5 Awesome End of Year STEM Challenges

STEM Activities for the End of the School Year

You have made it far enough to start thinking about an end-of-year STEM challenge! Hopefully standardized testing is in your past and you are ready to tackle some classic (and new) challenges!

Get Outside with STEM Challenges

My best tip for the end of the school year is to take a challenge outside! Especially if you teach through a long winter, take every opportunity to get outside and learn.

Keep your students motivated to learn right up until the very last day. If you would like printable resources to go with some of these challenge, please scroll to the bottom of this post.

STEM Challenge #1 - Design and Create a Paper Airplane

 
This challenge is about as easy as you can get from a materials standpoint, but designing and creating a paper airplane is something you could do every day for a full year with a new design each day!

Start with a plain sheet of paper. Explore different folds, cuts, and strategic weights to change up the design. Can you create an airplane that flies far? What about one that will fly in a loop? What if you need the airplane to curve to the right or left on its flight? This one is so easy to differentiate!

Start with basic paper folding and creasing if you are doing this with young kids. I find that sometimes these skills are lacking and a quick lesson in how to line up edges and crease the paper really helps!

STEM Challenge #2 - Design and Create a Kite

Save this one for a field day or when you see there will be some wind to work in your favor. Students will need to balance form and function with their creative touches to make sure the kite will take flight!

STEM Challenge #3 - Design and Create a Cargo Ship

This is always a favorite challenge among students. You can either give students all the same materials and have them try to support the most mass using those materials, or you can give different teams different objects (of various size, weight) that they must carry in their boats. They can then compare the designs and try out other objects. Can their cargo ship carry a variety of cargo or just the one you initially specified?

STEM Challenge #4 - Design and Create a Bubble Wand

Blowing bubbles never gets old. Can you create a bubble wand that blows large bubbles? What about a wand that will create multiple bubbles at once? How about a bubble wand that creates a bubble that is not a sphere? Is it possible? Students can also work on recipes for homemade bubble solution to determine the ideal quantities of water, dish soap, and either glycerin or corn syrup.

STEM Challenge #5 - Don't Crack Up! The Great Egg Drop STEM Challenge

This is a classic end of year challenge that works for elementary aged students all the way up through college! The simplest way to differentiate an egg drop challenge is to increase the drop height (you can use a foot or even one meter for each year of school, provided you have a tall enough building). Will students provide a cushion for the egg? A shock absorption feature? Maybe a way to slow the fall? There are endless possibilities here and testing is an absolute blast.

Find Resources to Guide you Through the Process

Paper Airplane STEM

Boats: Choose from in-depth Engineering Design Challenge (read this post for more about it) or a quick STEM challenge for boats.

 

Bubble Wand STEM Challenge

Egg Drop STEM Challenge

Or try these three STEM challenges bundled together:

 

Pin these End of Year STEM ideas for later:

Bird Beak STEM - Animal Adaptations STEM Adventure

STEM Activities for Elementary Students to explore Bird Beaks and Pollination

STEM That is Easy to Implement

This is the fifth installment of the "Pick the Path STEMventure" series. This story is about a budding ornithologist, Beth, as she visits a nature sanctuary and learns about various birds. Students decide 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.

If you are studying animal adaptations, pollination, or even ecosystems, these are some engaging hands-on activities that your students will enjoy exploring!

Pollination STEM Challenge 

Pollination is a concept that can be difficult for kids to understand. In this challenge, they will transfer "pollen" (which can be chalk dust, flour, etc.) from one flower to another.

A bonus in the resource I created is a page all about pollination. Students learn the basics and can color in the flower diagram to get a better idea of how plant reproduction takes place.

Another Bird Themed STEM Challenge - Eating

Do you know how hummingbirds eat? They don't use their long beak like a straw, but use their tongues to lap up nectar much like a dog does. In this challenge, kids will have to try to grab the food at the bottom of a tube. They will be glad this isn't a requirement for their own meals because it's harder than it looks! The food can be anything that can be picked up, but I use pompoms. In addition to grabbing the item (such as with chopsticks), students can "hook" onto the food. If you are learning about magnets, you could absolutely work this in. Have the magnet be the food, and students will need to use an item in their "tongue" that is attracted to magnets in order to pick up the food.

My favorite challenge in this story explores wading birds and different types of beaks. Can you pick up the food but allow the water to drain out? Can you stab the food?

There are other types of bird beaks to explore as well, and this is a great time to talk about the food chain, the environment, and being a good Earth citizen. What would happen if a bird's food supply goes away? Would they be able to adapt? Would their beak work well to eat another kind of food? These are big questions but I find most kids are ready to tackle them.

Find this STEM Resource on Teachers pay Teachers

If you would like to use the story and printables I've created, you can find them on Teachers pay Teachers at this link, Bird Beak STEM:

or save these ideas for later by pinning this on Pinterest: