Who doesn’t love a hands-on activity? Most often, the lessons our students remember are the ones that require active participation. This winter-themed STEM lesson on polar bears challenges students to create a blubber glove and offers an interesting way to engage students in learning about winter animals. Our blubber glove activity is a fun way to answer the question, “How do polar bears stay warm?” The answer is fascinating!

Download your free blubber glove polar bear STEM challenge below. In this STEM unit, you will challenge your students to design and create a blubber glove that keeps hands warm in winter! Complete with background information, visual literacy pages, and suggested materials list, this unique nature-themed winter class activities STEM unit will exercise your students’ collaborative problem solving.

Blubber Glove STEM Challenge

Free STEM Unit

Before beginning the polar bear activities STEM challenge, send home a suggested materials list for parents to donate to the classroom. (SignUpGenius is a great way to track who is bringing which item so you don’t get three of the same thing.) Download your free blubber glove STEM lesson for grade 3 from STEM Lessons and Challenges.

1. Build Content Knowledge by reading and discussing science articles about how polar bears keep warm.

• Have students research polar bears, whales, seals, and other arctic animals that stay warm using blubber. Ask them to think about how science, technology, engineering, and math are connected to blubber protection.

2. Visual Literacy: Use visual examples along with reading material to show students polar bear fur anatomy.

3. Blubber Glove STEM Challenge

• Separate students into groups and assign the challenge.
• Look at pictures of arctic and Antarctic animals. Figure out how they stay warm. Think about how science, technology, engineering, and math are used to protect animals like polar bears.
• Blubber Glove Polar Bear STEM Challenge: Make an insulating glove that keeps your hand warm in the cold.
• Brainstorm: In your group, draw one or more design ideas for an insulating glove.

4. Plan: Before starting construction, have students create a plan for their polar bear blubber glove design using their brainstorm ideas. Using the engineering process of plan, create, test, and evaluate, students will systematically create a blubber glove that will keep a hand warm in ice water for three minutes.

5. Redesign: Have students evaluate their blubber glove design. Did it work for three minutes? If it didn’t, how could they change it to function better? Draw a new design and test the results again.

As teachers we often cringe when we plan those creative and engaging lessons, knowing exactly which students will have difficulty following the rules. However, if you think back on the lessons you most enjoyed as a young student, the memories that sparked your investigation, they probably involved creative projects and field trips.

Resources:

The polar bear blubber glove STEM lesson was taken from Evan-Moor’s Stem Lessons and Challenges grade 3. This series is available for grades 1–6.

STEM Lessons and Challenges is an excellent resource for introducing hands-on problem-solving opportunities for students. Each unit includes a hands-on STEM challenge for students to complete. The units include background information, visuals, graphic organizers, and supply lists to make your STEM project simple and easy to execute in the classroom with very little planning involved (a major plus in my book). Every unit includes a redesign element that teaches students to value failure and learn from it. (As teachers, we use this concept daily to improve our teaching.) Incorporate some STEM challenges into your lessons and allow your students to develop collaborative problem solving while learning about the world around them.

For more information on the importance of STEM, read STEM and the Benefits of Failure.

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Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.