Winter break is the best time to curl up with a mug of hot cocoa and a good book, but there’s always planning to be done for 2018. What’s the best way to combine those activities? Reading one of these great books to gather ideas for STEM activities in the coming year. Check out why these are our top five picks:

1. The Big Book of Makerspace Projects: Inspiring Makers to Experiment, Create, and Learn by Colleen and Aaron Graves

Two school librarians put together this spectacular collection of creative activities. Page through 12 chapters of projects using everything from popsicle sticks to smartphones to 3D Printers. Our personal favorite? Project 7, a Balloon Hovercraft! With 51 projects in all, plus a challenge project for every chapter, this book is chock full of inspiration for your classroom — or even your free time before heading back to school!

2. The Way Things Work Now by David Macaulay

This volume, an updated version of the author’s previous work, The Way Things Work and The Way Things Work Now, explores today’s technology and new inventions, and explains the science behind them. What’s especially cool is that Macaulay explores the technological links between seemingly unrelated products to highlight the engineering principles that unify them! Break out this book to spark your students’ curiosity to kick off STEM activities, such as research projects.

3. The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

With its earliest publication date back in 1997, this is an oldie but a goodie. Enzensberger’s novel teaches important math concepts with through the dreams of a young boy named Robert, accompanied by wild, fun illustrations. The Number Devil is super helpful and entertaining for kids, and you’ll enjoy the read, too! It can inspire countless great activities. Maybe have students get creative and explain a STEM concept as if it were one of Robert’s dreams!

4. The Lego Ideas Book by Daniel Lipkowitz

Ah, the most timeless of toys. There will be tons of new Lego sets coming to kids this holiday season — especially with the new Star Wars movie coming out. (Who’s excited? Nobody more than us!) Open up your kids’ creativity with new ways of using the plastic bricks they’re so familiar with. Maybe you’ve got that big box of random Legos in your classroom? This book will help you turn them into a great engineering and design activity. Sounds like a blast!

5. Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age by Kurt Squire

Check out this book for a deep dive on the extraordinary power of digital games as educational tools. Squire’s work covers highly important, innovative material that will help you understand the future of digital gaming in education, and why it has so much potential. One of the most interesting topics is Squire’s look at how competition, participation, and failure stimulate learning. The book also features case studies on specific learning games, so you can see if they might be a good fit for your class!

We hope you find some inspiration for STEM activities this holiday season. If you do, share your class’s projects with us on social media — we’d love to see them!

Our new NGSS White Paper offers a comprehensive look at the new science standards and the challenges they present to educators on a district, school, and classroom level. The paper seeks to provide a knowledge baseline for educators who are just starting to grapple with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

The main ideas covered include science and engineering principles (SEPs), crosscutting concepts (CCCs), and Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), and resources to help teachers adapt. The paper then addresses some of the challenges that teachers may face as they implement in the classroom.

Finally, the NGSS white paper offers a series of resources to help teachers look for content and methods to bring the standards to their classroom. These resources are independent of the 90 lessons and thousands of games and assessment items on the Legends of Learning platform that map directly to the NGSS’s middle school DCIs.

“For me, the hardest part of implementing NGSS has been that at times I feel like the standards ‘gloss over’ certain topics. Then [I] dive straight into others in a lot of detail,” said April Thompkins, a Legends of Learning Ambassador. “Sometimes when I feel like if I follow the standards as they are written (with the instructional boundaries/limits), my students might not have the background they need. [It’s hard] to learn new material later in the year or in the next grade level.”

Kristin Wajda, another Legends of Learning Ambassador, voices this concern: “I know some teachers that just use the same activities each year because its [sic] easier. With the new NGSS curriculum, I’m hoping that teachers will embrace the change and create new experiences for their students.”

Interested parties can download the NGSS white paper here.