These activities are courtesy of Science Buddies. You can find the direct link page here.

May the 4th Be with You

In celebration of May the 4th (okay, so there really isn't a "celebration" on that day), I suggest doing a Star Wars OR Space-themed project. The below list came from Science Buddies, a STEM website. Pick one of the activities - or ANY space activity you want - and then show me what you did/discovered/learned in your Digital Science Notebook in Book Creator. Take a photo, draw a picture, put in some text. Click on the links in bold for more details. If you want to simply learn about a planet and include planet facts and pictures or drawings, that is okay too. Maybe you want to observe the night sky, constellations, the moon, and what planets you can locate.

15 Simple Activities with a Star Wars Spin

1. Build a Paper Airplane Launcher: TIE fighters…. X-wing…. no matter what variety of starfighter you like most, this airplane launcher activity is an easy tie-in. (Lesson Plan available)

2. Build a Gumdrop Geodesic Dome: the desert planet of Tatooine where Luke Skywalker grows up is spotted with dome-shaped structures. (This activity was recently featured in our Doing Science at Home series, too, with a geometry focus)

3. Colorful Patterns in Melting Ice: Hoth is an ice planet. Remember when Luke was frozen to the ceiling upside down? Explore the structure of ice — and ice melting — in this colorful activity.

4. How Does a Hovercraft Hover?: landspeeders and hovercraft appear in many places in Star Wars. In this activity, kids make a simple hover-inspired vehicle using a balloon and CD.

5. Oobleck: A Recipe for a Mesmerizing Mixture: there are numerous quicksand (or mucksand) pits in the saga. Exploring the non-Newtonian characteristics of Oobleck is a great opportunity for tactile fun with colloids.

6. How to Make Slime: Jabba the Hutt brings icky slime to mind. Slime is simple to make, but it's a great chance for kids to experiment with the formula to make slime with specific characteristics. What will their Jabba the Hutt-inspired slime be like? (Lesson Plan available)

7. Circus-Trick Science: How to Balance Anything and Balance the Forces Within a Mobile: bringing balance to the Force is a big part of the Star Wars storyline. These activities are about using physics to make things balance (literally). You could also use light and dark objects on each side of your balancing activities to see if you can use STEM to bring things into perfect, balanced harmony!

8. How to Harvest Water from Fog: moisture farms on Tatooine use "vaporators" to harvest moisture from the air. Kids can explore similar concepts in this activity.

9. Build a Robot Hand: Luke ends up with a cybernetic hand in the movie arc, but fixing robots and droids is also a recurring theme. In this activity, experiment with making and using a simple robot hand. (This activity was recently featured in our Doing Science at Home series.)

10. Candy Waterfalls: Can Candy Flow Like Water?: garbage pits and compactors involve piles and piles of trash and recycling (sorted along the way). In this activity, kids explore what circumstances make it possible for a material to flow like water. For an engineering design challenge on sorting, see the Marble Machine project. For a lesson plan about using magnets to create a sorting machine, see Build a Recycling-Sorting Machine.

11. Build a Rubber Band-Powered Car and Build a Wind-Powered Car: there are many kinds of vehicles in the Star Wars saga. Designing vehicles for different terrain and using various means of power is good practice for thinking about engineering to meet the needs of specific locations.

12. Creating Craters: with so many planets to explore, a crater-making activity is always a good fit. This one can be messy, but it's a great opportunity for a cool, slow-motion video, too!

13. Mars Rover Obstacle Course: Han Solo beat the odds when navigating the Millennium Falcon through the Hoth asteroid field. He was at the controls, but you can simulate the course by giving someone else directions and seeing if you can guide them through a tricky maze.

14. Robot, Make Me a Sandwich!: what are your favorite robots in Star Wars? Most of the droids operate based on their programming. In this activity, students practice thinking through and giving step-by-step directions for performing a task.

15. The Bouba-Kiki Effect: there are many races and languages in the Star Wars series. This activity is a simple way to explore how people make associations between sounds and shapes — and to think about communication.

Get Inspired with STEM Videos

I included some of the videos for the activities here. If you click on the bold activity titles, they will take you to individual page with more details.

STAR WARS ORIGAMI & ART AT THE BOTTOM!

Advanced Star Wars Videos for Older Students. Click here.