STEM!  Index Card Towers

STEM activities are one of the most requested activities in my classroom.  They don’t take a huge amount of time (40 minutes or so), and you don’t need a ton of materials.  Today they used up to 100 index cards and a yard of masking tape.  They could cut their index cards and they could put them together in any way they think will benefit their tower.  The goal:  build the tallest index card tower possible in the time given.

Here are some things I heard as I walked around the room:

“I need to get more support beams on this side.”

“Triangles are strong.”

“Secure it!  Secure it!”

“Make our tape last!”

“Structure.  That’s key.”

“Check out our base!”

“We need to angle it, for strength.”

Brilliant.  Your kids are amazing.

These activites aren’t easy.  They are asking them to do something in a fairly short amount of time, and work with one another.  It’s hard!  I love how they talk with one another and am always curious to see who comes up with clever ideas and how they all respond if their structure fails.