For most people, summertime means outdoor activities: sports, swimming, playing at the park, and so forth. But when winter comes around, we tend to hunker down inside our homes. Sure, as a kid, I still spent some time outside in the winter, building snowmen, sledding, and having snowball fights, but there were always winter days that were just too cold to enjoy outside.

Being inside didn’t usually hamper activity for me and my siblings. Rather, it tended to bring out our creative side. We played the typical board games as well as hide-and-seek and other kids’ games, but the games I remember the most are the ones we created ourselves: handball (with a pair of socks), indoor hockey (repurposing ski poles and my sister’s plastic doll plates), and marble runs or Rube Goldberg-type contraptions.

Outside of the Rube Goldberg contraption building, though, most of the things we did to kill time indoors didn’t really teach us much. And some could be downright destructive (RIP to my sister’s doll plates and some of Mom’s lamps). If you’re looking for something more productive than destructive, here are some ideas that might help keep everyone sane – and safe!

TAG Ideas

Two of our Teacher Advisory Group (TAG) members shared some great ideas for winter/indoor STEM activities.

• Sending ice . . . to the North Pole? One year, Susan Gaboriau, technology integration specialist for the Putnam County (FL) School District, had her fifth-grade students pair up with students from a school up north to exchange ice/a snowball. “The students had to design something that would keep the ice/snowball from melting,” she explained. “It really took a lot of thinking on their part!”
  

• Make races a learning experience – Gaboriau also likes to have her students make cars and use technology to track the cars’ time and speed, getting the students to use STEM while also having fun.
• Hands-on astronomy – Lisa Lewis, gifted intellectual instructor at Lafayette Upper Elementary, VA, currently has her third graders, who are learning about space and constellations, creating robot mazes and making flying comets from foil and paper. (See her PowerPoint for instructions). “They email [their mazes] to me and I share the bot tracing their mazes,” she said.
  
  However, Lewis also strongly believes in student-created, open-ended STEM projects. “I believe that they should be encouraged to use an engineering notebook and to use and create task cards,” she explained. To that end, she also has her students drawing constellations in their notebooks and adding the names and temperatures of the stars. (See Lewis’ idea for a student-created engineering and STEM notebook.)

STEM and the Arts

The idea of keeping a notebook introduces another great indoor pastime: writing. Writing in a notebook or journal, or even writing and sending letters, is a good way for students to practice their language arts skills. By asking them to choose the appropriate size of envelope, teaching them about different kinds of stamps or the history of the American postal system, or explaining how STEM keeps mail moving, you can bring STEM and history into the mix. Add art, and you’ve got a cross-curricular activity that can be fun for all ages. Most students have grandparents, aunts, or uncles who would love to receive handwritten letters and homemade drawings and creations. And, if no such relative exists, letters and art projects can be sent to senior citizens in nursing homes or those stuck at home by themselves. 

Better yet, have students create and send Christmas cards! Or, put a spin on it and have them make New Year's greetings cards. Holiday mail is always fun to send and receive, and it's the perfect way to combine letter writing, art, spatial awareness, and other STEM skills! Need some inspiration? See below:

And for even more indoor STEM ideas, check out our Pinterest boards or STEM Anywhere page!

Resources:

• “Aries and the Comet” PowerPoint
• Engineering & STEM Ticket Notebook 
• “Transportation in America’s Postal System”