Bring your next read-aloud to life with The Smart Cookie STEM Challenge!

This toothpick tower activity combines literacy, engineering, and team building as elementary students work together to create a standing structure. It’s a hands-on way to encourage creative thinking while helping students recognize that everyone brings valuable ideas to a team.

Pair the challenge with The Smart Cookie to start a conversation about different strengths, learning through challenges, and discovering what makes each person unique. Then give students an opportunity to put those ideas into practice as they build together.

Bring fall learning to life with this Pumpkin Catapult STEM Challenge!

Elementary students use popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and a plastic spoon to design and build a pumpkin launcher. Along the way, they explore potential energy, force, and gravity while practicing teamwork and creative problem-solving. Students sketch their ideas, predict launch distances, and measure results across three trials before reflecting on their designs.

Pair this Halloween STEM activity with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow? for a literacy connection.

Make Halloween a night of discovery with a Wizarding Family STEM Night!

Explore 14 hands-on activities that bring elementary students and families together to build, experiment, and create. From potion pH testing and floating feathers to broomstick coding, wizard towers, and owl paper airplanes, these Halloween STEM activities turn magical themes into meaningful learning.

The blog highlights each station and shares tips for choosing activities, organizing supplies, preparing volunteers, decorating your space, and adding a wizard photo booth.

Discover how to plan an engaging October school event, family science night, or fun-filled Halloween classroom celebration with the Wizarding Family Night Centers and Planning Guide from Carly and Adam.

Looking for easy Halloween activities for elementary students? Spark imagination with Halloween Creativity Challenges!

🎃 Explore a pumpkin drawing challenge and 11 finish-the-picture activities featuring bats, ghosts, spiders, and more. These low-prep Halloween printables encourage creative thinking with just pencils and paper.

Use them for October morning work, early finishers, STEM warm-ups, art centers, or Halloween classroom parties. Includes pumpkin challenge options for Pre-K, kindergarten, and elementary grades.

Looking for a hands-on apple STEM activity for elementary students?

🍎 This Apple Basket STEM Challenge turns apple season into an engineering adventure! Students use straws, pipe cleaners, a paper plate, and tape to build a basket with a handle that holds as many apples as possible.

🍎 Plan, build, test, and improve
🍎 Practice teamwork and problem-solving
🍎 Count apples and compare results
🍎 Includes teacher directions, planning pages, a STEM journal, and reflection questions

Add this fall STEM activity to your apple unit, STEM lab, or autumn classroom plans. Challenge older students to build without tape! Save this apple engineering challenge for your next fall lesson.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with a Sonia Sotomayor STEM activity for elementary students! Discover how to pair Turning Pages: My Life Story with a hands-on Tower of Knowledge challenge using books and index cards. Students plan, build, measure, and improve their towers while learning about the first Latina Supreme Court justice.

This blog shares materials, teaching tips, discussion questions, and connections to reading, writing, and Spanish vocabulary. Bring teamwork and creativity to your Hispanic Heritage Month lesson plans with this engaging read-aloud STEM challenge.

Save for your September and October classroom activities!

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with inspiring bulletin board for your elementary classroom! This Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month Poster Set features 41 figures from science, art, literature, sports, and more. Introduce students to Ellen Ochoa, Frida Kahlo, Sonia Sotomayor, Roberto Clemente, and other role models.

Perfect for classroom decor, STEM labs, libraries, and hallway displays! Explore simple bulletin board ideas, STEM connections, student reflection prompts, and ways to highlight a different person throughout the month. Add student writing and drawings to create an interactive display that encourages curiosity and celebrates contributions.

Save these Hispanic Heritage Month classroom ideas for September and October, and keep the learning going with inspiring posters all year!

Make dinosaur learning hands-on with Dinosaur Magnetic Tile Building STEM Challenge Task Cards! 🦕 Students build dinosaurs, design prehistoric habitats, create fossils, and explore shapes with these engaging dinosaur STEM activities.

🦖 11 dinosaur and prehistoric building prompts
🧲 4 creative challenges, including a freestanding 3D dinosaur
📊 Shape counting and graphing worksheets
💡 Practice creativity, problem-solving, and engineering

Perfect for elementary STEM centers, math stations, morning tubs, makerspaces, and early finishers. Just print the cards, add reusable magnetic tiles, and let students build, test, and improve their designs!

Looking for a Giraffes Can’t Dance activity that brings growth mindset to life? Try this giraffe directed drawing STEAM lesson!

🦒 READ & CONNECT
Pair the story with conversations about confidence, perseverance, and trying new strategies.

✏️ DRAW & TRY AGAIN
Students create four giraffe drawings using independent practice, a step-by-step guide, and a video tutorial.

💭 REFLECT & GROW
Printable journal pages let students notice what they like, set goals, and reflect on their progress.

🎨 SIMPLE SUPPLIES
Use pencils, erasers, and crayons, markers, or colored pencils!

Useful for elementary art, read-aloud extensions, growth mindset lessons, and back-to-school activities. Connect literacy, writing, and creativity with this engaging book companion.

