge.  Click here to see the challenge in my tpt store.

What can your students learn from a copycat STEM challenge?

What kid doesn't LOVE water balloons?  Why not grab their attention by using water balloons to do some fun STEM challenges?

These challenges are the perfect way to cool off while you are learning!  They should be done outside on the playground.  We did these over a two-week period at the end of the school year!  They could also be done in those warm fall months as a way to get kids working together.  I am sure I will be doing a few of them during those HOT August days!

I am a big fan of the Bunch a Balloons!  They fill up quickly and easily and give you lots of balloons to work with for these challenges!  You can grab these in a lot of grocery stores or on Amazon-  https://amzn.to/4cygrwk

These water balloon challenges are a lot of fun!  They will get your kids designing, building, measuring, and thinking critically.  

There are five water balloon challenges, they can be purchased individually or in a bundle in my tpt store!  Here is the link in my tpt store!  The bundle can also be found in the "shop" section of this blog!

Get engineering!

- Smart Chick