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Ever wonder what STEM challenges to serve up to your students? Here is an amazing list of clever, unique and simple set up STEM lesson plans from other teachers. You're going to love what your students come up with and the number of standards you can meet with these.

There is a range of grade level ideas K-5 in this list.

Think you could solve this Water Puddle Evaporation puzzle? You'll love that there are 4 more easy stem activities for the end of the year including this outdoor one.

Drink up your experiment after you figure out How Hot is Hot? Chocolate with this temperature-based exploration activity.

What tools would work best to Create an Umbrella?

This Dr. Seuss themed Stack the Cat's Hat uses cups - how easy is that!

I love this Plastic Egg Tower that uses leftover easter eggs and playdough. Engineering and oddball materials - just what the mind ordered.

Clever STEM Activities for Kids

Upper grade level students solve Real World Problems with Stem Activities like oil spills.

Can you make a Pristine Trampoline with a strainer and simple materials to bounce a ping pong ball?

This more involved building of Simple Machines will surely capture their attention as they try to make a snack machine!

Build a Computer Coding Game without a computer - perfect for helping superheros get to their destination.

What types of leftover Christmas supplies will make a quiet Christmas Jingle Bell?

Quick STEM Challenges

Making a Paper Plate Pinball Game looks like so much fun and an easy way to engage kids in STEM challenges.

Figure out the best way to drive a Magnet Powered Car if you explore concepts of magnetism with your students.

Index Card Science is part magic trick and part challenge - how can you fit through an index card. Be sure to have tons of index cards on hand!

Turn Christmas excitement and turn it into learning with these 4 Christmas Steam Task cards that use easy materials.

Easter Egg Towers are a no-set up STEM challenge for young students.

Super Simple Materials for STEM Lessons

If you've got rubber bands stored away, then keep Bungee Barbie from dying with this unique stem science challenge. Just pick a flight of stairs in your building to use.

Figure out how many drops of water can fit on a penny with Penny Drops - so quick and easy.

Beef up the magnet powered car activity listed above with this Make it Move challenge to race a car across one end of the table to the other.

Getting kids to complete a Paper Bag Mystery each day in a week sounds like the perfect set of sub plans if you ask me!

Unique STEM Lesson Plans

This fairy tale based Parachute Man challenge encourages students to find a way to help Jack escape the beanstalk by making a parachute for a Lego man.

Bring in your box fan from home to see what type of Paper Fliers can fly high, in circles or fit a requirement challenge of your choosing.

Determine how strong a single piece of paper is with Stem Shape columns to hold a stack of books.

Students create their own Lego Brain Puzzles to make a 10×10 square. Make sure they document the solution to their own puzzle before handing it over to someone else to solve!

Find out the value in STEM challenges with this Basketball Tower challenge using newspapers for third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade.

Free STEM Challenges Printables for the Classroom

Get students thinking on the challenge and preparing their experiment with free Lab Sheets to download.

Get lined paper, graph paper and more with these Stem Notebook Printables so you can make your own!

Get Role Cards along with lots of other free resources to get started making your stem lesson plans.

Make a Mini Journal to plan and execute stem construction projects with these free printables.

Now you've got tons of ideas to plug into your lesson plans - and most don't require complicated materials. How great is that? You're set to serve up creative, unique and simple STEM lesson plans in a snap.

More Science for Kids

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28 Awesome STEM Challenges for the Elementary Classroom

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Ever wonder what STEM challenges to serve up to your students? Here is an amazing list of clever, unique and simple set up STEM lesson plans from other teachers. You're going to love what your students come up with and the number of standards you can meet with these.

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Think chemical energy is dull? Think again with this cool project that lets you turn a potato into a battery. The project is perfect for ages five and up, although younger children will need adult supervision and help to work with the nails and wires.

Potato Battery Instructions

This potato battery is a great activity to discuss the transfer of energy, from chemical to electrical energy. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete from start to finish.

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Materials

Two potatoes

Knife

Two copper wires

Two pennies

Two galvanized nails

Multimeter with one black wire probe and one red wire probe

Directions

1. Cut out a penny-sized hole inside of a raw potato.

2. Strip one end of a copper wire.

3. Tie a copper wire around a penny, making sure the stripped end is touching the copper. You should wrap the wire around the penny a few times.

