Looking for a Bone Bridge® STEM challenge that’s easy to set up but packed with opportunities for engineering and problem-solving? In Bone Bridge®, students use cotton swabs and other simple materials to design a bridge for length, strength, capacity, or a combination of all three.
This hands-on STEM activity is a fun fit for Halloween, but it works well beyond October, too. Connect it to studies of the skeletal system, bridges and transportation, forces, or physical properties for an engineering challenge you can use throughout the year.
How the Bone Bridge® STEM Challenge Works
Students work in partners or small groups to design and build a bridge using cotton swab “bones” and other easy-to-find materials.
You can choose the engineering goal that works best for your students: length, strength, capacity, or a combination of all three. Because students aren’t given a model to copy, they’ll develop their own solutions, test their bridges, and make improvements based on the results.
Beyond Halloween: Connect Bone Bridge® to Anatomy
Bone Bridge® works well beyond Halloween, too. Connect the challenge to a study of the skeletal system, vertebrates and invertebrates, bridges and transportation, forces, or physical properties. The cotton swab “bones” make it especially easy to pair engineering with an anatomy or life science unit.
Watch the Bone Bridge® STEM Challenge
Want to see the challenge in action? In this quick video walkthrough, I cover materials, setup, ways to test the bridges, and tips for adjusting the challenge for different ages. Prefer to read? You’ll find the video transcript farther down the page.
Get the Bone Bridge® STEM Challenge
Want the ready-to-use version? Get Bone Bridge® individually or as part of the 6-activity Halloween STEM Challenge Bundle. The complete resource includes teacher tips, criteria and constraints, student handouts, modifications, extensions, discussion questions, and more.
More Halloween STEM Activities…
Looking for more ideas? Explore 20 Halloween STEM Activities for grades 2–8, including hands-on engineering challenges, quick builds, and paper-only activities.
Bone Bridge® STEM Challenge Video Transcript
Introduction: Halloween, Anatomy and Engineering in One!
Yay, Halloween week two, Bone Bridge. The premise for this one is the students are going to build a bridge either for length, strength or capacity or any combination of those. Now I know some of you are not allowed to do Halloween activities, so to get around that you can study the skeletal system, you can study vertebrates versus invertebrates, you can look into bridges, forces, transportation. There are a lot of ways around this.
One thing that might actually be really cool is to have the students build bone bridge, then study vertebrates and invertebrates and have the students come up with a design that would be for an invertebrate bridge. Oh, I really like that. Let’s take a quick look at the materials for this challenge and the STEM Challenge Cycle.
0:45 The STEM Challenge Cycle
This is the stem challenge cycle you should follow for every challenge. I’ve defined each step in another video. You can click on the title now to see the cycle explained. Just a couple of quick notes for set up, you want to make sure you have the students build along the floor so that there’s plenty of room for them
to keep going, that they won’t get cut off at the end of their desks, and you want to decide ahead of time if the goal for the challenge is the longest bridge or the strongest bridge, based on how much weight it can carry, or capacity. Or you might want some combination of those goals. You might be thinking what’s the difference between capacity and weight for this challenge?
For example, this bridge is pretty strong because the planks are wooden. If you had a big bag of these pumpkin candies, you could probably easily line up along this entire bridge these pumpkin candies, but it might be actually capable of holding more weight. Another thing that’s fun if they’re doing capacity is the
planks matter because you can see this one just barely holds the pumpkin, it’s almost a little too widely spaced, but you could probably fit two across or maybe even more on the edges out here. Capacity can be a lot of fun to measure. If you do buy these pumpkin candies, hold on to them because when we start going over the Thanksgiving challenges, you’re going to be able to use these again.
2:17 Easy & Fun Challenge, Even Easier with the Resource!
This is a really straightforward and fun challenge. You have what you need in order to conduct this on your own, but if you want more you might want to check out the resource, it has things like additional modifications to make the challenge more or less difficult, as well as cross-curricular connections and more fun stuff like that, so check it out.
This resource is going to save you oodles of time because it contains everything you need including modifications for use with second through eighth graders. You’ll still need to gather the simple materials of course, but the hard parts are done. You’ll get Aligned Next Generation Science Standards for grades two through eight, links to my stem challenge professional development videos to help you get the most from each challenge, and the Bones Bridge Materials list.
2:55 Teacher Tips: Increasing Difficulty with Modifications
In Teacher Tips you’ll find premise and set up, how to increase or decrease difficulty through the criteria and constraints list, measuring results and cross-curricular extension suggestions which you’ll need if you need to prove this is not just a Halloween activity. You’ll find an editable Criteria and Constraints list so you can tailor the challenge to your students. For Student Handouts there are two versions, four-page expanded room for response for younger students, and a two-page condensed space paper saver version for older students. Plus, there’s a second set of handouts if you want students to test their bridges for length and the weight the bridges can hold.
You’ll also find a set of group discussion questions. In the Extension Handouts you’ll find math extension and process flow templates. This resource is available individually and as part of the discounted Halloween and Mega STEM challenge bundles. Links can be found in the description below the video. Your students
are going to love this one and so are you. Make sure you like and subscribe.
Next week we’re going to be going over challenge three, Creature Catcher. See you next time.
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