Elementary STEM Curriculum: Activities for the Whole Year

Hello STEM friends! I have the most incredible news for you today! I am officially launching the STEM For a Year Club! This bundle includes tons of fun and engaging STEM activities for the entire school year. So, instead of taking up your valuable teacher time and stressing over coming up with your own STEM curriculum for the year, I have it all done for you. With a full year of STEM challenges ready to go, you will have unique and exciting STEM activities your students will be excited to complete. I don’t know about you, but I love it when I have themed activities that go with the seasons, holidays, or months of the year. My students love it too! That’s what makes this STEM For a Year Club so amazing.

STEM Curriculum Full of Simple STEM Activities

There isn’t much in a teacher’s life that can be called “simple”. When it comes to simple STEM activities you can do no matter how much experience you have, I’ve got you covered.

I created simple STEM challenges to help me give my students meaningful and engaging STEM activities that they could complete within the short time I had with them each week.

With over 360 students visiting my classroom each week I was feeling incredibly stressed. It was so difficult to keep track of materials, teach the lesson, and give my students time to actually create something.

I decided to create my own simple STEM curriculum that my students would love. The challenges didn’t use lots of materials, and they were low-prep! I can also tell you from many years of experience that these STEM challenges are a huge hit! My students look forward to them every year.

So Much Learning Going on In This STEM Curriculum!

It never ceases to amaze me how much learning is packed into STEM curriculum and its activities. While our students think they are just having fun, they are learning important skills like collaboration, problem-solving, creative thinking, and self-reflection. That doesn’t even include all of the digital skills they are learning when completing digital STEM challenges.

One of my students’ favorite digital activities is the Halloween Disguise a Pumpkin STEAM activity. This STEAM (A for Art) challenge uses Google Slides. Students learn about adding and editing images as they create a pumpkin disguise! Students drag, drop, resize, and position movable pieces within Google Slides.

It’s not all about art though. This digital activity also allows your students to practice some creative thinking and typing skills with a write-a-story activity. It’s a huge hit in my classroom and we even take time to ask student volunteers to share their pictures and read their stories.

You can read more about easy digital Halloween Activities here.

Promote Creativity and Collaboration With STEM Curriculum

One of my favorite things about the STEM curriculum is the incredible creativity and collaboration I see in the activities. You would think a room full of kids building, cutting, gluing, testing, and overall having a great time would be chaos right? I can tell you, that when I say it’s time for a STEM activity in my classroom, my students get excited!

Because the STEM curriculum in the STEM For a Year Club Bundle presents students with a problem or challenge to solve, they will have to think creatively. Some STEM challenges have a strict set of parameters, and others are very open-ended. Some require students to work collaboratively in a group or with a partner to solve the problem. It’s a great way to teach your students the importance of planning, discussing, and compromising with others.

Solving real-world problems together as a team is one of the best ways to get the important “buy-in” from your students. When spring and Earth Day come around, I bring out the Build a Birdhouse STEM Challenge. It’s the perfect way to engage students by giving them a real-world problem to solve. Building a functional birdhouse and watching birds choose it for a home is such a fun experience!

In addition to building some cool new digs for our neighborhood birds, students will also practice scientific observation. They count the number and types of birds they see, and how often they visit certain locations around the school.

Be sure to check out the 4 Earth Day STEM Activities to Challenge Your Students post to read more about this challenge and many other awesome Earth Day-themed STEM activities.

Use STEM Activities as Whole Group or Center Activities

Throughout the STEM curriculum, I made sure to include a variety of activities that have students working in different-sized groups. Nothing is better than an activity that can be done in centers or as a whole group. For some projects, I want my students to work in small groups, but sometimes it’s fun to work together as a whole class to complete a STEM activity.

Just in case you didn’t already know, I am a huge Star Wars fan! So, when May the 4th comes around, it’s time to pull out our Star Wars themed STEM activities. It’s the perfect opportunity to get the whole class excited about completing a whole group STEM challenge.

My students get so excited when we role play and pretend to be Rebels fighting against the evil Empire. With the mission to reconstruct the Rebel base, students must incorporate two exits and a secret hiding space. Your whole class will work collaboratively to achieve this goal!

My students love to create this new Rebel base using cardboard, giant bricks, or even classroom furniture. It’s a huge hit and something I look forward to every year. While students think through the engineering design process, they work together to test out ideas and complete their Rebel base!

Be sure to check out the May the Fourth Be With You blog post for even more exciting ways to celebrate Star Wars Day!

Reflection is Key

Getting students to reflect on their work can sometimes be a challenge, especially without some guidelines. It’s such an important skill for students to learn. All of the STEM activities in the STEM For a Year Club Bundle include student response sheets. I love them because they help students think about their accomplishments and their challenges while completing the activities in the STEM curriculum.

Since I teach kids as young as Kindergarten and as old as 4th grade, I want to be sure the response sheets I give them are appropriate for both their reading and writing levels. For younger students, it’s better to have them reflect with a drawing and a few simple sentences. With older students, I make sure they have the opportunity to write a complete paragraph with a sentence stem.

As much as I like to believe my students are running home to tell their parents every exciting detail about the day, in reality I know it doesn’t happen. That’s where the response sheets do double duty! When I send these home, parents can read the response sheet and then ask questions about the project. It’s a great way to get the conversation flowing in the right direction. I also love to hand out certificates to show my students how proud I am of their hard work. There is a unique certificate for each of the STEM activities in the STEM For a Year Club.

A Whole Year of STEM Activities

This STEM For a Year Club is sure to be your new favorite STEM curriculum! The simple STEM challenges are easy to set up. There is minimal to no copying, and it is capable of differentiation through grades Pre-K through 4th. The STEM curriculum also promotes creativity and pairs well with engaging read-aloud stories to incorporate literacy.

I know you and your students will love this full year of STEM activities as much as my students and I do. Make sure to grab this incredible STEM For a Year Club Bundle today!

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