Imagine this scenario. You’re doing an Engineering Adventures activity with the kids in your afterschool program. They’ve been working hard designing and testing . . . only to discover that their technology doesn’t work as planned. When that bubble wand doesn’t produce any bubbles, or the toy car made from a soda bottle doesn’t roll, don’t despair: this is a teachable moment.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at EiE to you! We hope you’re having a wonderful holiday. This has been a fantastic year for EiE, and we have a lot to be thankful for.

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.

Sue Pietrusza has a mission: to keep the 63-year-old Christ the King Catholic School in Jacksonville, Florida “ever dynamically changing.” In 2014, the assistant principal and technology integration specialist set her sights on an exciting new goal—to get Christ the King School a STREAM (science, technology, religion, engineering, arts, and mathematics) certification from the Florida Catholic Conference. Three years later, they’re the first STREAM-certified school in the state of Florida! Sue says she’s already seen a positive change in her students and teachers, and that EiE helped them get there: “It was such a huge, integral part of us earning that accreditation,” she says. “I don’t think we would have ever been able to meet our engineering requirements without it.”