STEM Mazes

Ahhh! I just finished our first full week of summer vacay! While this week has been nice and refreshing, I miss my kiddos terribly:/ So, not sure if anyone is still in school or not. I wanted to share this idea if you are, and if you're not and you like it, pin it:)

I introduced this with just a few pics a few posts ago but never talked about it. It's quick and easy and the kids LOVED it! All you need are popsicle sticks, a few shoe box lids, hto glue gun...TEACHER ONLY, and some marbles:)
I put my kids in groups of 4 or 5 to work together. I explained their challenge and then let them plan and have at it.

What we found worked best for us was after they lay the whole thing out and are pretty sure that is the design they want, they use a pencil and trace lines where the sticks are. That makes it so much easier for me (or you, the teacher) when it comes time to glue on the popsicle sticks.

Then just hot glue each of the edges and make the maze. It seems super time consuming but it's not terrible and I only burned myself once:/

Another thing to keep in mind.....give each team the marbles first because we also learned that if they do the layout without the marbles, the "path" may not be wide enough for the marble to fit through.

The kids really have fun designing these. They even may traps and dead ends:)

As with any STEM challenge, I just LOVE listening to them collaborate and plan.

This team even utilized the hole that was already in the lid of the shoe box....clever!!

After they were all glued and each team played with their own mazes, they traded mazes and played some more:)
Hope this is something you can use:) Don't forget to pop back by tomorrow for Monday Made It!!