Nothing is harder than trying to create content from scratch, decide on materials, build culture, create a cohesive year and align to standards. I only had 40-60 minutes with these students and so many ideas to teach! Grab your STEM planner to start planning your year. Organize your STEM Ideas, STEM projects and STEM activities for kids.
I remember for years I was teaching STEM alone with barely any curriculum to go off of. I was trying to do too much in a short amount of time. Class was hectic, I was exhausted and I never felt like true learning was happening.
Things felt chaotic and time felt wasted.
I put together The Ultimate STEM Planner to organize my content by quarter, break lessons down by the month and plan ahead when it came to materials.
Grab your planner below!
Break the Year Into Quarters
Breaking the year intro quarters helps gain a larger perspective on how the year will flow. It takes away the unknown and the dreaded feeling of not knowing what to plan. Breaking the year into quarters also helps with STEM standard alignment, activity planning and material planning.
Decide on Monthly Themes and/or Activities
Now that the year has been broken off into quarters you can decide how you will start teaching STEM activities for kids. Will it be thematic? Will it be standard aligned? Will you include monthly themes? You can long term plan which themes or ideas you will teach and start planning materials ahead of time.
Break the Month Into 4 Parts
When organizing your STEM challenges it’s important to note that you do not need to do a STEM challenge each time you meet your students. In fact I highly discourage doing a STEM challenge each and every class session. Wait an equal amount of time towards planning, researching and reflecting. You will burn yourself out and your students out if they are expected to build each and every class. If you are able to space your STEM challenges out the next part falls into place.
Creating new STEM activities for kids across 4-5 different grades levels was at times brutal. I was scrambling for materials and felt utterly horrible by the amount of wasted materials required for building their STEM challenges. It all felt off. After I broke my lesson planning down into yearly quarters I was able to long term plan what materials were required for STEM challenges over the course of 3-4 months. The end result was i was able to be a lot more purposeful and less wasteful.
Looking for More STEM Activities for Kids
Make sure to head over to my Tpt store for loads of STEM projects, STEAM ideas and STEM activities for kids.
