The holiday season is almost upon us! We thought we would do a #STEAM flavoured version of the Advent calendar for all of y’all to celebrate… whether you love all things Christmas, or you don’t celebrate it at all, here are TWELVE awesome holiday-themed STEAM activities for your tamariki to sink their teeth into!
Most of these are from our Kaiako Wharenui, which is our jam-packed digital repository full of lesson plans for all our rawe kaiako (awesome teachers) Aotearoa-wide.
If you are a parent, don’t despair, you’ll be able to do all these activities too! All the programs mentioned below are free, or they are offline resources.
Day 1: Blast off!
Construct a rocket!
Day 2: Minecraft Education
Take an hour and learn some coding with Minecraft: Education Edition
Day 3: Values-based Games
Make some games rooted in the values of you, your whānau and your community
Day 4: LED Greeting Cards
Make a greeting card that lights up!
Day 5: Gravity Free Water
Defy gravity with SCIENCE
Day 6: Sort me!
What is a parallel sorting network? How do computers sort data?
Day 7: Santa’s Binary Challenge
Psst Santa has a secret!
Day 8: Find the Toys!
Make a Christmas Find the Toys Animation in Scratch
Day 9: Animate a character
Animate yourself or a Kirihimete image using Piskel
Day 10: Hour of Code
Learn how to code in just one hour!
Day 11: Design a snowflake
Let’s learn all about snowflakes!
Day 12: Make a comic strip
Illustrate your favourite Christmas Carol