Check out PLTW's 2019 STEM Gift List!

Some PLTW teachers around the country gave their recommendations for great STEM gifts. 

Click here for the gift list!

(I personally love GoldiBlox products and Sphero mini! Really fun and relatively inexpensive.)

Third Grade: Forces and Simple Machines

Grade 3 students have been studying forces, simple and compound machines, and magnets. They will use all of this knowledge when they build a compound machine using VEX kits to solve the real-world problem of rescuing a (plastic toy) tiger who fell in the moat at a zoo!

                            Using 3D software and working as a group to build a pulley.

Exploring levers at centers. 

Designing and building a compound machine

                                        Exploring how magnets interact with other magnets

Explaining how their compound machine works in a video

Exploring what happens when magnets are brought close to iron filings