STEM Projects

As part of the 8th grade unit on Chemical Reactions, students mixed water, cement, sand, and gravel according to the manufacturer’s guidelines and tested it’s strength. Next  students changed the mix using their own ideas. Finally, they tested the strength of the student mixture against the manufacturer mixture and analyzing the results.

The students began with designing what they would imagine their structure would look like.  They were only given 100 toothpicks, and a cup of candy corn to create their structure.  They had 15 minutes to create the tallest standing structure out of candy corn and toothpicks.

As part of our studies of Ancient Egypt students were challenged to create a child sized mummy using only newspaper, toilet paper and packing tape. The students worked in small groups with much success.

3rd Grade read a story called “Pop’s Bridge”.  In conjunction with the story, students worked in groups to build a bridge with cups, tape, and yarn. The bridges were then tested to see how many “people”  (unifix cubes) they could hold.

Kindergarten students read the book Ten Apples on Top. After reading the book students tried to stack apples like the characters in the story.

PreK read the book Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and how P.T. Barnum proved it was safe by having 21 elephants walk across it. Student groups were given different building materials and 12 plastic bears. Each group worked together to build a bridge that 12 bears could “walk” across.