St. Patrick's Day STEM with a Leprechaun

Fun STEM Activities for Elementary Students on St. Patrick's Day

STEM That is Easy to Implement

This is the fourth installment of the "Pick the Path STEMventure" series. I wrote a short story about a leprechaun called Larry for St. Patrick's Day. No, we are not trapping the leprechaun! That has been done enough. In the story, Larry the leprechaun gets the opportunity to earn gold coins on St. Patrick's day by successfully completing various STEM challenges. Students choose how they want the story to progress; in completing the story students will complete 3-4 challenges. The story not only guides them through the engineering design process, it includes design constraints and areas for them to fill in their thoughts, plans, and testing data.

A Few of the Challenges Included

Up first, is a rainbow challenge. If you are studying light, this is a great time to do this challenge. In addition to the stories requiring students to design and test structures, they will be exposed to various science and technology concepts, such as dimensional constraints, malware, and the color spectrum.

Another St. Patrick's Day STEM Challenge - Unplugged Coding

Not all kids love coding, but it is still great to expose them to simple logic problems that are the basis of coding. Creating a path is a simple way to have kids think ahead and plan out a set of directions.

This challenge has two versions, plus I included extension options in the digital download for additional challenges. The other challenges include:

a slide
a musical instrument
a bank that holds gold coins
two bonus challenges, including a gold coin flipping device!

You can do several of the challenges mentioned above (aside from the coding one) without the resource I created, though if you would like it for the story and guided design process, keep reading. Here is an example of the slide challenge: