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Anytime can be the right time to explore STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Explore our favorite experiments, engineering challenges and demonstrations with these fun hands-on STEM activities! Materials are easy to find, most activities take an hour or less, and the STEM learning is limitless.

Try the annual Engineering Challenge from Science Buddies! Open to all students worldwide, a new challenge and prizes are announced every January. Explore the current challenge as well as ones from past years! Read more

Did you know that the seaweed you've seen in the ocean or even eaten as a snack is inspiring innovators to imagine new materials? Large brown algae, like kelp, contains polymers-long chains of molecules-that are more environmentally friendly than the ones in most plastics. These natural polymers (alginates) could eventually be used to create sustainable everyday objects. Try your hand at using a bit of chemistry to turn biodegradable polymers from algae into your own custom... Read more

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Make A Candy DNA Model!

Light-Tracking Robot: BlueBot Project #2

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Fun hands-on STEM activities (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities for kids of all ages.

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24 Stem Lessons You Can Quickly Deploy In The Classroom | NASA JPL Education

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Robotic Space Exploration - www.jpl.nasa.gov

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These days, STEM learning is more important than ever. Science, technology, engineering, and math are the keys to many modern careers, so a good grounding in them from an early age is a must. The best STEM activities are hands-on, leading kids to cool innovations and real-world applications. Here are some of our favorites, with challenges that will really get kids thinking about how STEM plays a part in their everyday lives.

1. Participate in the St. Jude EPIC Challenge

St. Jude's EPIC Challenge gives students a chance to create real-world impact for other kids currently facing cancer. EPIC stands for Experimenting, Prototyping, Inventing, and Creating. Participants come up with innovative ways to help St. Jude kids, following through from concept to creation. Past winners have created comfortable pillows, buddy blankets, and more. Learn about the EPIC Challenge and find out how to join here.

Plus, get a free copy of our engineering and design poster we created together with St. Jude right here.

2. Add STEM bins to your classroom

You can use STEM activities in a wide variety of ways with these cool bins. Incorporate them into literacy centers, create a makerspace, and offer early finishers fun enrichment ideas. Learn how to create and use STEM bins.

3. Conduct an egg drop

This is one of those classic STEM activities every kid should try at least once. Kids can do it at any age, with different materials and heights to mix it up.

Learn more: Buggy and Buddy

4. Engineer a drinking straw roller coaster

This is such a fun way to encourage engineering skills! All you need are basic supplies like drinking straws, tape, and scissors.

Learn more: Straw Roller Coaster/Frugal Fun For Boys and Girls

5. Simulate an earthquake

The ground under our feet may feel solid, but an earthquake changes that pretty quickly. Use Jello to simulate the earth's crust, then see if you can build an earthquake-proof structure.

Learn more: Teaching Science

6. Stand up to a hurricane

In a hurricane zone, houses must be able to stand up to strong winds and possible flooding. Can your students design houses that make it safer to live in these dangerous areas?

Learn more: Carly and Adam

7. Create a new plant or animal

Kids will really get into this project, indulging their creativity as they invent a plant or animal that's never been seen before. They'll need to be able to explain the biology behind it all, though, making this an in-depth project you can tailor to any class.

Learn more: I Love 2 Teach

8. Design a helping hand

This is a great group science project. Students hone their design and engineering skills to make a working model of a hand.

Learn more: Model Hand/Science Buddies

9. Understand the impact of non-renewable resources

Discuss the differences between renewable and non-renewable resources, then have your class form "companies" to "mine" non-renewable resources. As they compete, they'll see how quickly the resources are used. It's a great tie-in to energy conservation discussions.

Learn more: The Owl Teacher

10. Devise an amazing marble maze

Marble mazes are one of students' favorite STEM activities! You can provide supplies like straws and paper plates for their project. Or let them use their imaginations and create marble mazes from any materials they can think of.

