Looking for something fun to do on this STEM holiday?  This one is a lot of fun and uses supplies you already have in your classroom!

We work in table teams for this STEM challenge.  Just crumple up 20 sheets of paper and use these paper balls to build a tower.  There is a limited amount of tape for this challenge, so be sure to use it wisely.  The crumpled up paper balls will need to be taped together for this construction of the tower!

You can use as much time as you need for this challenge!  In our classroom we usually use about 45 minutes. 

November 8th is the perfect day to do some engineering!

- Smart Chick 

Learning to write a hypothesis is always a challenge for my students.  I found these amazing color changing animals on Amazon and thought these may provide an engaging and fun way to learn more about writing a hypothesis!

I have created a pack using these color changing animals.  The pack has three posters:

What is a Hypothesis?

A Good Hypothesis...

Things to Think About...

They come in black and white and with a rainbow background color.

The color change animals come in a few different forms.  These include alligators, lizards, dinosaurs, and sea animals.  Our school mascot is an alligator, so that is the one I chose to use!  You can do these labs with just one box of 12 animals, or you can use a couple of boxes!  

Students begin by testing the animal in cold and warm water.

These animals are about 6 inches long and come in multiple colors!  

Heat, or warm water, makes them change color.  Holding them in your hand firmly for a few minutes will also cause them to change color.

The last lab in the pack has students try to figure out another way to change the color, like exposure to sunlight, etc.

They are really fun to play with in the classroom science class!

You can choose a lab for cold water and a lab for warm water OR one lab that let's each student group choose a water temperature (cold or warm).

The materials for these labs are really cheap and easy to find!  The color changing animals can be instantly reset to their original color in cold water and they can be reused!

You can purchase the pack in my tpt store or on my blog if you are interested!  Click here to check it out!

 

- Smart Chick

STEM Breaks are something I have been using in my own classroom for years!  These short STEM activities give my students the opportunity to practice skills they will use in our STEM challenges.

Often, I would look through my local dollar store for items to use in STEM Breaks.  I try to do one or two STEM Breaks each week in my own classroom.  We do these in those time periods of the day that occur between our specials classes and lunch or even during indoor recesses.  We often have these 15-20 minute sections of time that we need to fill with lessons, and these STEM Breaks work great.

I have started developing monthly STEM Breaks based on unusual holidays.  Students get to build, create, research, design, and present during these STEM Breaks.  I don't have the time to do all of them, so I just pick the ones I want to use.  The materials for these STEM Breaks should be easy to find and cheap, if you need to purchase them!

The August STEM Breaks pack is in my tpt store.  There is a page for each day of the month.  There is also a chart that tells the teacher what supplies are needed for each of the STEM Breaks!

Use the ones that work best in your classroom!  Kids will learn a lot about the STEM way of thinking with these.

Eventually, I will have the year complete and I plan on bundling them.  You can also buy each month separately, but the bundle will save money!

If you have purchased other months already, I can send months for free so you can also enjoy the bundle price.

I am working on finishing the rest of the months of STEM Breaks this summer so stay tuned!

Smart Chick

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

Celebrate National STEM Day on November 8th!  This is a fun challenge to do on this day with cheap and easy to find materials.

All you need is a set of 20 cups and a timer!  I get 20 cups for each group and we always REUSE our cups for various STEM challenges throughout the year.

The challenge with this one is the TIME LIMIT!  I always let students discuss their building strategies BEFORE I begin the timer.

Grab this challenge in my TPT store for just $2!

Have some STEM fun to celebrate National STEM Day!

We are doing monthly STEM challenges in our school building as a way to have some consistency across classrooms.

For this challenge each classroom got a small foil pan, a bag of potting soil, and a small pumpkin.  All the teachers have to do it cut the top off the pumpkin and fill it with dirt.  Then they just have to water it every few days.  

It took our pumpkin about 7 days to begin sprouting.  We have had dirt inside the pumpkin for about 2 weeks now.

So far we have quite a few sprouts!  I am thinking we will have more sprouts soon!  The kids are fascinated with this STEM challenge!

Click here to grab the lab pack for this monthly STEM challenge!  The lab pack includes directions and lab sheets!

Why not grow some pumpkins in your classroom this fall?

Smart Chick