Looking for something fun and challenging to do on   National STEM Day on November 8, 2025?  Why not try this challenge?

All you need is 20 toothpicks and 25 marshmallows for each team!  The large marshmallows work best for this challenge, but you could also use the small ones!

We practice for about 10 minutes, then we spend 25 minutes building the marshmallow towers.  The towers need to be free-standing, they cannot lean on anything!

Materials can be found at your local dollar store or grocery store!  I plan on grabbing 3 bags of marshmallows and two boxes of toothpicks for my own classroom!

This is the perfect day to get engineering!

Can your students make the longest paper chain using just one sheet of 9 x 12 construction paper?

This seems like a simple and easy STEM challenge and in some ways, it is one of the easier ones we complete.  It can be a challenge, though!

The best STEM challenges often use the easiest to find materials.  For this one you need a sheet of 9 x 12 construction paper for each student, some scissors, and tape or staplers for groups to share.  Here are all of our chains!

This challenge took us about 45 minutes to complete.  The kids were so focused on it!

These are some of the chains that were created by my students this year.  Our longest chain had really wide loops and was over 11 feet long!

The kids could use any size and width of chain they wanted to use for the challenge.

We talked about the different chain lengths and the different reasons why some chains were much longer than others.

This is a challenge that may be fun to do later in the year!

If you are looking for some fun and easy challenges, you may want to check out my World Record STEM Challenges pack!

Which STEM challenges have you tried already this year?