Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast. I’m your host Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher turned K-5 STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master’s degree in STEM leadership, I’m here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

I’m excited about this episode because we are getting more into STEM Survival Camp and the questions that I have been asked over the years when implementing these challenges because, well, it’s made up from my brain and it’s all the things that I’ve done with students and have a really good time with them and in turn they have a great time too. So, if you want to really dive deep into STEM Survival Camp, you’re really interested in implementing this in your classroom, or maybe you already have and you want more tips and tricks when trying these lessons, you can actually pause this episode, go back and listen to Episode 4. So, all the way back, scroll all the way back to Episode 4. Listen to that first because I actually talk about every single challenge, what it encompasses, and what it’s all about. Then, after you listen to Episode 4, you can then listen to last week’s Episode 212 where I talked to K-5 STEM teacher Bree Smith and how she uses STEM Survival Camp in her classroom and then you can listen to this one.

If you don’t want to do all that, you can listen to this one, go back and do whatever. You do you, boo. One thing that I don’t think I even mentioned in Episode 4 about STEM Survival Camp is, yes, I did mention it talks about the engineering design process, but I really go in heavy on the planning stage because planning goes along with almost every single project that I do in STEM with kids, whether it’s a verbal plan or most likely a plan that they draw.

And so, I really go in heavy on this planning stage, and I actually have a four-star rubric that I use with kids where one is just drawing a picture, two is a picture and labeling, a three-star plan is where kids draw a picture, they label, and then they explain what each part does, and a four is showing multiple views of their invention and explaining what all those parts do. So, I really go in heavy on this planning stage and really push that for kids before they can actually start building. And if you’re like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense.

It helps so much. Trust me, it’s so helpful. This is a great skill for all your projects.

And I finally put this together as a rubric that you can use in your classroom too. It’s all ready to go. I also have a coloring rubric, so if your kids aren’t ready to draw and label quite yet, but they are ready to color, there are rubrics ready to go for you that you can use in your class.

You can just shine them up on your screen, or you can even go get those printed at a place that does large poster printing, like Walgreens. That’s the one close to me. As a quick little recap, if you don’t even know what I’m talking about, STEM Survival Camp is one unit that I created actually during COVID times where I needed the kids to be outside and not sharing materials.

And I was watching the show alone a lot during this time, really got into it. I’m not a big camper. I can camp, but I’m not a big camper as an adult.

I created these challenges based off of that show where every single thing that they do, K through five, it’s a different challenge, and it teaches them some basic survival skills. Now, granted, they’re only here at school, they’re trying it in your classroom, but it does touch on those things that these people in the show do to survive out in the wild. And what’s really fun about these challenges is that they progress over the years.

So if they do one challenge in first grade, they’ll do a different one in second grade, but maybe they learn some skills that they can carry on throughout the year. So it’s pretty exciting that you can kick the year off with these challenges, and they all encompass the engineering design process. So it’s actually a really easy way to introduce the engineering design process in an authentic way.

Really quick, here’s a recap of what all the challenges are. So kindergarten is across the bridge and talks about sinking and floating. First grade is build a fishing pole.

Second grade is protect the food from wildlife in the area. Third grade is to create a game from the land. And you’re like, that has nothing to do with it.

Yes, it does. Because on the show, especially alone, and even if you’re out camping, you usually don’t have access to internet. And so over time, you need to find ways to entertain yourself and maybe create some games.

Fourth grade is hand sewing a hiking backpack, a little prototype of one. And fifth grade is build a shelter to withstand the weather elements. You can literally mix and match if you wanted, but I like having different challenges for different grades.

So it’s a lot of planning at first, but then over the years, it makes it a whole lot easier and the kids aren’t technically repeating anything. So with those challenges in mind, I am going to go through some questions that you guys have had about survival camp over the years. And if you’re watching the video version, I do have my computer with me.

So if I look over, I do have some notes, and I’ll just tell you my experiences about them. First question for the kindergarten cross the river challenge, do I need bubble wrap? I have a lot of other supplies, but not bubble wrap. So with this challenge, I like using bubble wrap only because there’s that element of sinking and floating.

And most likely that’s something that’s been donated to your classroom or something that you collect with different things being shipped to your house or shipped to your school. So that was a material that I had a lot of and implemented as a choice of what kids can choose when building their way for their little toy character to cross the river, but definitely not required. I think in this challenge, because you are using real water, I use buckets of water.

It is good to have things that are waterproof. So bubble wrap, usually waterproof, unless you have the one with paper on the back. But having some different things that can sink, that can float, things that are waterproof, things that are not, having a good variety is great.

So if you don’t have exactly what I list in this challenge, or even all the other challenges, see what you already have. That’s a huge part of STEM. Like I don’t want you to feel like you have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff, especially if you can’t.

So bubble wrap was suggested, but not required. Along with this challenge, the person was asking how are they actually testing their design? So their goal is how can you cross the river safely? I had some little counting bears that the kids would use. So that could be their little character that they can play with.

And it’s so cute to hear the kids play with little bears. I’ve also had, for some reason, someone donated a bunch of little wooden pegs. So I had a set that were black, a set that were blue.

