Back To School Can Be STEM-Tastic With New Tips, Tricks, and Ideas!

For many teachers it is time for back to school. A time when you prepare your classroom for a new group of learners. You start planning your lessons and creating new ways to inspire your class!

We each come back to school with new passion for our positions, new goals set, and along with that you want to find ways to get to really know your students right away.

I love starting the year off with STEM challenges! Not only do they allow me to see how my students work in groups or teams, I can see their personalities shine through when given a challenge!

My friends and I are linking up some great blog posts that can help you get ready for that STEM-tastic new year with Tips, Tricks, and Ideas!

My friend Claire over at http://www.vivifystem.com/blog/2016/8/6/back-to-school-stem has great ice breaker ideas ready for back to school! “If you need more icebreaker challenges, you can really use almost anything to challenge students to build the tallest tower in teams. Examples include: index cards and tape, toothpicks and gumdrops, or spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, ” Claire shares!

If your looking for another great icebreaker idea that gives it a slightly different twist…my friend Meredith from Momgineer   shares an amazing No Peek Activity. She says, ” You can see in the image above what that is. That’s right, for this challenge, the builder will be blindfolded (or have their eyes shut!). That means the rest of the team needs to tell the builder how and where to build the tower using verbal commands. Tower building has never been so difficult, or more fun!” Check out her great video to show it in action as well!

My friends Wendy and Cheryl over Get Caught Engineering have a great post that shares some STEM-tastic ideas for not only activities, but great organizational ideas! Find it at http://www.getcaughtengineering.com/back-to-school-make-it-stem-azing/ . It’s the perfect blog post for everyone that may need a bit of help with organizing STEM supplies as well as integrating them into hands-on STEM-Tastic Fun! Wendy says, “As you are setting up your room, organize supplies that will be used for engineering. A dollar store or a hardware store is a great place to go for cheap containers to hold all the treasured STEM goodies that you are collecting. We did a blog a while back that shared what we learned about the organization of “STEM stuff”. Check out her post to help you on your way!

Carol Davis over at Teachers Are Terrific has amazing STEM challenges! She starts off her year with towers. Not only does this post share great tips on how to modify, the constraints that are needed, and supply issues, she shares, “Here’s another thing! You would think that with such a small amount of supplies all of their towers would look the same. No way! They tried such amazing things to solve this one and it was so fun to watch. And, they were so PROUD of being able to get a standing tower. This is an amazing and simple challenge and would be perfect at the beginning of your school year- without breaking your budget!” Head on over for a great post on the many ways you can create towers with simple supplies!” Check out her post HERE: http://www.teachersareterrific.com/2016/08/back-to-school-stem.html

Finally, I wrote a blog post this week on back to school as well! I am over at the Science School Yard http://www.scienceschoolyard.com/.

I share great tips on collecting supplies along with a free poster download for you! I also share my latest tips on back to school STEM classroom set up and activities to free links! Head on over to my blog…http://www.scienceschoolyard.com/2017/07/back-to-school-stem-starters.html. On my blog, if you are still needing help getting started with STEM leave a comment. I would love to help!

Whether you have been in school…already back…or preparing to go back…there are plenty of great STEM ideas to get you started!