STEM Activities

This ink stain matching activity focuses on practicing critical thinking and communication inside of a group.

16 items were dipped in ink and then used by an individual. Can you work together to match the ink stain left on their hand with the object that they used.

Pick up some pipe insulation at the hardware store and a bag of marbles from Dollar Tree, and your students will have hours of fun creating these marble roller coasters!

Use your knowledge of metric prefixes and love of puns to solve this fun set of measurement puzzlers.

Help your students understand what it was like for early scientists to determine the contents of an atom with this Black Box Activity Challenge.

My students loved creating hands-on models of covalent molecules using pipe cleaners and pony beads.

Students will need to use the periodic table of elements to fill out this fun Chemistry Gossip worksheet.

This mini lab will help students get a feel for mass and give them practice using a triple beam balance.

Students use their knowledge of density to put the maximum amount of sand in the film canister so it still floats.

This makes a fun group competition!

Practice learning the names and symbols of the elements on the periodic table with this fun element bingo game!

It may look like a normal periodic table, but it isn’t! Can you find the 25 mistakes hidden within this “Periodic Table of Mistakes?”

Build It is a cooperative learning activity that provides students with clues and a set of linking cubes that must be assembled to match the clues.

Each student can only see their own individual clue. This provides great practice in group work communication.

This cup stacking challenge uses everyday materials (string, cups, and a rubber band for each group) and really encourages students to communicate and work together to build each structure.

Each student can only touch their individual string which is tied to the group’s rubber band which is used to move the cups in the challenge. Be prepared for a room full of laughter as students experiment!

In the Marshmallow Challenge, small groups compete to see who can build the tallest tower using a limited amount of dried spaghetti, tape, and string. The completed tower must be free-standing and support a marshmallow at the top of the tower.

If you have some wooden dominoes laying around, you have all you need for this Impossible Domino Bridge building activity.

Spoiler alert: it’s not actually impossible. But it might seem that way to students.

Then, you can use those same dominoes to have your students tackle the impossible domino tower challenge.

Students work in small groups to create the given numbers using exactly four of a given number. I set up different challenges for each number around the room.

Prefer printable paper-based versions of these same challenges? I have also turned them into printable activities.

• Twos Challenge
• Threes Challenge
• Fours Challenge
• Fives Challenge
• Sixes Challenge
• Sevens Challenge
• Eights Challenge
• Nines Challenge

Five Easy Pieces combines paper folding, algebra, and logic puzzles into one great activity. Students have to follow a set of instructions to create a set of paper pieces that are then used to answer a series of math problems.

Digit Cells is an interesting math puzzle that asks students to write a 10 digit number so that the digit in the first cell tells how many zeros are in the entire 10 digit number. The digit in the cell marked “1” tells how many “1’s” are in the number, and so on.

Students always think this puzzle must be impossible at first, so it’s always a joy to watch their faces when they finally solve it.

The twelve envelopes puzzle is a hands-on math puzzle that will really test your students’ logic skills and knowledge of divisibility rules!

Another quick puzzle to review divisibility rules is this fun divisibility puzzle which involves placing the digits 0-9 in the blanks to create 10 true statements about divisibility rules.