Inspirational Steam ideas for primary

Creative challenges and tricky investigations designed to expand pupils' minds and promote enquiry

It's always worth making the time to try out some Stem and Steam challenges with your class. And why wouldn't you? Not only do these projects give learners a chance to stretch themselves, but they also encourage critical thinking and team work.

To help you get started, we’ve hand-picked a collection of innovative activities that will test learners’ skills, while injecting some cross-curricular fun into the classroom.

Whole school resources

Ideal for all ages, this comprehensive booklet* offers a wealth of thought-provoking worksheets and stimulating activities in the form of practical experiments and creative design work.

Engaging activities

Using this template, help students to investigate the basics of aerodynamics by making their own air rocket and experimenting with the factors that affect the distance it will travel. Or, watch learners get to grips with magnetism in this simple task, in which pupils try to guide a range of objects around a maze they've drawn on a plastic bottle.

Inspired by the story of The Three Little Pigs, this well-designed pack* challenges your class to build houses that can’t be blown down by the mean wolf, or, in this case, your hairdryer!

In-depth investigations

Older learners are guaranteed to relish the opportunity to practice critical thinking in this creative activity*, which gets them designing a catapult using their knowledge of angles and ratio.

Introduce pupils to the classic egg drop challenge and task them with creating a structure within a specified budget using this illustrated resource pack. Twist it up a bit with this alternative space-themed version, giving students more time to learn from and improve upon their designs.

Quick links

*This resource is being sold by its author

For even more inspiration, check out our brand new Steam hub, full of project ideas organised by both phase and subject.

This post was originally published on 3 March 2017, and was refreshed on 13 June 2017.