65 Easy STEM Activities Complete with Close Reading {Review}

STEM is a pretty hot buzzword lately, especially in regards to education.  Incorporating STEM activities into your school day can seem daunting,  especially if you are trying to come up with them yourself.  Tied 2 Teaching aims to help busy moms accomplish this with their STEM Activities, Full Year of Challenges with Close Reading.

About the Full Year of STEM Challenges with Close Reading

The STEM activities from Tied 2 Teaching arrived in a zipped file over email.  While you can choose to download and save each individually, I found it easier to save the file on my Google drive.  The bundle includes 65 STEM challenges. 

On the website, the challenges are broken down into months, but when you download them they are not.  The ones related to a certain holiday, such as the Cupid’s Bow challenge, were obvious which month they would be best in.  For the most part, it was fun to pick and choose depending on interest.  If you want them all laid out you can visit the website to see which challenges are assigned to which month.  

What Sets Tied 2 Teaching’s STEM Design Challenge Apart?

Each Tied 2 Teaching’s STEM challenge begins by directing the student to a lesson on the website Wonderopolis.  Students can read or listen to the article, or it can be printed off in PDF format.

After reading the information presented through Wonderopolis, there is a lesson page to fill out.  The page asks questions related to the material read.

The STEM Challenge is based on the reading material. For example, after learning about whether all birds fly south in the winter, students would design a birdhouse.

While you can always skip this part and go straight to the experiment, I liked that this element was included.  The kids learned a little bit about something interesting and in some cases even learned a practical application to the design challenge. 

I had my kids fill out the worksheets together.  Depending on the nature of the challenge, they would decide whether or not they worked together or individually to complete them. 

For example, in the Eiffel Tower Building Blocks Challenge, they learned some history about the Eiffel Tower before constructing their own Lego tower that needed to support a tennis ball.   Since the objective was to build the largest tower that could support a tennis ball, they decided to work together.  They also decided this particular challenge was too time-consuming and a 12-inch tower would suffice.  In the “how could I do this better next time section” they put to use Duplos.   

However, during the challenge to build a carrot carriage, they chose to build individually and then race them to see who fared better.

How Did My Kids Like It?

My kids had a lot of fun with these. 

Haydn much preferred to only do the STEM challenge.  He didn’t mind the close reading, but he didn’t want the hassle of filling out the worksheets. 

Ellawyn didn’t mind the worksheets, which is part of the reason they were a joint effort.  He would participate if she wrote it out. 

However, when he did the Leprechaun Trap on his own, I had him read the website and go straight to the challenge. We skipped the worksheets altogether.

Inspire Creativity with Everyday Items

I loved the creativity these challenges inspired.  Most of them used everyday items you would have on hand.  A few required some specific items. For example, we skipped the Basketball Tower challenge because we lacked a basketball. 

A list of suggested materials is given with each challenge allowing you to easily see what you might be missing and decide to pick those items up or skip it entirely. 

I also liked the variety of challenges–from building paperweights, to monuments, to bird feeders.  Having different types of challenges kept the kids from getting bored.

Best of all, the inclusion of close reading allowed me to incorporate language arts into our STEM learning for a more rounded learning experience.

I definitely recommend these as a great way to have all your STEM activities in one place and as an opportunity to add in some close reading as well.

Head on over to see what activities other members of the Crew chose to do.