Hands-On January STEM Activities for the Classroom

If you’re looking for hands-on January STEM activities to use in your classroom this January, you’ve come to the right place! These STEM activities for January are creative, fun, and perfect for elementary kids and freezing temperatures.

Check out the list of January STEM activities, but first, make sure you have everything you need to get started before you plan your activities and grab your FREE January STEM activity prompts as part of your winter STEM activities for kids!

Creative Janauary STEM Activities

Grab your FREE set of STEM activities for January! These January STEM activities are so much fun for the start of the year!

Supplies for January STEM Activities

Make sure you have everything you need for your January STEM challenges before getting started!

The Mason Jar Scientist: 30 Jarring STEAM-Based Projects Ball Regular Mouth Mason Jars with Lids and Bands, 16-Ounces (4-Pack)Crisco Pure Vegetable Oil, 32 Ounce Barbasol Soothing Aloe Thick & Rich Shaving Cream 10 Oz (2 Pack)Alka-Seltzer PFY BXAS50 80659297 Antacid and Pain Relief Medicine, Two-Pack (Pack of 50)Kadaon 10X Handheld Magnifier Antique Mahogany Handle Magnifier Reading Magnifying Glass for Reading Book, Inspection, Coins, Insects, Rocks, Map, Crossword Puzzle BORAX 20 Mule Team Laundry Booster, Powder, 4 Pounds Fine Ground Celtic Sea Salt – (1) 16 Ounce Resealable Bag of Nutritious, Classic Sea Salt, Great for Cooking, Baking, Pickling, Finishing and More, Pantry-Friendly, Gluten-Free McCormick Assorted Food Color, 1 Fl Oz (Pack of 1)Food Coloring – 12 Color Vibrant Cake Food Coloring Set for Baking, Decorating, Fondant and Cooking – Upgraded Liquid Concentrated Icing Food Color Dye for Slime Making, DIY Crafts – .25 fl. oz. Each 30% Pure Vinegar – Home&Garden (1 Gallon)Arm & Hammer Pure Baking Soda, 5 lb Argo Corn Starch 16 oz. Box (Pack of 4)

January STEM Activities for Kids

In the free set of Janauary STEM challenge cards, you’ll get eight STEM challenge prompts that provide open-ended STEM exploration perfect for elementary STEM centers. Find more fun STEM activities for kids here.

But if you want to expand on these simple challenge cards, you’ll want to get teh full January STEM challenges pack!

This set of STEM challenges includes 8 STEM challenges with supply lists, instructions, worksheets, and lesson guide.

Get the complete January STEM pack here!

Keep reading to see what experiments are included!

January STEM Challenges for Elementary

It’s January, which can be borning and not that fun of a month, but it will be a lot more fun with these January STEM challenges!

Build an Ice Cube Tower

We like learning with ice, and making an ice cube tower is a fun STEM activity that is perfect for January.

You can discuss how ice was used as the original refrigerators and how ice was preserved and kept cool before freezers were invented.

Build an Igloo from Sugar Cubes

This classic engineering activity is so much fun in elementary. Practice building igloos using sugar cubes and help kids learn how to build a round shape with a square object.

January STEM Projects for Elementary Kids

Make a Snowball Shooter from a Plastic Cup

You don’t need any fancy supplies to make this happen! Snowball shooters are a fun way to explore physics and math at the same time all while developing engineering and building skills.

Make Fizzing Ice Cubes

WIth the right ingredients, kids can make fizzing ice cubes powered by a chemical reaction.

This is one of our favorite January STEM activities!

If you don’t have access to a freezer, try making fizzing snowflakes as demonstrated in the video below.

Make Snow Cones

Who doesn’t love a good snow cone?

If you don’t have any clean snow, you can crush up ice to make snow cones, or you can make ice cream in a bag instead!

Ice Cube Color Mixing

Dye water blue, red, and yellow and freeze it in ice cubes. Use the freezing cubes to made secondary colors and any color of the rainbow you can think of!

This January STEM activity is even more fun if you can do it in a bed of snow! It reminds me a lot of our ice scrabble game that we made a few years ago.

Ice Suncatcher

For this activity, kids can try out their design skills to create a unique ice-based suncatcher to hang outside in freezing weather!

Even if it’s not freezing where you live, hanging the suncatchers and watching them melt is a good science demonstration on how sunlight makes things melt faster.

Melt Ice with Salt

When you melt ice with salt, you can make frost in a jar! Or you can do it on a tray and find out about the science of how salt helps ice melt faster.

Bonus: Crystal Snowflakes

This isn’t included in the January STEM activity set (but it is included in the winter STEM activity card set!), but we love making crystal snowflakes so much we had to include it in this list.

Go here to get the directions to make borax crystal snowflakes.