Fall is in the air—pumpkin spice, crunchy leaves, and Friday night lights. 🍁 For your classroom, that means the perfect time to bring football fever to your STEM program! Wonder Workshop’s Football Launcher Task Cards turn Dash into an all-star quarterback, inviting your students to huddle up, problem-solve, and code their way to a touchdown.
These free activities combine the excitement of football with hands-on coding challenges that get kids moving, collaborating, and thinking like engineers. Whether you’re an elementary school teacher, STEM coordinator, or library media specialist, this resource is an easy win for your fall lesson plans.
🏟️ Touchdown Coding: Creative Problem-Solving in Action
Each task card sets up a football scenario—like programming Dash to launch a ball into a target cup in the end zone or navigate defenders before making a touchdown pass
Students must plan their code, test their strategy, and refine their approach—just like a real offensive line adjusting plays. The open-ended challenges encourage trial-and-error, resilience, and creativity, making them ideal for stations, after-school clubs, or team-based STEM games.
📏 First Downs & Field Goals: Building Core Computational Skills
From moving Dash 10 yards downfield to keeping score across multiple throws, these activities sneak in key math and measurement skills while reinforcing loops, sequencing, and conditional thinking. Students gain practice with precise commands, debugging, and iterating—skills that translate directly into stronger coding confidence.
🤝 Team Spirit: Collaboration and Friendly Competition
Le Super Bowl Showdown card has students split into two teams, programming Dash to launch passes from different yard lines. The team with the most accurate throws wins, turning your classroom into a cheering section of budding engineers. This playful competition promotes communication, sportsmanship, and cooperative problem-solving—essential skills for any young coder.
🧰 Easy Setup, Big Impact
All you need are a Dash robot, simple materials like cups or blocks for goalposts and defenders, and a bit of floor space. That said, if you want to get fancy, there are supplies available on Amazon to spice up your setup. Find a football field table cloth to use on the floor of your classroom, or these nifty footballs to use with the launcher.
The cards are flexible—you can adapt them for different grade levels or time blocks, making them perfect for quick brain breaks or full STEM sessions.
Need a Launcher for Dash?
Launcher is a customer-favorite for Dash. This fun accessory transforms your Dash robot into a projectile-launching machine. Shop for it on our online store today.
Need help using launcher?
For tips on how to launch things with launcher that are not the balls that come in the box, please seeour Blog Post, Beyond the Ball: Learn to Launch Lemons, Pom Poms, and Other Creative Cargo.
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