Learn more: Marble Maze/Raising Lifelong Learners

11. Fly clothespin airplanes

Ask students what they think the airplane of the future might look like. Then, provide them with clothespins and wood craft sticks, and challenge them to build a new kind of airplane. Bonus points if it can actually fly!

Learn more: STEAMsational/Clothespin Airplane

12. Play catch with a catapult

This take on a classic science project challenges young engineers to build a catapult from basic materials. The twist? They also must create a "receiver" to catch the soaring object on the other end.

Learn more: Catapult Challenge/Science Buddies

13. Bounce on a trampoline

Kids love bouncing on trampolines, but can they build one themselves? Find out with this totally fun STEM challenge.

Learn more: Teach Student Savvy

14. Build a solar oven

Learn about the value of solar energy by building an oven that cooks food without electricity. Enjoy your tasty treats while discussing ways we can harness the energy of the sun and why alternative energy sources are important.

Learn more: Desert Chica

15. Build a snack machine

Incorporate everything students learn about simple machines into one project when you challenge them to build a snack machine! Using basic supplies, they'll need to design and construct a machine that delivers snacks from one location to another.

Learn more: Snack Machine/Left Brain Craft Brain

16. Recycle newspaper into an engineering challenge

It's amazing how a stack of newspapers can spark such creative engineering. Challenge students to build the tallest tower, support a book, or even build a chair using only newspaper and tape!

Learn more: STEM Activities for Kids

17. Design a biosphere

This project really brings out kids' creativity and helps them understand that everything in a biosphere is really part of one big whole. You'll be overwhelmed by what they come up with!

Learn more: Laney Lee

18. See the effects of an oil spill

Learn why an oil spill is so devastating for wildlife and the ecosystem with this hands-on activity. Kids experiment to find the best way to clean up oil floating on water and rescue the animals affected by the spill.

Learn more: Kitchen Counter Chronicles

19. Assemble a steady-hand game

This is such a fun way to learn about circuits! It also brings in a bit of creativity, adding the "A" to STEAM.

Learn more: Steady Hand Game/Left Brain Craft Brain

20. Craft a cell phone stand

Your science students will be thrilled when you let them use their phones in class! Challenge them to use their engineering skills and a small selection of items to design and build a cell phone stand.

Learn more: Science Buddies/Engineer Cell Phone Stand

21. Engineer a craft stick bridge

Here's another one of those classic STEM activities that really challenge kids to use their skills. Build a bridge with popsicle sticks and push pins, and find out which design can bear the most weight.

Learn more: Build a Bridge/Scholastic

22. Forage and build a bird nest

Birds build incredibly intricate nests from materials they find in the wild. Take a nature walk to gather materials, then see if you can build a sturdy, comfy nest of your own!

Learn more: Kids Craft Room

23. Drop parachutes to test air resistance

Use the scientific method to test different types of material and see which makes the most effective parachute. Your students also learn more about the physics behind air resistance.

Learn more: Education.com

24. Find the most waterproof roof

Calling all future engineers! Build a house from LEGO, then experiment to see what type of roof prevents water from leaking inside.

Learn more: Waterproof Roof/Science Sparks

25. Build a better umbrella

Challenge students to engineer the best possible umbrella from various household supplies. Encourage them to plan, draw blueprints, and test their creations using the scientific method.

Learn more: Better Umbrella/Raising Lifelong Learners

26. Go green with recycled paper

We talk a lot about recycling and sustainability these days, so show kids how it's done! Recycle old worksheets or other papers using screen and picture frames. Then, ask kids to brainstorm ways to use the recycled paper.

Learn more: Undercover Classroom

27. Brew up your own slime

Chances are good your students already love making and playing with slime. Turn the fun into an experiment by changing the ingredients to create slime with a variety of properties-from magnetic to glow-in-the-dark!

