Skip to main content

STEM toys for team building


I started placing my students into groups about 4 years ago and it's been fantastic (Which I didn't expect). I realized last year that I never did anything to solidify the groups at the start of the year. 

This year I have decided that once the pre-testing is over and I have separated the classes down into groups I am going to have them complete some team building activities. 

I was in target earlier today and they had an entire section of STEM toys. That gave my the idea to use STEM toys as a team building activity. I am most interested in the Wonderology Rube Goldberg toys but they tend to get poor reviews on Amazon for being difficult. I still think they would be better than marshmallows and spaghetti ;)

Here are the activities I have managed to find that I am thinking about so far. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

1,000 Pens update

My 1,000 pens came in the mail! I thought I would show you guys what they look like! Want your own cheap box of 1,000 pens? Click Here   To read that blog post On a side note I found an awesome recipe that I made tonight with Basil from my garden. I liked it so much I thought I would share it with you! Tomato, Mozzarella, Quinoa, and Basil Salad

Say what? Inference Oops

So I got my first cold of the teaching season. It is too early in the year to call in sick because I am trying to keep my routines and authority in place. I have been barreling through with this cold all week.  We started learning about inference this week. For the most part it has been going well.  We read "Made out of Meat" and then made inferences about the story.  The story is a conversation between two beings and their discussion about these beings they have just encountered who are, "Made out of meat."  The reader needs to infer that the being having a conversation are aliens and the beings made out of "meat" are humans. An adaptation of the story if you are interested: At the end of the story the aliens decide that they are going to, "Pretend like no one is home," and leave without making contact.  One of the inference questions I asked my students was, "Why were the aliens going to pretend like no one is home?" One block of my s...

Teaching Point of View with Video Games

I was looking for new ways to introduce point of view and I stumbled across a GREAT idea! Using video games! There are tons of video games in different points of view. Halo=First person point of view Mario 64= Second person point of view Tomb Raider=Third person limited point of view The Sims=Third person omniscient point of view A great video overview that I found: