Bring engaging, hands-on building activities to your classroom or home with this collection of 100 of the Best STEM Challenge Cards. STEM activities are very popular and encouraged throughout many school boards as well as homeschooling communities. They are excellent learning activities that are meaningful and best of all, they’re easy to add to your program.

STEM activities include activities focused on science, math, engineering and technology. The challenges below focus on engineering. A mix of as many of these subject areas is ideal, but it’s easy to add little elements to each challenge to bring in other subject areas.

Kids love to build. Focus their building and give it meaning by giving them an activity card. Along with some building supplies, give kids the freedom to build. One of the great things about STEM challenges is that there is no one solution. Each child may come up with their own building and they can all be right! The focus of a STEM challenge is the process, and learning that happens as they build and test, not the final result.

I’ve included a free sample from the STEM challenge cards at the bottom of the page. Grab your six free cards today to get started to see how easily you can use them.

Printable STEM Challenge Cards

The product includes printable cards in both color and black and white. You can download whichever set works best for you. Each page includes six of the STEM activity cards. Once printed, you can laminate and cut out each of the pages, or just print and cut.

Each challenge can be completed using almost any collection of materials. If you teach, work with kids or have kids in your own home, use materials that you already have on hand. A few ideas include:

• Wooden Blocks
• Popsicle Sticks
• Lego/Plastic Building Blocks
• Magnetic Blocks
• Craft Materials
• Plastic Cups
• Paper Rolls

There is a page with “Tips for Use” within the product. It’s a great resource for getting started and using the cards.

STEM activities don’t have to be expensive. The challenges are made so that you can use any material. One of my favorite ways to set up the activities is to provide children with a variety of materials and they can choose what they want to work with. They pick whichever supply they feel they can build best with.

You can have children look through the cards and choose one that interests them. It’s a great way to increase interest and engagement. There are lots of cards and ideas to choose from. Encourage children to pick a different card each time.

You can limit them to only pick one supply or let them mix materials. They can change their minds and switch their supplies as they build if they need to. Once you have given children their challenge and offered the materials, the rest is up to the kids. Give them as much time as possible to build and create.

Best STEM Challenges

For many of the challenges children are challenged to create something. Remind them that what they make is not expected to look exactly like the item, but does it, or could it resemble it? Encourage them not to get stuck on it physically looking perfect.

As children build, remind them that it is the process that is important. They are not expected to come up with a solution right away. It will take time and mistakes. Their structures will fall and may not work at first. Trying again and making improvements each time is what is important and where the learning happens.

The cards offer a variety of building opportunities. From shapes and other math ideas to a fairy garden and special challenges. One of the challenges that my students enjoyed, that is included in the resource is, “Build something special using exactly 25 pieces“. This was a great challenge where kids had to first count the exact number of pieces, but then also decide on something to create that would use all of the pieces, and no more.

STEM Challenge Extension Ideas

Another great option when preparing the STEM challenges is to have a bin filled with your supplies along with the cards. If you have everything together all you have to do is bring the bin out and kids can start building.

If you want to bring in some math, science and technology to these engineering focused activities it is easy to add it in with simple additions. Have children measure the height or their structure or the weight a creation can hold.

You can add a bit of the scientific process to each challenge by having children think about the challenge before building. Have them predict what will happen, make a hypothesis before testing, and then draw conclusions based on their results. They can test who’s structure was the strongest etc.

You can easily add a bit of technology by having kids take photos of their completed structure or their process. They can record a video of them talking about their experience and showing their creations. Depending on the activity card, they can do research before building for ideas and strategies.

Free STEM Challenge Cards

Grab six free printable STEM challenge cards by clicking the box below. The printable will be available as soon as you subscribe through Grow. Once you subscribe this will you will get the file with the six cards and you will also unlock the other freebies on this site. You will also gain access to the Free Resource Library where you will find over 150 free resources that you can access for free!

This page, of six cards, are also included in the full resource. If you like the freebies then you’ll love the full product! More information about the full product is included below.

To purchase the full set of 100 STEM challenge cards featured above, click the image below for more information and to purchase.