Learn more: Slime Design/Science Buddies

28. Create a taxonomy system

Students can step into Linnaeus' shoes by creating their own system of taxonomy using a handful of different dried beans. This is a fun science project to do in groups, so students can see the differences between each group's system.

Learn more: Our Journey Westward

29. Find out which liquid is best for growing seeds

As you learn about the life cycle of plants, explore how water supports plants' growth. Plant seeds and water them with a variety of liquids to see which sprout first and grow best.

Learn more: Lessons 4 Little Ones

30. Find the best soap bubble solution

It's easy to mix your own soap bubble solution with just a few ingredients. Let kids experiment to find the best proportion of ingredients to blow the longest-lasting bubbles with this fun outside science activity.

Learn more: Soap Bubbles/Science Buddies

31. Blow the biggest bubbles you can

Add a few simple ingredients to dish soap solution to create the largest bubbles you've ever seen! Kids learn about surface tension as they engineer these bubble-blowing wands.

Learn more: Scholastic/Dish Soap Bubbles

32. Help monarch butterflies

You may have heard that monarch butterflies are struggling to keep their population alive. Join the fight to save these beautiful bugs by planting your own butterfly garden, monitoring monarch populations, and more. Get all the info you need at the link.

Learn more: Monarch Watch

33. See water pollution in action

Learn about the challenges of cleaning up polluted water sources like rivers and lakes with this interesting outdoor science activity. Pair it with a visit to a local water treatment plant to expand the lesson.

Learn more: Water Pollution/JDaniel4's Mom

34. Test your local water quality

Once you've "cleaned up" your water, try testing it to see how clean it really is! Then head out to test other types of water. Kids will be fascinated to discover what's in the water in their local streams, ponds, and puddles. Student water testing kits are readily available online.

Learn more: The Homeschool Scientist

35. Explore with an edible Mars Rover

Learn about the conditions on Mars and the tasks the Mars Rover will need to complete. Then, give kids supplies to build their own. (Add to the challenge by making them "buy" the supplies and stick to a budget, just like NASA!).

Learn more: Library Makers

36. Baked potato science

This edible science project is a nutritious way to explore the scientific method in action. Experiment with a variety of methods for baking potatoes-microwaving, using a traditional oven, wrapping them in foil, using baking pins, etc.-testing hypotheses to discover which works best.

Learn more: Potato Science/Left Brain Craft Brain

37. Waterproof a boot

Ask kids to select various materials and tape them over the free boot printable. Then, test their hypotheses to see which ones work best.

Learn more: Waterproof a Boot/Science Sparks

38. Determine the best way to melt ice

Conventional wisdom says we sprinkle salt on ice to melt it faster. But why? Is that really the best method? Try this science experiment and find out.

Learn more: The Chaos and the Clutter

39. Don't melt the ice

We spend a lot of time in winter trying to get rid of ice, but what about when you don't want the ice to melt? Experiment with different forms of insulation to see which keeps ice frozen the longest.

Learn more: Ice Insulation/Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls

40. Build a straw house

Grab a box of straws and a package of pipe cleaners. Then task kids with designing and building their dream house, using only those two items.

Learn more: Deceptively Educational

41. Design a balloon-powered car

Explore the laws of motion and encourage creativity when you challenge students to design, build, and test their own balloon-powered cars. Bonus: Use only recycled materials to make this project green!

Learn more: Balloon-Powered Cars/Science Buddies

42. Learn map skills by designing an amusement park

For this cross-curricular activity, students investigate the parts of a map by creating an amusement park. After they create their map, they do a detailed drawing and write about one of their ride designs. Then they design an all-access park pass. So many STEM activities in one! Find out more about it here.

43. Reach for the ceiling

Round up all your building blocks and try this whole-class project. What will students need to do to be able to construct a tower that reaches all the way to the ceiling?

Learn more: Mama Smiles

44. Cast a tall shadow

Here's another tower-building challenge, but this one's all about shadows! Kids will experiment with the height of their tower and the angle of their flashlight to see how tall of a shadow they're able to cast.

