Shark Week is a brilliant opportunity to capture children’s interest and turn it into a fun, hands-on learning experience. Sharks are fascinating creatures, and their bodies, behaviors, habitats, and place within the ocean ecosystem provide plenty of inspiration for science and engineering activities.
Our free printable Shark Week STEM Challenge Pack contains a collection of creative challenges that encourage kids to design, build, test, and improve their own ideas. Instead of simply reading facts about sharks, children can explore related concepts through practical problem-solving and experimentation.
STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. These activities bring several of those areas together while helping children develop creativity, persistence, communication, and critical-thinking skills. They can be completed individually, with a partner, or as part of a small group.
We have multiple themed STEM challenge packs like this available on In The Playroom, so you can continue the hands-on learning throughout the year. Each pack follows a similar easy-to-use format, with themed challenge cards and printable planning and reflection worksheets.
What Is Included in the Shark Week STEM Challenge Pack?
This printable pack contains 10 different shark and ocean-themed STEM challenges. Each challenge card clearly explains the task and includes a list of suggested materials. Most of the supplies are inexpensive craft materials or everyday items you may already have at home or in the classroom.
The material lists are suggestions rather than strict requirements. Children can choose from the listed supplies, replace them with similar items, or think of completely different ways to complete the challenge.
The pack also includes six supporting worksheets for planning, designing, testing, improving, teamwork, reflection, and assessment. You can select the worksheet that best suits the children’s ages, the activity, and whether they are working independently or in a group.
Shark Cage STEM Challenge
The first challenge asks children to build a cage that will protect a diver from a pretend shark. Suggested supplies include straws, craft sticks, cardboard, tape, string, and cups.
Children will need to think carefully about how to make the structure strong, stable, and large enough to hold their pretend diver. Once the cage has been constructed, encourage them to test it using a toy shark or shark figure. Can the shark reach the diver through the gaps? Does the cage remain standing when it is pushed?
This activity introduces ideas relating to structural engineering, strength, stability, and protective design.
Shark Tooth Grabber STEM Challenge
For the Shark Tooth Grabber challenge, children must create a tool that can pick up food in a similar way to shark teeth. They can experiment with craft sticks, spoons, rubber bands, paper clips, tape, and cups.
Place small objects such as pom-poms, blocks, or pieces of crumpled paper on a table and ask children to test how effectively their grabber can collect them. They could record how many objects they can move in one minute or compare which design picks up objects most securely.
This challenge is a fun way to explore movement, grip, force, and simple mechanisms.
Fast Swimmer Fin STEM Challenge
Sharks have specially adapted bodies that help them move efficiently through the water. In this activity, children are challenged to design a fin that will help a pretend shark move faster.
Suggested materials include craft foam, cardboard, straws, tape, foil, and paper. Children could attach their fin to a simple shark model and test it in water, or move it through the air to compare how different shapes respond.
Encourage kids to create several fin shapes and make predictions before testing them. Which fin is the most effective? Does its size, shape, angle, or material make a difference?
Shark Shadow Test
The Shark Shadow Test combines a shark theme with an investigation into light and shadows. Children create a shark shape before using a flashlight to discover how its shadow changes.
They can use paper, cardboard, straws, tape, and markers to construct a shark puppet or standing model. Ask them to move the flashlight closer to and farther away from the shark, observing what happens to the size and clarity of the shadow.
This simple investigation helps children understand that the position of a light source affects the shadow an object creates.
Ocean Food Chain STEM Challenge
Sharks play an important role in ocean food chains. This challenge asks children to build a model showing how a shark food chain works using materials such as paper, string, cards, tape, markers, and craft sticks.
Children can research a simple ocean food chain and create pictures or labels for each part. For example, their model might begin with phytoplankton before moving through smaller sea creatures and fish to a shark.
As they connect the different parts, talk about the direction in which energy travels and what might happen if one part of the food chain disappeared. This activity brings biology, research, model-making, and environmental awareness together.
Rescue Raft STEM Challenge
In the Rescue Raft challenge, children must build a raft that floats and can hold a pretend swimmer. They can experiment with foil, craft foam, straws, tape, cups, and pennies.
A bowl, tub, or sensory bin filled with water makes a simple testing area. Begin by testing whether the empty raft floats, and then gradually add pennies or another type of small weight. How many can it hold before it sinks?
Children can compare different raft shapes and materials while learning about buoyancy, balance, weight, and water displacement.
Camouflage Fish STEM Challenge
The Camouflage Fish activity asks children to design a fish that can hide from a shark. Paper, tissue paper, markers, glue, scissors, and cotton balls can all be used to create textures, patterns, and colors.
You could first create a coral reef background, rocky seabed, or patch of seaweed. Children must then study the environment and design a fish that blends into it as closely as possible.
Once the fish are complete, display them against the chosen backgrounds and see how quickly other children can find them. This challenge is a creative introduction to animal adaptations, camouflage, predators, and survival.
Shark Tracking Tag STEM Challenge
Scientists use tracking tags to learn more about where sharks travel, how deep they swim, and which habitats they use. This challenge invites children to build a pretend tracking tag that can attach securely to a shark model.
