Luck is in the air! Being Irish, I’ve always loved St. Patty’s Day, but it is often a holiday that comes and goes in the classroom without much notice other than wearing our green. Now, I’ve created five St. Patrick’s Day activities using new STEM design challenges that will be a fantastic way to pay tribute to the day! Almost better than finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? ?
I love the themes of St. Patrick’s Day: cleverness, tricks & pranks, lore, and luck, and you’ll find these woven into the challenges.
Materials for all St. Patrick’s Day activities are the simple things you’ll either already have on hand or can get at stores like Dollar Tree or Target.
ST. PATRICK’S DAY STEM CHALLENGES OVERVIEW
A brief description of each St. Patrick’s Day activity is available below. Each challenge has its own blog post with video walk-through and additional details. Click on the challenge title or image to go to a specific post.
St. Patrick’s Day Activity #1: Guard the Gold STEM Challenge
Basic Premise:
For leprechauns, life is a constant struggle to protect their pot of gold from treasure hunters and keep from getting caught themselves!
Working against criteria & constraints individually or in partners/groups, students will design and build one or more devices to help a leprechaun guard his pot of gold from thieves.
Basic Premise:
Basic Premise:
You may know that leprechauns have the ability to grant three wishes to human captors in exchange for their freedom, but capturing leprechauns in this St. Patrick’s Day activity is trickier than it sounds!
Working in groups against criteria & constraints and equipped with a Leprechaun Lore List, students will design and build a device to lure and safely capture a leprechaun. (Rolling balls are used to symbolize the swift movement of leprechauns.)
St. Patrick’s Day Activity #4: St. Pat’s Snake Snatcher STEM Challenge
Basic Premise:
- Snakes (10 – 20) are spread over a map of Ireland. Student devices must lift snakes from Ireland and drop them in the surrounding ocean.
- Introduce mimics to increase the difficulty!
St. Patrick’s Day Activity #5: Limitless Luck STEM Challenge
Basic Premise:
Save yourself time and energy (and use it to head over to your local dollar store!) by picking up the prepared St. Patrick’s Day activities and challenge lessons, which include teacher notes/guide, modifications to increase the difficulty for older students, data recording & analysis handouts, NGSS standards, extension ideas and more.
You can get them individually or treat yourself (and your lucky students!) to the bundle!
Available for purchase on TpT.
Click the image for more details!
Pin to Save for Later
