EiE turns 15 this year, and we’re excited to kick off our 15th anniversary celebration recollecting some of our earliest failures and, of course, triumphs. EiE fans and long-time blog readers will know that one of our most-loved Engineering Habits of Mind is “persisting and learning from failure.” We wouldn’t have made it to where we are today without a few challenges along the way!

The holiday season is the perfect time for cookie exchanges, snowball fights, and—of course—engineering! To get into the holiday spirit, we brainstormed ways to incorporate STEM into seasonal celebrations and came up with these three festive activities. It’s snow joke that this wintry mix isn’t exactly suitable for the classroom, but we hope the results of our festive brainstorming will help brighten a dreary winter day!

This November, the EiE staff decided to take a quick break from daydreaming about mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie to brainstorm new units that would have young engineers designing revolutionary Thanksgiving technologies. Unfortunately, these engineering challenges weren’t quite ready for the prime time. We might need to stop brainstorming holiday ideas cold turkey! We hope you’ll get a kick out of these failed Thanksgiving units.

We love hearing from teachers who integrated the arts into their STEM instruction. STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) activities can enrich student learning by providing learners with different ways to engage with STEM concepts. To support educators who want to incorporate the arts into their STEM instruction, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite examples below.

In September, our founder and director, Christine Cunningham, was invited to participate in “Cracking the Code: The Next Generation of Women in STEM”, hosted by AtlanticLIVE. Alongside other STEM education researchers, corporate leaders, and prolific children’s book author Andrea Beatty, Christine participated in discussions that aimed to answer the question: how do you get more girls and women interested in STEM fields? Christine first noticed the trend of capable women and girls dropping out of STEM fields when her female classmates began disappearing from science classes. She has dedicated her career to battling the misconceptions and stereotypes that keep underrepresented populations out of STEM. Over the course of the day-long event, she shared valuable insights into the lack of female representation in science and engineering that she’s gained over more than a decade at the helm of EiE.