Full Year of STEM Activities from Tied 2 Teaching {Product Review}

We are a science loving family. I’ve recently been trying to figure out how to incorporate more STEM projects into our homeschooling, because I like to encourage critical thinking and problem solving. Enter Tied 2 Teaching and their STEM Activities, Full Year of Challenges with Close Reading. A full year’s worth of STEM activities? Without me having to come up with them myself? Join me as I share our review of this product and learn why I think this is a must have for any homeschooling family or co-op leader!

About the Product

Tied 2 Teaching was created by a teacher who is a passionate believer that learning should be fun and that students learn best in an environment they enjoy! One of the best ways this occurs is when students work in an environment where they are encouraged to explore, create and try new things. Combining subjects is an excellent way for this to happen, and when you can combine Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM),
you’ve got a winner! The FULL YEAR STEM BUNDLE includes MORE THAN 70 STEM DESIGN CHALLENGES from the STEM with CLOSE READING series. Each challenge is able to be incorporated into any curriculum by providing you with text dependent questions which go with a reading passage—and then a fun STEM activity.

This collection provides a FULL YEAR of STEM activities, and while you can mix and match them however you want, the creator has also bundled them together by month for your reference and ease of use!

Here is a list of the first four month’s bundles so you can see the wide range of activities…

January STEM Challenge Bundle with Close Reading

100th Day of School STEM Challenge - SPAGHETTI TOWER Design Challenge
Marshmallow Snowman Challenge
CIVIL RIGHTS MONUMENT Design Challenge
Sled Design Challenge

February STEM Challenge Bundle with Close Reading

Valentines Day STEM Challenge - Cupid's Bow Design
Groundhog Day STEM Challenge - Groundhog Burrow Design Challenge
Valentines STEM Challenge - Love Bug Design Challenge
Presidents Day STEM Challenge - Lincoln's Cabin Challenge

March STEM Challenge Bundle with Close Reading

St. Patrick's Day STEM Challenge - Build a Leprechaun Trap
Basketball Tower STEM Challenge
St. Patrick's Day STEM Challenge - Build a Rainbow Bridge
New Hat for Cat Challenge Read Across America STEM

April STEM Challenge Bundle with Close Reading

Jelly Bean Tower Challenge
Easter STEM Challenge Design a Carrot Carriage
Earth Day STEM Challenge - Design Something Useful
Earth Day STEM Challenge - Upcycled Birdhouse

and sooo much more!

The entire collection comes in a zip file which can be opened up on Google Drive for storage and convenience. Because the product is digital, you can print as many copies as you need for your students.

Our Thoughts on the Product

While we did do a couple challenges from these months, I just picked random other challenges from the entire collection that I knew would interest my boys. At this time, we’ve done 9 of the challenges working through about one challenge per week. I have plans to incorporate more as the year continues—and ESPECIALLY during the summer months when we don’t do school, but I do want to keep the brains engaged.

Each unit comes with critical thinking questions based on an online reading passage which can be printed out. These cover an over reaching topic like—making balloon animals, bones, spaceships, UFOs, ect. Once these are completed, you are able to introduce the challenge. The guidelines are clearly laid out, as well as all the materials able to be used to complete it. There are also pictures of real kids and their creations for extra inspiration. The activity includes 4 different sheets which can be printed out and used for the beginning step of thinking and planning, as well as a summary of lessons learned. They are in a few different styles, so you could pick the one that works the best for your students.

samples of the organizer sheets

I’ll be honest—my boys didn’t care a rip about the reading and questions. They sighed and hemmed and hawed through it, just dying to get to the challenge activity. LOL. I think that it’s a great added aspect, but works better more in a class scenario. On the other side, I LOVE the website with all these reading bits and questions! I will be bookmarking it for future use.

But the challenges. Oh how they loved those. I have a HUGE collection of odds and ends, bits and bobs that I save for JUST these kinds of activities. So I brought those out based on the material guidelines for each challenge. The only things I had to buy were the consumable food stuffs—dried spaghetti, marshmallows, jelly beans—things I don’t keep on hand.

Getting ideas of what will work for a zipline carrier

The two favorite challenges were DEFINITELY the zipline and the alien landing craft. Although the bone bridge comes a close third. We would have done the building blocks one had we kept LEGOS on hand at the house, so we may incorporate those later in the year. I like that teach boy can create their OWN projects and try them out. I had to work more with my 8 year old as his brain isn’t as engineering minded as his brothers. But we were able to work together with him taking the lead to great success. I was more of the “hold it there” partner while he attached things.

STEM is definitely right up my oldest son’s alley. He’s got an engineering mind and he quickly assesses the challenges and sketches ideas. He is able to analyze in his mind so many of the “how will you deal with ___” questions even before I ask them. I think he created his zipline challenge in like 5 minutes. LOL.

One thing I found interesting was that my oldest would sometimes tell my youngest “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to work!” and my youngest would insist that it would and persevere.  And his ideas ALWAYS worked, even if they weren’t the way my oldest did something. This was especially true on their landing craft challenge. They each came at it very differently, yet both were 100% successful.

I think these challenges would be a MUST HAVE resource for any parent in charge of science activities at a homeschool co-op. This would give them a YEAR of activities to do—and everything worksheet wise you’d need to go with it! We did the balloon tower at home with the boys, and then enjoyed it so much, we used it for a last minute activity at our OWN co-op when we were short on the number of kids one week. The four kids we had enjoyed splitting into two teams and working through the challenge.

Tip: stale marshmallows work best

Spaghetti Noodle and Marshmallow Towers

Any Cons?

The only con is that this is a HUGE file. But because of Google Drive, I can easily access ONLY what I need for an individual challenge. I would suggest that the challenges be grouped by MONTH bundles instead of alphabetically which is how they are grouped at this time when I open up the file on Google Drive.

Want to Know More?

For the last several weeks, we have been enjoying using the STEM Activities, Full Year of Challenges with Close Reading from Tied 2 Teaching. You have seen some of the activities we have done, but what about other crew members? What activities did they choose to do with THEIR families? Make sure you head over and find out!

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