Quick and Easy Stem Activities for 2nd Grade

When time is limited and the budget is small, we have AWESOME, cheap and quick STEM activities the kids will love testing out. Whether you have 30 mins or all day, these budget friendly STEM challenges are sure to please everyone. Give them a spin in your classroom, at home, or with any group of kiddos. You will love all of our science and STEM projects with ease and budget in mind.

CHEAP AND QUICK STEM ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS

STEM CHALLENGES FOR KIDS

Some of the best STEM challenges are also the cheapest! When you are introducing STEM activities to young kids, it's important to use familiar materials, keep it fun and playful, and not make it to complicated that it takes forever to complete!

You need STEM activities that can be set up easily, kids will find engaging, and provide plenty of opportunities for hands on learning with the STEM design process.

I think you will love our 5 Day Quick STEM Activities Challenge Pack filled with useful printable materials that will take you well beyond the 5 activities we have chosen to share with you.

You are also going to want to check out our NEW Science Standards Series for NGSS! See how NGSS and STEM go hand in hand . Use the printable materials below in your classroom, group setting, or at home!

WHAT IS THE ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS?

Engineers often follow a design process.

There are many different design processes that engineers use but each one includes the same basic steps​​:

• Ask
• Imagine
• Plan
• Create
• Improve

The process is flexible and not always linear​. You might look at it as a cycle without a distinct end to it. There's always opportunity to improve and test.

You can encourage the kids to loop around and back to the "imagine" step from the "improve" step and so on! One step is never completely done and crossed off when you are working to find solutions!

The engineering process has a specific task as iit allows the engineer to reproduce results and share with other engineers more easily once the goal is reached.

YOUR FREE STEM CHALLENGES PACK INCLUDES:

• STEM Design Process: Steps To Success
• 5 Quick and Easy STEM Challenges
• STEM Journal Pages
• Materials Master List
• How To Get Started Instructions

We have included 5 of our favorite easy to set up and quick STEM activities and challenges for you to share with your kids! Build their confidence with simple materials, fun themes, and easy to understand concepts.

Read through our NGSS and STEM series to better understand how these awesome STEM ideas still fit into your new standards!

Your kids will love using our Steps to Success STEM Design Process page during their activities. This will help reduce the need for your constant involvement because each step provides great information for the kids to think about! Build their STEM confidence!

The STEM journal pages include plenty of room for writing notes, drawing diagrams or plans, and collecting data! These are perfect to add to projects for older kids to expand the lesson. Younger kids will love to draw their plans too.

You will also find my master list of cheap STEM materials and a quick how to get started guide for using the STEM activities pack! Also make sure to check out our dollar store engineering kit.

QUICK STEM ACTIVITIES

We know STEM time is fun time! We want you to be able to easily share quick STEM activities with your kids. These ideas aren't high tech so no circuits or motors in sight, but they will get your kids thinking, planning, tinkering, and testing with easy to use STEM supplies.

PLANNING YOUR STEM TIME

If you are short on time, set time limits for each phase of the design process and make that part of the STEM challenge.

Or if you have multiple short sessions to work on these STEM challenges, choose one or two parts of the design process at a time so as not to rush the activity. Having kids use the journal pages to keep detailed notes will help them from session to session. Maybe day 1 is planning, researching, and drawing designs.

MATERIALS FOR STEM ACTIVITIES

My best tip for these quick STEM challenges is to always be collecting re-usable materials. Keep a bin handy for storing cool items that might come in packaging materials, your recyclables and non-recyclables, and all those other random bits and pieces.

STEM CHALLENGES FOR REAL WORLD LEARNING

Scientists and engineers and designers all use different ways to study the world around them. This is exactly what these quick STEM activities are intended to provide for your young scientists and engineers! Many valuable, real world lessons come from working on simple STEM projects.

Don't let STEM intimidate you! Your kids will AMAZE you with their thinking power and creativity when it comes to problem solving. Often they have much better answers then we do! These hands- on STEM challenges combine the right amount of play with critical thinking to truly engage any kid.

Not only are these STEM activities amazing for academic success, they provide an amazing opportunity for social skills practice. Working together, problem solving and planning, to come up with solutions is perfect for kids because it encourages interaction and cooperation with peers.

Even if you set up a junk maker space for free time projects, observe kids coming together to build creations. STEM builds confidence, cooperation, patience, and friendships!

Click below to get your quick and easy STEM challenges.