4. Place the penny and copper wire unit in the hole of your potato.

5. Pierce the potato with a galvanized nail, in the opposite side of the potato as the penny.

6. Do the same thing with another potato, penny, copper wire, and galvanized nail.

7. Place the two potatoes side by side.

8. Wrap the copper wire from one potato around the galvanized nail of the other potato.

Does Your Battery Work?

So now you've made your potato battery, but what should you do with it? There are a variety of things you can do to see if your battery works and how it might be used.

Use a multimeter - A multimeter measures voltage - so you can measure voltage by touching the multimeter's probes to the nail or penny.

Use your potato to power something. You can use LED lights, a light bulb, a simple clock, or anything else small that requires a battery. Keep in mind a potato battery isn't strong enough to power anything large. This is easiest to do if you use alligator clips to help connect your battery to the battery terminal of a small device.

Variations

There are a few variations you can try with this experiment. All of them are appropriate for any age. However, small children will require adult help.

Add more potatoes (with pennies and galvanized nails in them) to increase your voltage, by attaching the potatoes to each other with copper wires (see video).

Try boiling or cooking the potato first to see if this increases the output or voltage.

Try the experiment with a lemon or an orange.

Why It Works

The reason potato batteries work is because chemical reactions are taking place, and changing chemical energy into electric energy. Teach Engineering notes potatoes create an electrolyte solution. This means they provide electrons with a place to move to copper and zinc (and back to copper) to complete circuits. The potato itself acts a buffer between the copper and zinc during electron transfers.

Learning About Electricity

The potato battery experiment provides an excellent way for kids (and adults) to learn more about science. Now that you've made a potato battery, you know more about how a circuit and electricity works.

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How to Make a Potato Battery | LoveToKnow

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Think chemical energy is dull? Think again with this cool project that lets you turn a potato into a battery. The project is perfect for ages five and up, although younger children will need adult supervision and help to work with the nails and wires.

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Rainforest Facts: Tree Canopy

Did you know that in the rainforest, the trees are sometimes so tightly packed together that rain can take ten minutes to reach the ground? This is just the beginning of all the fun rainforest facts for kids in this slideshow!

Rainforest trees are generally quite tall, and the leaves of several trees mix with each other at the top creating what is called the 'canopy'. Like a canopy on a bed covers the whole bed, this canopy of leaves covers the whole rainforest. Rain has to trickle down through the canopy one drop at a time.

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Did you know that in the rainforest, the trees are sometimes so tightly packed together that rain can take ten minutes to reach the ground? This is just the beginning of all the fun rainforest facts for kids in this slideshow!

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While water exists as a solid, liquid, and gas, it is a fascinating molecule. Before you take a drink of water, think about what's inside of it. Water is composed of tiny atoms of two hydrogen atoms and one atom of oxygen. Did you know these small elements are the forces that make water a unique compound on Earth?

Making Rain Clouds

You might've seen condensation on a cold water glass as little droplets. Did you know this same effect is in clouds? In making a rain cloud, you'll observe how moisture builds up in clouds. This experiment represents how clouds (white shaving cream) and the blue drops (rain droplets) interact as pressure builds and moisture is released from clouds. For a preschooler or 2nd grader, the concept of pressure is too abstract to demonstrate. A rain cloud like this experiment is a good visual representation of pressure and moisture.

Grade level: PreK-2

Time: 30 minutes

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Materials

Mason jar

White shaving cream

Blue food dye

Instructions

1. Fill the Mason jar with about 600 mL water.

2. Spread white shaving cream on top of the water.

3. Inject drops of blue dye into the shaving cream.

4. Watch as the dye slowly trickles down from the 'cloud' to the 'pond.'

5. After experimenting, it's safe to dispose of down the drain.

What do you think was happening to the dye as it was moving through the 'clouds'?

Precipitation is another way to look at rain, snow, or sleet. After a cloudy, rainy day, the sun comes out and clouds disappear. Since there was enough pressure in the air to squeeze the rain out of the clouds, it falls to Earth as drops of rain. How magnificent is a rainy day.

