Easy New Years Eve STEM Activities Kids Will Love To Try!

The week leading up to New Year is perfect for a few quick STEM challenges with a New Year’s Eve theme! You can use what you have from around the house and pick up a few additional supplies at the local dollar store or grocery store to complete these New Years’ Eve STEM Activities. Perfect for New Year activities for elementary to middle school!

Easy New Years Eve STEM Activities for Kids

Enjoy Quick STEM Activities For New Years Eve

Quick STEM challenges and simple science activities are perfect any day of the week, and we think New Year is a great time to try out some fun twists on classic ideas. Check out some fun ways to explore STEM for the upcoming New Year!

We love to add fun theme accessories to make the New Years’ STEM activities feel a bit special. These ideas are just right if you plan a kid’s countdown for New Year’s Eve!

Check out our slime for New Year’s Eve! Did you know slime is chemistry?

You will find that many of these New Years’ Eve STEM activities offer open-ended exploration, which is perfect for kids who love to tinker around. Your engineer, scientist, or inventor will have loads of fun!

STEM is about asking questions, problem-solving, designing, testing, and re-testing ideas! To read more, check out our STEM resources below, which include free printables.

Helpful STEM Resources To Get You Started

Here are a few resources that will help you introduce STEM more effectively to your kiddos or students and feel confident yourself when presenting materials. You’ll find helpful free printables throughout.

Free New Year STEM Challenge Printable NEW!

Get the kids excited for STEM as you ring in the new year with this free New Year’s STEM Challenge printable.

New Year’s Eve STEM Activities

Of course, these ideas also carry over to New Year’s Day! Click on the activities below for complete setup and instructions! Otherwise, you will find fun ideas, supplies, and set-up instructions below.

Word of the Year Binary Code NEW!

Do you and your kids pick a word or words of the year? “Joy”, “Adventure”, “Peace”… Whatever you choose, write it in Binary Code for a fantastic New Year’s STEAM Activity. Turn it into a keychain to keep with you for a secret reminder.

Make Sparkly New Year’s Eve Slime

You saw the video above; now make the slime for New Year’s Eve! Our slime recipes are super easy to make, and even more fun to play with!

Fizzy Confetti Eruptions

Confetti, and a baking soda and vinegar chemical reaction make for exciting New Years science for kids of all ages! Make a bubbly, fizzy version of the adult champagne with a chemical reaction. You don’t want to drink this one!

DIY Confetti Poppers

Have a blast with homemade confetti poppers that offer a bit of simple physics too!

Champagne Glass STEM Challenge

Who can build the tallest tower of plastic champagne glasses? The challenge is on, and all you need is a set of inexpensive plastic champagne glasses or similar. These glasses can also be combined with index cards as part of the challenge. Our New Years Eve tallest tower challenge is always a hit!

Draw A Countdown Ball

If you want to introduce some screen-free coding to the kids and have it double as a simple New Years’ Eve activity, try this coding activity. Learn how to run your program!

Ball Drop STEM Challenge

You can have your kids put their designing and engineering skills to the test by challenging them to create their ball drop for New Year’s Eve! Can they design and create a homemade ball? Can they engineer a pulley system? A little research on the simple pulley machine and some creativity to make a ball are all you need! Look at items around the house to solve these challenges!

Build A Tower STEM Challenge

For this New Years’ Eve STEM activity, you can challenge your kids to make a tower to support your “New Year’s Countdown Ball.” We will use the classic spaghetti and marshmallow STEM challenge for this challenge.

The marshmallow will be your BALL.

Using only one large marshmallow, 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, string, and/or tape, challenge your kids to build the tallest tower possible to support a marshmallow on the top. You can give a time limit or keep it open-ended!

LEGO Ball Drop

Next, you can challenge your kids to build a LEGO theme ball drop for New Years’. Our friends created this challenge over at Frugal Fun For Kids. They are whiz at creative, kid-friendly LEGO builds.

New Years Balloon Rocket

A balloon rocket is a pretty cool physics to play with too! This time, turn your balloon into the New Year’s Eve ball and send it flying. See how to set up a balloon rocket for easy STEM on New Year’s Eve.

Hint: What if instead of a horizontal string, you try a vertical string like the ball drop!

Magic Milk Experiment

Have you ever explored the classic science activity called magic milk? It’s pretty neat and a little bit magical too. Although there’s some simple science behind it too. Look at our magic milk science experiment and see if it reminds you of fireworks!