FUN STEM CHALLENGES!

The first 5 quick STEM activities below are included in the printable pack, but you will also find a few more fun ideas to add to your STEM time. All of these quick STEM activities and challenges can start with designs on paper.

1. Design and Build a Catapult

There are a variety of materials and methods you can use for building a catapult!

CHECK OUT>>> Popsicle Stick Catapult

2.  Build a Boat That Floats

Option 1

We have two ways you can go about this challenge! One is to dig into your recyclables (and non-recyclables) and build a boat that floats. Set up a tub of water to test them when everyone is finished.

You can take it further by testing their ability to float under weight! Try a soup can. Will your boat float while holding a soup can.

Option 2

Alternatively, you can give each kid a square of aluminum foil to build a strong boat that floats. Go ahead and test your boat with added weight too. Remember to pick one type of item like pennies to test the flotation of the boat. Otherwise you will have inaccurate results because you can't compare the results.

3.  Design a Paper Bridge

This quick STEM activity uses a couple of stacks of books, pennies, paper, and a couple pieces of tape. Challenge your kids to build a paper bridge that spans the gap between two stacks of books. Test the weight of the bridge with pennies.

Additionally, you can challenge the kids to make bridges out of similar sized material like aluminum foil, wax paper, cardstock etc. This is a fun way to extend the STEM activity for older kids too.

4. Egg Drop STEM Challenge

Another great STEM activity that uses whatever you can find for materials.  Here's one of our recent egg drop challenge designs! Where's the egg? Did it break?

FIND OUT>>> Egg Drop Project

5. Build a 100 Marshmallow Tower

Do you love STEM building challenges? They make for a quick STEM challenge or a long STEM challenge depending on the time you have available. Plus there are so many materials you can use. Here we have added the 100 item challenge to the mix.

CHECK OUT>>> THINGS TO BUILD

6. Build a Car That Goes

There are a few ways you can go about this challenge with a group of kids and it really depends on the time available and level of difficulty you want! If you have confident builders sending them to design their own cars that move may be the way to go!

If you have less time or less confident builders, providing the means for the "go" might be more helpful. For example, building a balloon car might be a good choice. Or have the kids brainstorm as a group how they want to make a car "go". It could be as easy as setting up a fan or arubber band car.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: 12 Self Propelled Car Projects

7. Design a Marble Run or Paper Roller Coaster

You can set this challenge up for whatever your space and time allow.  Make a marble run from LEGO or build your own marble run wall. Why not try a 3D paper roller coaster kids can build on the top of a table. This is where your stash of cardboard tubes comes in handy.

CHECK OUT>>> Pool Noodle Marble Run Wall or Cardboard Marble Run

8. Set Up a Balloon Rocket STEM Activity

Challenge the kids to have balloon rocket races from one end of the room to the next. You can see how we set up a simple balloon rocket along with some other fun physics activities for kids.

9. Explore Pushing and Pulling Forces

This is perfect for exploring forces with young engineers. Build ramps and test objects. Explore what happens when one object pushes into another object or when two objects collide. How does speed and direction change with different forces? Observe what happens when bigger pushes or pulls are exerted on an object

10. Build A Pulley System

Fill a bucket with heavy material and see how easy it is for the kids to lift. Have them imagine trying to then lift that bucket way up high. How would they do it more easily? A pulley system of course!

CHECK OUT>>> DIY Pulley System

Challenge the kids to build a homemade pulley system to move objects like marbles from the ground to table level. Toilet paper tubes come in pretty handy. Add some string and plastic cups.

11. Rube Goldberg Machine

Combine some fun things you've learned about forces into a STEM challenge where a ball has to travel a path in order to knock down items at the end (a very simplified Rube Goldberg Machine). You can incorporate ramps and even a mini pulley system!

12. Be an Architect for the Day

You can challenge your kids to design and build a creative structure that solves a problem such as a dog house to keep Fido cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Incorporate planning and design and then build models using found materials from your stash.

Check out this fun architecture idea >>> Three Little Pigs STEM

13. WHAT MELTS ICE FASTEST?

What can you do with ice to meet STEM requirements? You will find 3 simple STEM projects to effectively explore ice and states of matter at home or in the classroom.

CHECK OUT>>> Ice Melting Experiments

First, don't forget… your free printable quick STEM activities.

Click below to get your quick and easy STEM challenges.

QUICK STEM ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS

For more easy science experiments and STEM projects click here or on the image below!

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