Kick Off a New Year With Exciting STEM Challenges!

The time has come to head back into those hallways and meet your new group of students! This year, we want to help you change things up a bit, so we’ve created some exciting new STEM challenges and science projects that are perfect for the first day or week of school.

Forget the usual routine; it’s time to turn the first day of school into a STEM-powered extravaganza! This year we challenge you to try out one of our Back to School STEM challenges as your icebreaker and team-building exercises. These tasks will have your students diving headfirst into collaborative problem-solving, engineering feats, and hands-on experiments, all while forming bonds and getting to know their classmates.

These STEM activities are perfect for years 4 – 6. They provide opportunities for independent or group STEM work.

3 Exciting Upper-Years STEM Challenges to Choose From!

This teaching resource encourages students to use everyday materials that you, as the teacher, can source easily.

Back to School STEM Challenge #1 – Pencil Me In✏️

Your students might need some help remembering their new classmates’ names. This design activity challenges them to create a name badge that doubles as a holder for their most important tool – their pencil!

Back to School STEM Challenge #2 – Walk the Plank☠️

This challenging task is a sure-fire way to get those brains thinking! This is a great way to introduce your students to the idea of a ‘cantilever’. Why not study some famous cantilevers around the world, such as the Balancing Barn in Suffolk, UK, beforehand?

Back to School STEM Challenge #3 – Mascot Madness🦸

This is a team-building STEM challenge extraordinaire! Encourage your students to get to know each other by building a mascot out of pencil case equipment!

We also have a fun pack of Back to School STEM Challenges for younger grades.

Looking for more back-to-school activities? Check out the ones below:

teaching resource

Learning Dispositions Poster Pack

Teach your students about learning dispositions with this set of 10 posters.

teaching resource

Editable Acknowledgement of Country Poster

A poster to recognise the traditional custodians of the land on which you teach.

teaching resource

'Sit Down If...' Getting-to-know-you Elimination Game

Play this interactive game with your new class to break the ice in the first week of a new school year.