The Joy of Teaching

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Native American and Thanksgiving STEM Challenge

STEM Challenge: Build a Native Shelter

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Native American and Thanksgiving STEM ChallengeThis STEM challenge arrives just in time for Thanksgiving celebrations and fall lessons. Children use their problem-solving skills in a creative way while developing a better appreciation for the challenges that colonists in the New World faced 400 years ago.

Children learn how Native Americans taught colonists to build homes in the 1600s using only what they could find in nature. Children design and build a model version of their own.

Download the STEM challenge unit here.

Duration: approximately 3 hours (can be over several sessions)

Grades: 2–3; Age range: 7–10

  • Background information, challenge guidance, and a list of materials are included.
  • Hands-on activity increases children’s involvement.
  • Collaborative challenge gets children cooperating and communicating.
  • Open-ended format helps all children feel successful.
  • Cross-curricular activity mixes science with social studies and engineering.
  • Higher-order thinking is encouraged as children analyze properties of materials, visualize and draw ideas, apply knowledge to a new situation, problem-solve, and create.

Optional extensions:

Get active! Get some fresh air, exercise, and appreciation for nature by having children help gather materials from a park or forest.

Get expressive! Have children write a story, poem, or skit about colonists building their first home in the New World.

Get inventive! Discuss other items that colonists would have needed to make in order to live, such as clothing, tools, or items for food preparation. Have students make one of these out of natural resources.

For more history activities, see these resources from Evan-Moor:


History Pockets: Life in Plymouth Colony, Grades 1–3


History Pockets: Native Americans, Grades 1–3

For more STEM projects, check out Evan-Moor’s STEM resource, with 15 hands-on STEM units in each grade level:


STEM Lessons and Challenges, Grades 1–6

For additional Native American Activities and Lessons check out:

Native American Activities and Lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers

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Kathy Jorgensen has been an educator most of her life, starting as a peer tutor in second grade and tutoring her way through high school and college. After teaching grades 2 through 12, she spent two decades editing standardized tests. Kathy happily returned to her teaching roots, providing instruction and practice in Evan-Moor’s math and science products. When she’s not polishing words on the page, Kathy is flitting down the dance floor indulging her passion for Scottish country dancing as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher.

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