Creative Teaching Made Easy

This Bundle Includes the book " The Day We Asked Why" and the STEM, Career Exploration Challenge and Literacy Connection. "The Day We Asked Why" is a STEM-inspired picture book written by an elementary STEM teacher, that shows how simple questions have led to some of the world’s most important inventions. Each moment highlights a real innovator—or a curious thinker—who noticed a problem, asked a question, and imagined a better solution, ending with today’s students being encouraged to ask wha

This comprehensive book study for The Secret Lake by Karen Inglis is designed to engage students deeply with the novel through a variety of literary activities and comprehension tools. The study includes multiple-choice comprehension questions for all 26 chapters, along with a complete answer key to support educators in quick and effective assessment. Students will explore character traits and development throughout the story, analyze central themes, and engage in compare and contrast activitie

This fun set of 10 posters is designed for robotics labs, STEM classrooms, and competitive VEX teams. Each poster highlights clear rules, expectations, and best practices aligned with the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation’s Student-Centered Policies. Topics include teamwork, safety, equipment care, respectful competition, and core guidelines for success in VEX IQ Robotics. The posters serve as daily reminders to help students build responsibility, show good sportsmanship, and kee

Challenge your students analytical and problem solving skills with these hands on place value task cards inspired by STEM. Students will create an architectural design with a number value using place value cubes. Included in your purchase is 36 task cards covering values in the hundreds, an additional set of 36 cards for numbers in the thousands, blank cards for teacher creation, a set of challenge exit ticket cards, and an answer key.

The Day We Asked Why is a STEM-inspired picture book that shows how simple questions have led to some of the world’s most important inventions. As the story unfolds, readers travel through time to see how asking “why” sparked ideas such as the wheel, the printing press, electricity, computers, clean water systems, and inclusive technologies. Each moment highlights a real curious thinker and innovator who noticed a problem, asked a question, and imagined a better solution, ending with today’s stu

The Ask Why? STEM Challenge & Career Exploration activity pages are designed as a comprehensive STEM, CTE, and literacy companion to the book The Day We Asked Why. This resource extends the themes of the story by giving students hands-on opportunities to explore how curiosity, problem-solving, and questioning lead to real-world innovations and careers. Through engineering challenges, career connections, and literacy activities, students move from reading about innovation to thinking and actin

This fun set of 10 posters is designed for robotics labs, STEM classrooms, and competitive VEX IQ teams. Each poster highlights clear rules, expectations, and best practices aligned with the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation’s Student-Centered Policies. Topics include teamwork, safety, equipment care, respectful competition, and core guidelines for success in VEX IQ Robotics. The posters serve as daily reminders to help students build responsibility, show good sportsmanship, an

Help young engineers develop their engineering skills with this digital engineering notebook template designed based on engineering notebook best practices as identified on the VEX IQ competition website found here. This editable digital engineers notebook will guide students through the steps of the engineering design process, and includes suggestions and guiding notations that will help students be successful. The notebook can be used in the classroom as a note booking resource for any long t

Displaying classroom expectations and rules has never been so fun and colorful! Creating these collaborative posters as a group gives students the opportunity to take part in the construction of classroom rules and norms. When all the members collaborate together they are able to utilize the experience, knowledge, and skills of everyone involved to achieve the shared goal. Teaching what collaboration is and highlighting the benefits of collaboration will help students become better individual pr

This printable STEM and Design Thinking-themed bulletin board border set features bright, cheerful designs with playful science, technology, engineering, and math icons like gears, microscopes, rulers, and rockets. Its colorful patterns add a fun and engaging touch to any STEM classroom display, making learning spaces inviting and inspiring. Print on card stock and/or colored paper for a lasting personal touch. 4 strips = length of standard bulletin board trim.

Failing forward means using what you learn from failures, mistakes, or unexpected results as a tool to support learning. In this activity, students will participate in a short book study of Made by Maxine by Ruth Spiro. Students will then go through the engineering design process to design, build, test, and evaluate a weight bearing tower. Students are asked to identify their favorite FLOP as an opportunity to highlight the importance of learning from failure. By encouraging students to identi

Want to embed more STEM & PBL style challenges into your classroom but struggle with the organization of groups/teams? How do you ensure everyone is participating and there is not fighting over tasks? How can you accomplish those longer projects while ensuring students are developing those 21st century skills like collaboration, critical thinking, and communication? Group Roles designed to highlight those 4C skills! This tool is designed to help assign roles for all members of a STEM or PBL

In this creative and open-ended STEM activity, students will draw inspiration from the world around them to design an original tool, gadget, or improvement for something they already use every day—at home, school, or play. Rather than solving a teacher-given problem, students will use their own knowledge, experiences, and skills to identify something they wish was easier, better, or more fun, and then invent a product or improvement for it. This activity encourages students to express their uniq

This STEM Challenge helps students strengthen both STEM and SEL skills in an open-ended challenge that mirrors real-life problem solving, just like the creative and resilient Problem Solving Ninja! Designed as a companion STEM activity for the book "Problem Solving Ninja" Ninja Life Hacks. In this creative STEM lesson, students will design and build a rescue ramp to help a “stranded toy” (small figure or marble) safely reach the ground from a tabletop “cliff.” Students must plan, test, and mo

In this imaginative STEM challenge, students will become mini-inventors as they brainstorm and create a “Handy Helper” — a simple machine or device that solves a real-world classroom problem (e.g., organizing pencils, holding a book open, picking up dropped items, or turning pages). Inspired by Innovative Ninja’s out-of-the-box thinking, students will apply creative problem solving and the engineering design process using everyday materials. Students may work individually or in small groups of

Labeling Engineering Notebooks can be a challenge for young learners and early readers. As students design and build prototypes utilizing VEX GO, drawing designs and labels diagrams becomes increasingly important. Utilizing this resource will assist early readers as they engage in the design process using VEX GO construction pieces.

In this hands-on STEM challenge that includes a short study of the Engineer Ninja by Mary Nhin (Ninja Life Hack book series), students take on a mini-engineering mission using simple materials. Inspired by Engineer Ninja’s persistence and problem-solving mindset, students will work through the Engineering Design Process to complete their quick-build challenge. The challenge is designed to promote:Creativity: Students brainstorm and sketch original designs using basic materials. Critical Thinki

Displaying classroom expectations and rules has never been so fun and colorful! Creating these collaborative posters as a group gives students the opportunity to take part in the construction of classroom rules and norms. When all the members collaborate together they are able to utilize the experience, knowledge, and skills of everyone involved to achieve the shared goal. Teaching what collaboration is and highlighting the benefits of collaboration will help students become better individual pr

Students will practice computational thinking and programming patterns in this unplugged activity. Students will create algorithms to move their diver to different layers of the ocean to study animals that live there. This activity can be used in connection with an ocean unit. Multiple levels of play encourages students to challenge their computational thinking and expand upon their computer science knowledge.

Encourage reading and literacy with this fun and interactive way to review reading skills while students work with a fiction book of choice. Project reviews literary elements, main idea, genre, plot summary, conflict resolution, point of view, parts of a book, etc. Be sure to check out our Non-fiction Reading Fair Project too.