Suggested supplies include paper clips, string, tape, cardboard, craft foam, and paper. The tag should remain attached when the model is gently moved, but children should also consider its size and weight.
This is a good opportunity to discuss why scientists collect information about wild animals and how technology can support conservation and scientific research.
Reef Crossing Bridge STEM Challenge
For this activity, children need to build a bridge or path across a pretend coral reef habitat. They can work with craft sticks, cardboard, cups, tape, straws, and paper.
Create two points that the bridge must connect, leaving a gap between them to represent the reef. Children should try to build a structure that crosses the gap without touching or damaging the habitat below.
The finished bridge can be tested with a small toy or a series of weights. This encourages children to think about span, support, balance, and how engineering projects can be designed with the natural environment in mind.
Shark Mouth Model STEM Challenge
The final challenge asks children to create a model that opens and closes like a shark’s mouth. Suggested supplies include paper plates, brads, cardboard, tape, craft sticks, and paper teeth.
Children will need to work out how to join the upper and lower jaws while still allowing them to move. Once the mechanism works, they can add rows of paper teeth and test how widely the mouth opens.
This activity explores joints, levers, movement, anatomy, and model-making. It also gives children an opportunity to study the unusual way sharks continually replace their teeth.
Plan, Design, Test, and Improve Worksheet
The first recording sheet provides space for children to name their challenge, make a plan, draw their design, and list the materials they need. After building, they can record whether their design worked, explain how they could improve it, and write down one thing they learned.
This page offers a clear overview of the entire STEM design process without requiring too much writing.
Engineering Design Process Worksheet
This more detailed worksheet guides children through the stages of asking, imagining, planning, creating, testing, improving, and explaining.
It is especially useful for older elementary students or for challenges completed over a longer lesson. The final section asks children to consider what worked, what did not work, and what they would do differently next time.
Simple STEM Design and Testing Worksheet
This recording page provides large sections for the challenge name, supplies, and a drawing of the design. Children can then decide whether their model worked, did not work, or almost worked before explaining how they could make it better.
Its large drawing space and simple prompts make this version particularly suitable for younger learners.
Team STEM Challenge Planning Worksheet
If children are completing a challenge together, the team planning page will help them organize their ideas. It includes spaces for the team members, chosen challenge, plan, design, team jobs, and testing method.
Assigning roles can help every child take an active part. Possible jobs might include designer, builder, materials manager, tester, or recorder.
Shark Week STEM Challenge Reflection Worksheet
The reflection sheet gives children a chance to look back at the entire experience. It asks them to describe the hardest and best parts, one change they made, what they would do next time, and why their design worked.
Reflection is an important part of STEM learning because it helps children recognize that changing an idea is part of the process, rather than a sign that they have failed.
Shark Week STEM Challenge Rubric
The final page is a STEM challenge rubric covering planning, building, testing, teamwork, and improvement. Each area can be assessed across four levels, from beginning through to excellent.
Teachers can use the rubric for assessment, or children can use it to evaluate their own work. It can also help make expectations clear before a group begins its challenge.
Download the Free Shark Week STEM Challenge PDF
Download the free printable Shark Week STEM Challenge Pack below. The PDF includes all 10 challenge cards along with the planning, design, teamwork, reflection, and assessment worksheets.
Print the entire pack or select only the challenge cards and recording sheets you would like to use. You may wish to laminate the challenge cards so they can be used again with different classes, groups, or children.
Terms of use: These shark STEM printables are free for personal use and classroom use.
These Shark Week STEM challenges make learning feel exciting, practical, and purposeful. Children can explore real scientific ideas while building with familiar materials and having the freedom to develop their own solutions.
The most important part is not creating a perfect model on the first attempt. Encourage kids to plan, try an idea, test it, notice what happens, and make changes. That process of thinking and improving is at the heart of STEM learning.
More Shark Activities for Kids
Continue your Shark Week theme with more shark activities for kids. Shark crafts, coloring pages, sensory play, printable games, and simple science activities can all help children learn more about these incredible ocean animals while keeping the theme playful and age-appropriate.
- Free Printable Disguise a Shark Activity for Shark Week
- Shark Craft For Kids With Free Printable Template
- Best Shark Movies on Netflix for Family Movie Night
- 38 Jawsome Shark Crafts for Kids
- 18 Free Printable Shark Coloring Pages For Kids
More STEM Challenge Printables
If your children enjoyed this activity, take a look at our other themed STEM challenge printables. We have multiple packs in the same format, making it easy to introduce new engineering and problem-solving activities for different seasons, holidays, and classroom topics throughout the year.
- Beach Day STEM Challenge Pack
- Free Bubble Day STEM Challenge Cards & Recording Sheets
- Free Printable Ocean Animal STEM Challenge Pack for Kids
- Free Printable Lemonade Stand STEM Challenges for Kids
- Printable Camping STEM Challenges for Kids
If you found this free Shark Week STEM Challenge Pack useful, please share this blog post with friends, families, teachers, and homeschoolers. Sharing helps more children discover these free hands-on learning resources!
