Looking for St. Patrick’s Day activities that your students will love but are more than just a craft or activity to pass the time? These St. Patrick’s STEM Challenges (or STEAM Challenges) will keep your students engaged in brain-busting work disguised as fun!

The basic premise:
Students work in partners or groups against criteria & constraints lists to design and build St. Patrick’s Day themed objects. Modification suggestions are included to make these challenges engaging and productive for students in grades 2 – 8.

There are five STEM design challenge events included in this bundle:

• Guard the Gold
• Get the Gold
• Leprechaun Lockdown
• St. Pat’s Snake Snatcher
• Limitless Luck

This bundle saves you 40% off the cost of buying each challenge separately. What a bargain! ☺

Note: The version you are viewing is compatible with Google Slides ™.

Click here for the printable version of this resource.

If you have questions about which version is right for you, please check out this blog post and/or feel free to reach out with a question: [email protected].

Materials you’ll need to do the activity are easily modified. Materials lists can be found in the product descriptions for each individual challenge linked above.

Resource includes:

• Overall STEM Tips
– Suggestions on timing and whether or not to treat these challenges as competitions
– What to say (and what not to say) during STEM Challenges
– 5-event Data Tracker handout

Plus, each challenge comes with:

• NGSS aligned standards, Grades 2 – 8

• Teacher Tips
– Links to STEM Challenge “How-to” Videos
– Links to challenge-specific video walk-throughs
– Materials and timing
– Criteria & Constraints (including modifications to increase difficulty for older students)
– Measuring results
– Post-design extension activities list

• Student Handouts
– Criteria and Constraints list (editable version provided)
– Results and Design Data Analysis
– Discussion Questions

• Extension templates
– Process Flow Map
– Math Extension
– Additional handouts vary by challenge

Benefits of this STEM Design Challenge:
– Focus on critical thinking, problem solving, and application of learning
– Helps students develop growth mindset traits like persistence and resilience
– High levels of student engagement
– The potential to hit upon all NGSS ETS standards depending on the depth and number of iterations you choose to implement in your classroom (modifications included)
– Highly flexible and differentiated for materials, timing, grade levels, and rigor.

Each design iteration should be planned for ~60 – 90 min. if you are including data gathering and analysis rather than just building for fun. If you add extension activities, you will need to adjust timing accordingly.

NOTE: You can save even more by purchasing this bundle as part of the
STEM CHALLENGE YEAR-ROUND MEGA-BUNDLE!!!

“This is my third set (so far). My students love, love the activities. Thank you for sharing the wildly creative, critical thinking challenges.”

“My class loved these activities! Thank you!”

“I loved this bundle! As usual as I have bought them all this year!! And will be buying the summer bundle tomorrow to use in MAY. Can’t say enough about how organized, clear, and concise these STEM projects are. They are truly STEM…as they are not just an experiment but allow the students to engineer and investigate and really think! They also are easy to make more challenging, or leveled. I have done these with 2nd through 5th grade gifted and talented students. LOVE LOVE the videos provided that help make things more clear to me and help me truly visualize and I even come up with more ideas by watching! I buy a lot on TPT…SHE IS ONE OF THE BEST! HIGHLY RECOMMEND Investing IN THESE! You don’t have to be a STEM, SCIENCE, or GT teachers, they can be used and are such a valuable use of instructional time for any class!”

“What fun activities to pull out around St.Pat’s, which is usually just a couple of days before spring break for me. So even more appreciated that they are fun and easy to use!”

This resource is available in a printable format.

Printable Discounted Bundle