4 Engaging and Fun STEM Activities for Elementary
Doing STEM activities with elementary students is one of my favorites! STEM activities foster creativity and critical thinking by encouraging students to solve real-world problems. They build foundational skills in science, technology, engineering, and math, preparing students for future academic success.
Additionally, hands-on STEM projects make learning fun and engaging, sparking a lifelong interest in these subjects.
If you’re looking for STEM activities for kids, you’ll love these STEM activities for students! Whether you are looking to enhance your geometry lessons, incorporate literature into your STEM curriculum, or add excitement to your classroom with real-world engineering problems, we’ve got you covered.
Let’s dive into some activities that will make your students excited about learning!
3 Tips for Doing STEM Activities in Your Elementary Classroom
1. Use Hands-On Learning
Engage students with materials they can touch and build with, like toothpicks and molding dough for creating shapes. This makes learning more interactive and fun.
2. Connect to Real-World Scenarios
Relate activities to everyday experiences. Use familiar stories, like designing a mouse house from “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” to make learning relevant and exciting.
3. Encourage Teamwork
Promote collaboration with projects like the Apollo Lunar Module Challenge, where students work together to design and test solutions, building teamwork and problem-solving skills.
Here are some engaging and fun STEM activities you can do with your early elementary students!
2D 3D SHAPES Toothpick Cards | STEM Activities and Challenges
Are you looking for some engaging STEM ideas to incorporate into building geometry skills with 2D and 3D Shapes? I have you covered with these Build-A-Shape Mats! Print and laminate. Students build shapes with toothpicks and molding dough (you can use marshmallows or gumdrops instead), count the toothpicks, sides, and vertices, and trace the words!
If YOU Give a Mouse a Cookie STEM Challenge | Build a MOUSE HOUSE
Be the teacher they remember with these engaging STEM Activities! Kids will have a blast learning about blueprints, floor plans, area, design, and writing while doing these activities! Use the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff as a hook with this STEM activity!
Popsicle Stick Activities | Basketball STEM Catapult Challenge
Looking for an engaging STEM activity to engage your students with academic skills to solve real-world problems? This will enhance learning about basketball during March Madness. Be the teacher they remember by using student interests in your lessons by having them build a catapult to dunk a ball in a basket!
Apollo Lunar Module STEM CHALLENGE
Are you looking for an engaging STEM Challenge to enhance your space unit or to teach how the first man landed on the moon? This is a great challenge for students to use materials to create a Lunar Lander (module) to test for a soft landing with their “shock absorbers.”
I hope your students love these activities! If you want to learn more, check out my post on the top benefits of STEM in elementary!