Learn more: No Time for Flashcards

45. Devise a recycled toy bot

These adorable toy bots are made from pool noodles and recycled electric toothbrushes. So clever! Kids will have fun designing their own, plus they can tweak this idea to make other fun wiggling toys.

Learn more: Artsy Momma

46. Link up the longest paper chain

This incredibly simple STEM activity really gets kids thinking. The challenge? Create the longest possible paper chain using a single piece of paper. So simple and so effective.

Learn more: Paper Chain Challenge/Frugal Fun For Boys and Girls

47. Find out what you can make from a plastic bag

Plastic bags are one of the most ubiquitous items on the planet these days, and they're difficult to recycle. Give each student a plastic bag and ask them to create something new and useful. ( These ideas from Artsy Craftsy Mom offer some inspiration.)

48. Start a school robotics team

Coding is one of the most valuable STEM activities you can include in your classroom plans. Set up a school robotics club and inspire kids to embrace their newfound skills! Learn how to set up your own club here.

49. Embrace the Hour of Code

The Hour of Code program was designed as a way to get all teachers to try just one hour of teaching and learning coding with their students. Originally, the Hour of Code event was held in December, but you can organize yours any time. Then, continue to learn using the huge amount of resources on Hour of Code's website.

50. Give kids a Maker Cart and a pile of cardboard

You don't need a whole lot of fancy supplies to create a STEM Cart or makerspace. Scissors, tape, glue, wood craft sticks, straws-basic items like these combined with a stack of cardboard can inspire kids to all sorts of amazing creations! See how these STEM activities work here.

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50 Stem Activities To Help Kids Think Outside the Box

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Hands-on science is one of the best ways to get kids thinking creatively. These STEM activities are perfect for upper elementary students.

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By Amy Cowen on November 27, 2023 4:00 PM
Planning an hour of code with students for Computer Science Education Week? Try these projects and activities to help students explore computer coding now and after!
It's easy for students to get started learning about computer programming and video game and app design. Basic coding involves writing an algorithmic set of steps that tell a computer exactly what to do. No matter what language or programming environment will be used, learning to write effective instructions for a computer involves breaking things down into logical and orderly steps and understanding an if/then mentality that a computer uses to perform specific tasks based on certain criteria.

We've got suggestions below for more than 15 experiments kids can do to explore computer coding at all levels, including introductory options that don't even require a computer! Many of these activities are short and can work well for an hour of code. Many of these can also be easily adapted for remote and asynchronous learning.

Think Like a Computer - Coding Projects and Activities for Beginners

1. With the Mars Rover Obstacle Course activity, students create a set of instructions to guide a pretend rover through an obstacle course. Paper-based mazes are easy to create, easy to scale in difficulty, easy to gamify, and can be great for this kind of logic-based activity, too. These activities help reinforce the kinds of thinking involved in writing programs. (For a similar activity, see Program a Maze with Paper. For additional inspiration, see Paper Maze Programming: Start to Finish Computer Logic. We have a fun Gingerbread-themed version for December, too, in our Gingerbread STEM collection!)

2. The How do Self-Driving Cars Know What to Do? activity guides students in thinking about how self-driving cars can be programmed to autonomously respond to whatever situation arises. Students think through some of the common scenarios and events the car will encounter and write an algorithm that a driverless car could follow when navigating various road scenarios like stop signs, traffic lights, and roundabouts (traffic circles). This activity encourages discussion and brainstorming as students think about the science behind self-driving cars. The activity is part of our Autonomous Cars collection of STEM materials.

1. With the Program Your Own COVID-19 or Flu Simulator with Scratch activity, students use Scratch to make their own COVID-19 simulation tool. Once programmed, they can explore the impact of social distancing and branch out to add additional factors to their program.

