Our fabulous fifth grade team participated in a week long STEM-mazing field trip. Our community partners Starbase of Indiana led various STEM based lessons that engaged our students in STEM activities. These lessons helped our students to develop a greater creative and conceptual fluency using coding.

While there are many opportunities for students to explore STEM concepts in school, there are plenty of ideas for how families can engage in STEM activities together at home, too. Finding time to come together to create, collaborate and learn could be a great way to spend some time as the weather turns cooler and families are together over holiday breaks.

One great resource for ideas is PBS. Design Squad Global provides inspiring videos, games and project plans that give families the chance to learn about a wide variety of STEM concepts. The site offers weekly updates that refresh the content and offer families the chance to explore engineering and design in real world contexts.

Another PBS resource for STEM activities can be found by visiting Sci Girls. Sci Girls is a show on PBS that highlights tween girls using STEM in their lives. While the girls showcased in each episode change, there are animated characters that appear in each episode. The website linked above provides activities to try at home that connect to different episodes of the show. Children can explore a wide range of topics including bird-watching, robotics, recycling and more.