And I use those all the time for lots of different STEM challenges, not just this one, but those can represent people as well. So anything that’s reusable, that can definitely work. Or if you even just printed out a tiny little person, taped it onto a block or a Lego brick, that can make it stand up.

That might actually get wet. So anything that’s reusable for the little character, like I said, a counting bear, you could definitely use that. They’re pretty cheap on Amazon, but you could always ask another teacher in your building and someone might have some that you could probably borrow.

Next question is when first grade goes to catch the fish with their fishing pole, do you give them a time limit? This really depends. Usually the time limit is the time I have them in class. And it’s really fun with the catch the fish challenge because there are different recommendations that I have for making the fish to make them different types of fish, just like real fishing.

And this goes into another question. Someone was asking, how do you attach the magnets? I recommend adding magnets to some of the fish, hole punching, small hole, a small hole on a fish where they can hook it. Some fish have a larger hole punch where it’s a lot easier to catch.

That way kids really have to think about with their fishing pole, how should I design this? And maybe I need to change the hook to catch the other fish. And that actually naturally happens when you have the different fish in your pretend pond or you put the fish, these paper fish, in a bucket or something like that. But in terms of an actual time limit, it’s really just the time we have in class.

And the kids naturally go from testing their fishing pole, trying to catch the fish, to fixing their design, changing out their hooks, trying a different way. Some kids might not catch any fish and they get really frustrated. I’m like, that’s like real fishing.

Trust me. So you just kind of, it’s kind of, that challenge is pretty natural with the testing part of it. So you can set a timer.

I do that anyway for challenges and things that we do. But you can, if you want to be more specific, like you only have 10 minutes to catch fish. You might want longer than that.

They’re going to want to test it and play with it. But you can set a specific timer if you need to. Some people like to do all of these STEM survival camp challenges with kids in groups.

For me, this started during COVID and I actually had kids build individually. But I also kept them building individually because this is the very first thing they are doing in my class. Even if they have known me for over the years, they don’t necessarily know each other.

Their teachers are probably having them do a lot of team building stuff in class, a lot of things together. I eventually will have them work in groups on other things, but I actually keep them individual for these challenges. And here and there, some kids want to naturally work in partners and I’m okay with that.

I don’t really force the groups in any of these STEM survival camp challenges. So this question was asking, did each student in a group for the fishing pole challenge get a chance to bar graph all of their results? Depending on how much time you have with the kids, yes. If you plan it out, you can.

You can share that at the end, maybe share the results the next day, create the graph. With all of these challenges and everything that I create, I try to provide more than enough where you have lots of options to extend the challenge based on the amount of time you have. So really it’s a timing thing and what you do with it.

For second grade, it’s the protect the food challenge. So the kids are creating a prototype to keep their food. It’s like a mini eraser, these tiny pictures of food safe.

So it’s a small one. It’s not like with real animals, it’s small, but it does take some time for them to build. And this person asked in some way, are they just explaining their design? How are they testing it? I just naturally had kids explain their invention.

I like to use Seesaw as a way for them to video record them talking about it. I’m pretty sure in Google Slides, you can still have kids record their voice and insert that into a slide. Or maybe your school has like another platform you want kids to use.

But having them talk about and explain their invention or even just to each other where you do like a museum style in your classroom. So half the kids are explaining, half the kids are listening. But that’s just how they’re testing that design.

And maybe you even have them make different types of animals. So they can make a bear, they could make a squirrel, and they could show how their invention works with all types of animals. So that can help really help them think about that testing piece.

Fourth grade is where they’re sewing a small hiking backpack about the size of their hand. And yes, I teach the kids how to sew, how to hand sew. And if you heard the last episode with Bree, she said I was super intimidated by this, but actually ended up loving it.

And I have videos in there that you can just play on a loop that shows the kids different types of hand stitching stitches. So if you don’t have any experience with that, super easy, really easy to just jump in and get started. I definitely on that one have kids sew those individually.

So if you’re really hoping to do group projects, that one does work better when the kids are working by themselves, just because they are a smaller project. And this last question really goes along with kind of what I said before, the last question is asking, how many class periods did your students work on Build-A-Shelter? So on average, with these challenges, I can sometimes fit these in three days. If I really speed through the imagine and planning stages, three to four days is a great time for this.

I have done the fishing pole challenge in one day, but I already had sticks. I’ve even used popsicle sticks. So if you have more materials prepped, and maybe not so much searching in nature for some of these materials, you can extend it over like three to four days.

One to two can happen. But three to four is ideal if you can make it happen. I will link all of this in the show notes for you.

But if you have any other questions about this challenge or any other challenges, please let me know. Feel free to send me an email or you can send me a message on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of the elementary STEM coach podcast.

I would love to connect with you over on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore or send me an email to elementary STEM coach podcast at gmail.com. Also make sure to check out my website Naomi Meredith.com to see all the show notes from today’s episode and shop my K through five STEM resources. Any questions you have needs for resources or ideas for episodes, get in touch. I’ll talk to you soon.