📌 Save this tip for your next STEAM lesson!

Turn magnetic tiles into hands-on math learning! Discover how to use Number Magnetic Tile STEM Task Cards to help students build numbers 0–10, explore shapes, and create addition and subtraction sentences.

This blog shares useful ideas for kindergarten and first grade math centers, STEM stations, and morning tubs, plus ways to encourage fine motor practice, spatial reasoning, and creative problem solving.

Extend the learning with shape counting, graphing, and two-digit or three-digit number challenges. Find simple setup tips, questions that inspire redesign, and ideas for supporting different learners. Read the blog from Carly and Adam, then save this magnetic tile activity for your next hands-on math lesson!

Give students time to build, explain their thinking, and try a new number design.

Looking for hands-on fall STEM activities? Explore 12 printable Snap Cube puzzles featuring pumpkins, acorns, woodland animals, and more! This blog shares easy ways to use autumn building mats for fine motor practice, counting, and problem-solving.

Add these fall activities to morning tubs, math centers, STEM stations, or early finisher bins. Gather your Snap Cubes or Unifix cubes and make seasonal learning fun!

Save this post for fall lesson planning and discover your next favorite classroom activity.

Spark creativity with Autumn Finish the Drawing Activities for kids!

Explore 10 fall finish the picture prompts featuring pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows, and more, plus an acorn creativity challenge for elementary students.

Pair these printable fall activities with lessons about apples, pumpkin patches, and the autumn harvest. Perfect for morning work, early finishers, brain breaks, and STEM warm-ups, these low-prep drawing challenges encourage creative thinking, imagination, and sharing unique ideas.

Make chemistry exciting with this Elephant Toothpaste Science Experiment for young students!

Pair the activity with Ada Twist, Scientist as children use the scientific method to form hypotheses, observe a colorful foaming chemical reaction, compare different amounts of yeast, and record their results.

This hands-on STEM challenge teaches chemical changes, variables, and exothermic reactions while building curiosity, observation skills and confidence through an unforgettable classroom experiment.

Start the school year with five engaging back-to-school STEM challenges inspired by picture books! Elementary students can build a dream school after reading If I Built a School, invent and improve a prototype with The Most Magnificent Thing, design a zip-line flying machine for Rosie Revere, construct a LEGO or DUPLO bridge for Iggy Peck, and explore the scientific method with an Ada Twist elephant toothpaste experiment.

These hands-on read-aloud STEM activities help students practice teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, perseverance, and problem-solving.

Each lesson introduces science or engineering vocabulary and guides as they plan, create, test, reflect, and improve. Perfect for elementary STEM labs, makerspaces, science class, back-to-school centers, or the first weeks of school!

Discover 13 fine motor skills activities for kindergarten and first grade that make hands-on practice fun!

Students strengthen hand muscles, coordination, pencil control, and independence through cutting, tracing, gluing, lacing, stacking, geoboards, play dough, shoe tying, and more.

These easy fine motor STEM centers are perfect for morning work, small groups, early finishers, makerspaces, or classroom rotations.

Strengthen students’ hand muscles, coordination, creativity, and problem-solving with engaging fine motor skills activities for elementary STEM centers.

Explore 13 hands-on stations featuring paper folding, cardboard construction, weaving, knot tying, paper airplanes, cutting, play dough mazes, tower building, and braiding.

These low-prep activities are perfect for STEM labs, makerspaces, classroom centers, early finishers, partner work, or whole-class engineering challenges.

Make back-to-school learning fun with Cup Stacking Challenge STEM Task Cards!

These hands-on cup stacking activities double as engaging icebreaker games that help students practice teamwork, communication, creativity, and problem-solving.

With 23 challenges, reflection sheets, and two card sizes, this low-prep resource is perfect for STEM centers, morning work, team building, early finishers, brain breaks, and indoor recess.

Kick off the school year with an engaging back-to-school STEM activity inspired by A Letter From Your Teacher on the First Day of School. Students write letters to help their teacher get to know them, then work in teams to design a zipline device that delivers their letters.

This first day of school activity combines a read-aloud, writing, teamwork, creativity, and the Engineering Design Process for a memorable start to the year.

Pair The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes with a hands-on STEM activity that teaches growth mindset and the engineering design process.

Students plan, build, test, and improve a broom and dustpan using simple classroom materials.

This low-prep read-aloud STEM challenge encourages teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, and learning from mistakes—perfect for elementary STEM centers, makerspaces, back-to-school lessons, and growth mindset activities.

Make alphabet practice hands-on with Alphabet Magnetic Tile Building Challenge Cards!

Students use Magna-Tiles, Magformers, or similar magnetic tiles to construct uppercase letters A-Z while practicing letter recognition, shapes, counting, spatial reasoning, fine motor skills, and problem-solving.

These low-prep magnetic tile alphabet cards are perfect for STEM centers, literacy stations, morning work, makerspaces, early finishers, and engaging classroom learning.