Creating a Path of Walking Water

Does water walk from one place to another? While in this experiment, it may seem like it does, you might be surprised the phenomenon behind it. By adding a medium as a mechanism for water to move, you will experience how water molecules work together to advance from one cup to another.

Indeed, seeing is believing. In creating a step pattern with the books, water has a little help from gravity to transcend from a downward to an upward position. This effect is called capillary action and it happens because of the affinity of water to other water molecules. In other words, water molecules naturally like to be with other water molecules.

Grade level: K-3

Time frame: One hour prep and 24-hour observation

Materials

Small pieces of paper towels (three)

Three small clear plastic cups

Measuring cup

Mixing spoon

Color dyes (green, red and yellow)

Two books about the same width

Instructions

1. Pour about 100 mL of water into one cup.

2. Pour about 50 mL of water to the other two cups.

3. Add green food coloring to the 100 mL cup.

4. Add red food coloring to one of the 50 mL cups.

5. Repeat for the yellow food coloring.

6. Stack the books on top of each other slightly off center.

7. Gently place the green cup at the very top of the book.

8. Put the red cup on the next 'step' of the other book.

9. Lastly, place the yellow cup at the bottom.

10. Slowly insert a paper towel strip going from the green cup to the red cup.

11. Next, slowly place another strip of paper towel from the red to the yellow cup.

12. Watch as the color moves from one paper towel to another.

13. Leave it in a secure area overnight.

14. After your observations, it's safe to dispose down the drain and to recycle your paper towels and cups.

Were you able to see how the water with the help of color dye was able to walk along the paper towels?

As a result of how water molecules attach to one another and the paper towel, you might've experienced the movement of water. Although it may not happen rapidly, water does transfer from one cup to another. It is essential to look at your experiment the next day to see how much the water progressed overnight.

Challenge

Add more cups of water and books to see how the water 'walks' from one cup to another.

Have fun mixing colors by using different color variations of dyes.

Test different types of paper towel brands.

Defining the Bending Abilities of Water

Water bends? How is this possible? Besides having water coming out of a hose or a faucet, water has a unique property called polarity. You might think that water follows the form of whatever shape it can take. In reality, water molecules have distinctive characteristics of negative and positive charges. In the presence of static forces, these charges tend to behave differently. For example, if you rub a balloon in your hair, the static electricity can help you lift a piece of paper with the balloon. The same effect occurs between water molecules in the presence of a static balloon.

Grade level: 8 -12

Time: 30 minutes

Materials

Balloon

String

Wool gloves

Hose or faucet

Instructions

1. If you haven't done so, wash the wool gloves with laundry detergent without any softener.

2. Let them dry overnight or place in a dryer without a dryer sheet at high setting until dry.

3. Blow up the balloon and tie it with a string; secure your balloon.

4. Let a small amount of water trickle down from a faucet.

5. Rub gloves together as fast as you can.

6. Put on one of the gloves and rub it upon the balloon.

7. Make sure it's static; put the balloon close to a piece of paper.

8. Rub the balloon again with the glove.

9. Place the balloon close to the water stream, gently.

10. Watch as the water 'bends' or moves close to the balloon.

Was it fascinating to see how water 'bends' to force it's attracted to on the balloon?

To better observe the effect, always make sure to have a small trickle of water next to a balloon. Interestingly, the charges from the balloon were attracted to the negative charges of the water.

Think About It

Water molecules working together produce a powerful natural effect. Whether it is rain coming from clouds as condensation or the capillary action of water adhering to surfaces, water is the driving force in nature for life on Earth. More captivating than seeing water 'walk' or 'bend' it is essential to realize the significance of how charges make a difference. Next time you take a closer look at your water bottle or cup, think about its incredible properties.

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3 Water Science Experiments | LoveToKnow

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While water exists as a solid, liquid, and gas, it is a fascinating molecule. Before you take a drink of water, think about what's inside of it. Water is composed of tiny atoms of two hydrogen atoms and one atom of oxygen.

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Z albumu Dziadka - historia Józefa Piłsudskiego opowiedziana dla dzieci