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I teach at a regular old high school, a very small high school and am really interested in implementing more engineering type STEM projects/activities. . . But I have no idea how to approach it. Physics seems to take care of itself-rube goldberg machines, musically accurate instruments from scratch, Mindstorm bot challenges . . . But what about chemistry? How does one institute good, indepth, extensive, creative projects in chemistry and still cover all the expected topics? What types of projects are there? Thoughts from any of you masters?

I had my 9th graders on a field trip to the University of Maryland College Park's engineering dept a few years ago and they made their own lip gloss; looked pretty inexpensive and they got to determine ratios of ingredients.

If you go to the American Chemical Society website--just google it--and click on the Education tab at the top, you will find enought resources to run a class for two years. This site has resources at all skill levels, and has activities/information for all kinds of experiences.

You may want to check out our website, http://www.teachengineering.org There literally hundreds of free engineering and STEM-based lessons and activities that are ready-to-go, and provide all the handouts/instructions/lessons/keys/attachments/etc. that you will need. You can browse the curricula and search by curricular unit, subject area, keyword, and grade level. It's a great way to get started and bring engineering into the classroom without much effort on your part. Hope that helps! Marissa @ TeachEngineering

Marissa, The TE site looks great and will be very helpful to elementary teachers who are struggling to add the engineering piece to their lessons; thanks for sharing

Wow! That TeachEngineering site was awesome! There were a number of really interesting lessons. I have already bookmarked the site and would like to see if I can incorporate some of the lessons into my classroom. Thank you all for sharing the other wonderful resources. I'm a 4th grade teacher and really need to bring more STEM activities into my class. Although I know Meredith started this thread with a question on starting with chemistry specifically, I wouldn't mind suggestions on activities to start younger students with any type of STEM activities. Thanks again for all the wonderful resources and ideas! Mahalo, Jason

One site I have used many times is PBS.Zoom (printables). That is a great site for elementary students because it's very clear and easy to understand and then offers suggestions for extensions and changing variables. Young children really love these activities. They are broken down into various topics and chemistry is one of them. You can also look into DiscoverE, another great site with good ideas. Have fun!! Linda

Just another thought-- we have a BEAMS Club, Boys Exploring and Achieving in Math and Science and our focus is engineering. We will be starting a new five week (once a week meetings) session up in March. The plan is to do the NASA On Target Challenge. I think they will love it. It will take the entire five week period - 45 minutes a session - to complete.This will be very manageable for us to do and it gives them enough time to learn from it, re-evaluate, and re-test. I decided this time to make sure they keep a design notebook / journal and keep up with how their design changes. We also use video clips for them to keep up with changes in their design. It's a lot of fun! Linda

SECME.org also has may great STEM-resources.

I am very impressed with the http://www.teachengineering.org site. I have used bits and pieces of it with my middle school students. The site is well organized, seems to span the grade levels quite well and has a variety of activities that can be used or easily modified for all grade levels. It was easy to spend a lot of time just looking around. I would love to hear how others have used the materials from this site and which they have found to be "wouldn't want to miss these for anything" lessons.

Teach Engineering is AWESOME!