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St. Patrick’s Day STEM Project Ideas

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One fun thing about STEM projects is that there are a lot of basic ideas that you can twist into a holiday theme without a lot of effort, which makes the same kind of project you might have done before fun all over again.

For example, baking soda and vinegar fizzing explosions are fun any time of year. Add a St. Patrick’s twist by making your ingredients different colors, so that when they combine you’ll also get green fizz. Find out all the details (plus a rainbow experiment) at The Science Penguin.

Or give the fun of growing crystals a twist by growing them on shamrock shapes, like in this activity from Fun with Mama.

Make a density jar into a rainbow with ingredients you probably already have in the house. This post from Playdough to Plato will show you how. And if you’ve never made one before this post has some good tips on how to keep your layers separate.

Speaking of things you already have in the house (maybe not a shamrock cookie cutter, but those are pretty easy to come by this time of year) you can do a quick experiment with shamrock milk and have a fun lesson about surface tension. Get all the details from Science Kiddo.

I love this idea to make a rainbow bridge out of whatever rainbow colored materials you might have lying around (pipe cleaners, construction paper, craft sticks, etc.). The blog post from STEAM Powered Family has a great explanation of different kinds of bridges and how they work if you need a quick lesson before you build.

If you have a favorite STEM activity you like to do at other times of the year, why not try to give it a St. Patrick’s Day twist by adding green, rainbows, shamrocks or other signs of the season? If you try it I’d love to hear what you come up with!

 

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Earth Day Printables and Activities

I know doing printables for Earth Day doesn’t sound very eco friendly, but it does give you a chance to talk to kids about how you can make the classroom or the home a little greener by only printing what you need, using low ink or only black and white printing, printing on the back of other pages, using recycled paper and recycling what you can when you are done.

These Earth Day printables help kids learn about Earth Day or use earth designs.

Pre-K Pages has Earth Day math printables, including a dice rolling game with a recycling theme, graphing, number grouping and sequencing activities.

123 Homeschool 4 Me has a variety of printables for Earth Day including writing prompts, plant life cycle worksheets and links to other activities.

A Dab of Glue will Do has a little printable emergent reader book that explores the basics of Earth Day and some things we can all do to be kind to the planet. You can print it in color or black and white and have kids color it themselves.

Speaking of coloring pages, Preschool Mom has a collection of coloring pages with color versions that you can use as posters in the classroom as well as having kids color the black and white ones.

I love all the printable hands on activities from Differentiated Kindergarten, which help kids build fine motor skills with an Earth Day twist. You’ll find printable mats for use with playdough, geo boards, snap cubes, pattern blocks and Legos, as well as a Q-tip painting activity. You can get these when you sign up for emails.

Here are a few more quick printable Earth Day activities for your kiddos:

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