Vivify STEM Blog
Earth Day STEM and a FREEBIE!
Earth Day is a great opportunity to combine STEM with environmental awareness! Today’s students will be entrusted with preserving our planet for future generations. Industrialization, population growth, oil spills and other dangers threaten the safety of our home. Learning the science of plant growth and other critical functions of life here on Earth provides the foundation for engineering and technology developments that may save our planet.
This Earth Day, we challenge you to join us in giving kids hands-on STEM challenges that allows them to plant, design, and rescue. Find a freebie at the end of this post for you and your kids to enjoy too!
Not all STEM is Equal: 3 Stages of STEM Education
STEM education is sweeping the nation. From robotics competitions to coding games, school districts are scrambling to provide STEM programs while teachers sift through thousands of Pinterest pins in search of quality activities. We need further clarification to distinguish these levels in STEM education. To help guide educators and administrators, we propose the following 3 stages of STEM Education.
Fall and Halloween STEM
Halloween is almost here, and we have just the thing to celebrate with your kids and classroom! ...an engineering challenge is my favorite way to immerse kids in a hands-on STEM learning environment throughout the fall season
Earth Day STEM: Oil Spill Challenge
Need a fun and hands-on Earth Day activity? Challenge your students to an oil spill clean-up! Read on for a STEM challenge that teaches environmental consciousness, problem solving, and team work along with extension math problems that use measurement, percentages, and volume calculations. Our students loved this activity, and we think yours will too!
Middle School Students Reach the Stratosphere!
No FBI report or stolen data this time! My Space Club students successfully launched and recovered a weather balloon from 80,000 feet! Read to learn about our adventure and tips to complete your own balloon launch.
STEM in Sports
The Super Bowl is almost here! While I am planning to consume large amounts of buffalo wings and chips and dip, I am reminded that there is more that goes into this monumental day in America than just good entertainment. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), is present in every aspect of this beloved game. This truth provides a wonderful opportunity to get kids involved in an early love of STEM.
Space Lander Mission
Last year, I started a new Space Club program at four middle schools. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I searched the web for ideas and curriculum to implement. I soon became excited to find great resources like NASA and TeachEngineering, but I was also overwhelmed as a simple Google search for "Space STEM activities" gives you a mere 89 million hits. Wading through a lot of junk eventually brought some gems that I could implement, and I leave it to another post to rant about the lack of quality in many activities that claim to be "STEM."
Do you want to build a snowman?
I don’t know about where you live, but here in Texas it has been really hot outside! Shocking, I know! So how do my munchkin and I beat the heat while having fun and learning a little along the way? Well, besides squeezing in our daily airing of Frozen, we built a snowman!
Weather Balloon Launch: Conclusion!
I know you have been waiting on pins and needles on the update from the last balloon launch failure! The students were very disappointed in the lost data, but they learned a valuable lesson of engineering. Failure is an integral part of all engineering, and it provides an opportunity to learn and try again!
Weather Balloon Launch: Recovery Drama
After a successful launch, the balloon team was on fire! We had just successfully launched a balloon into the stratosphere, and everyone was jumping from excitement. But very quickly our enthusiasm turned to dread as we had yet to receive a GPS signal. We went from the high of releasing the balloon to a state of depression as we anxiously refreshed the webpage, hoping the GPS would come through. Without a signal, all hope was lost for recovering the balloon.
Catapult Challenge
After years of STEM activities, including towers, bridges, race cars, and rockets, one of my favorites is the classic catapult challenge! It incorporates all aspects of a quality STEM activity: easy math connection, engineering design process, student-driven learning, and hands-on fun! Read on to see my ideas to incorporate into your classroom.
Pipe Cleaner STEM Challenge
The Pipe Cleaner (aka "Fuzzy Sticks") Challenge is one of my favorite STEM activities to introduce students to STEM learning. This is a fun, inexpensive, and engaging challenge that can be tailored to different ages, settings, and time-frames. This challenge is also an excellent team icebreaker.