2. With the Design a Game to Help Alzheimer's Patients project, students use Scratch (or another programming environment or language) to design and build a game to help improve or practice memory skills for people with Alzheimer's or dementia. ( Be inspired! See A Video Game Science Project to Help People with Alzheimer's.)

3. With the Save a Life! Teach Hands-Only™ CPR project, students use Scratch to design and program an interactive educational campaign. The example is to teach people about how to do Hands-Only ™ CPR, but students could use this project to design an informational project to raise awareness about any topic of interest.

4. With the Do Antibiotics Change Your Gut Microbiome? project, students use Scratch to make and use a model to see how environmental and genetic changes are related to the development of cancer.

Educators! For lesson plans to explore artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks, see:

Programming Projects - Intermediate to Advanced

The following projects help students continue to develop their programming skills and explore new elements of coding.

1. 13. Hit Boxes: How Size Affects Score: the size and placement of hit boxes is important in game design and can be related to how easy or hard the game is to play.

2. 14. Making It Real: Incorporating Physics in Video Games: students who are serious about the realism in their game play will want to pay special attention to the role of physics in their game design.

3. 15. Crack the Code: Breaking a Caesar Cipher: learn what a Caesar cipher is and experiment using one by hand and then use code to see how quickly a computer can detect and crack this simple encoding strategy.

4. 16. Building Personal Medicine Apps to Help Patients: use MIT's App Inventor coding environment to design and create a useful app with real-world value. The sample program is for a medicine reminder app, but students can take the general premise and develop their own meaningful app.

5. 17. Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?: use Python to write a program and see if you can use it to crack passwords of varying lengths and formats. Writing a program that can successfully guess our sample 6-character code is a challenge!

6. 18. Preventing SQL Injection Attacks: learn how SQL injection is used to insert malicious code into text fields on a website and then use that information to find a way to fix SQL injection vulnerabilities in a sample website.

Programming with Arduino - Physical Computing

With Arduino, students can explore programming and connect their programming with an unlimited range of robotics, electronics, and other circuit-building projects. The Introduction to Arduino lesson is designed to introduce students to physical computing (programming a microcontroller to interact with circuits).

The lesson is broken into seven activities (with videos!) that walk students through the basics of setting up the Arduino and interacting with circuit parts like LEDs, buttons, and resistors. The lesson can be used as an introduction to Arduino programming in preparation for more advanced Arduino projects or as a refresher.

Note: The Electronics Kit for Arduino contains the specialty parts to enable students to get started adding Arduino to their projects.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Projects involving artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning support students in exploring cutting-edge STEM that relates to many fields of science and engineering. With projects like the ones listed below, students can begin learning about various applications and algorithms for supervised and unsupervised machine learning, reinforcement learning, neural networks, and more.

Recognition for Student Coding Projects

Students entering coding projects in select science fairs may be recognized by Broadcom Coding with Commitment™, a program sponsored by Broadcom Foundation. To find out more about fairs at which Coding with Commitment awards are given, see the Science Fair Directory.

An Hour of Code

Computer Science Education Week is December 4-10, 2023. During #CSEdWeek, educators and families around the world encourage students to try coding, often with short, introductory "hour of code" activities that help students better understand what programming is all about. A simple activity or an hour of code might spark lasting interest!

See also:

Thematic Collections

Collections like this help educators find themed activities in a specific subject area or discover activities and lessons that meet a curriculum need. We hope these collections make it convenient for teachers to browse related lessons and activities. For other collections, see the Teaching Science Units and Thematic Collections lists. We encourage you to browse the complete STEM Activities for Kids and Lesson Plans areas, too. Filters are available to help you narrow your search.

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25+ Coding Projects for Beginners and Beyond | Science Buddies Blog

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Choose from 25+ projects and activities for students to learn more about coding and computer programming at all levels, including using Arduino and exploring artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) can program their own interactive stories and games.

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Learn computer science. Change the world.

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Every student in every school deserves the opportunity to study computer science.