Tag Archives: STEM

Building Boats STEM Activity

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Buddy loves to build and be creative. So he was very excited when I asked him if he wanted to build his own boat.

I gave him a variety of foam base materials for the boat. He had parts of a styrofoam egg carton, a foam cup, a foam plate, and a couple of cut up pieces of pool noodle to choose from. Then he had a bunch of other materials to use to finish the boat including wooden skewers, straws, popsicle sticks, play doh, construction paper, coffee filters, and rubber bands.

Buddy decided to make two different boats. For his first, he used the top of the egg carton and a pool noodle slice for the base, and play doh, popsicle sticks, and a coffee filter for the sail. For his second boat, he chose another pool noodle slice, part of the bottom of the egg carton, a couple wooden skewers, a cup, and a straw.

Once both boats were built, Buddy was excited to try them out. Our water table wasn’t quite big enough for them, so we decided to test them in the bath tub. After a few minutes of playing on the side of the tub, Buddy decided he wanted to throw on his bathing suit and get in to play.

Buddy had a great time putting his little toys in the boats and pushing them around. Unfortunately, he quickly learned that play doh and the coffee filter weren’t very durable in the water. Buddy decided that he wanted to use the large egg carton boat as a balance to compare the weights of two things. He also was interested in seeing how much weight his boats could hold before they start to sink.

Buddy had a great time, and I’ve put the rest of the unused materials aside to do this again. It was so fun and I’m sure we will do it again some time soon.

Disney STEM: Building Parade Floats

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Buddy and I love Disney World, and we’ve been missing the parks lately. We were supposed to go in June, but that trip was canceled. Instead, we’ve been busy doing Disney activities at home. (Read about our virtual Disney World here.)

*Disclaimer – This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

A friend of mine posted about doing her own Disney at home trip, and one of her activities was building parade floats out of Duplos. I knew Buddy would love it, so I wanted to try it.

Buddy’s been to Disney World twice, but we’ve never watched a parade there together. So before we built our floats, we watched a Disney parade on You Tube. (This is the one we watched, which is a parade from Disneyland.)

Once we had our inspiration it was time to build. Buddy and I searched through his Duplos to find as many wheels as we could. Then we went to build fun and inventive parade floats to carry different characters. We had to do some trial and error to find ways to make the float base large enough to carry the characters and still balance on the wheels. We also had the challenge of getting his Disney characters to stand while the float was moving since they weren’t Duplo blocks.

After we were done, Buddy and I put on some Disney music and made our floats go around his room and into the next room. We had such a blast doing this activity, that the following day Buddy wanted to make more floats before we did anything else. He loves the ones we made, and a week later there are still a few on his shelves that he can bear to put away. It was such a fun and easy activity, and I’m so glad we tried it.

Building with Marshmallows

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Buddy talked me into buying a bag of jumbo marshmallows when we were purchasing candy for our gingerbread houses. And of course, he only used one, which meant I needed other ideas for marshmallows. First, we painted with the marshmallows, and that was a lot of fun. (Read more about that activity here.) But once that was done, we needed something else to do with all of our leftover marshmallows.

I found the idea for building with jumbo marshmallows from Kids Activities Blog. After pulling out some marshmallows and straws, I cut the straws into different sized pieces. I cut them at an angle so there was a sharp point to pierce the marshmallow at each end. Once I did that, I brought Buddy over, and I showed him how to stick the straws into the marshmallows.

Buddy started by making a square. Then he filled it up with all of the rest of the marshmallows. He had a pretty good stack in there before they started falling over.

After that, I showed Buddy how to make a building. We worked together to build a triangular pyramid shaped building together. Then, we tried to make a cube. It was a little tricky for Buddy to build on his own, so he preferred making two dimensional shapes.

This was a fun and easy activity that could be done at many different ages. Preschoolers like Buddy may be better off working on two dimensional shapes, and older kids should be able to build three dimensional ones. I’d like to do this activity again when Buddy’s a little older to see what he can do.

Do you have any other ideas for using up marshmallows? Please share in the comments if you do.

Jingle Bell Play: A Preschool STEM Activity

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I’ve been on the lookout for fun and easy holiday activities to do with Buddy this December. Buddy loves playing with his magnatiles, so when I saw a jingle bell magnatile activity on AndNextComesL’s blog, I knew it would be perfect. This is a STEM activity, which means it builds skills in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics. This particular activity focuses on the science of magnets, engineering with building magnatiles, and mathematics of working with different types of shapes. 

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

I ordered a bag of assorted jingle bells for this activity, which was perfect. Some of them were very tiny, though, so they’re definitely not appropriate for younger children. I put the bells in a small cup, and I told Buddy that we would be decorating trees with the bells. Buddy loved the ideas of the bells, but he wanted to build gingerbread houses instead. 

Buddy put the bells inside the cubes and along the edges as well. He kept adding more and more until we used almost all of the bells! Even though only parts of the edge are magnets, they still held a lot of the bells. 

After building the house, Buddy decided he wanted to put the bells on a train. He poured the bells into the middle of the train base, and he was surprised when they flew to the edges. I thought he would be excited by it, but actually, he was frustrated because he wanted to put some squares on the side instead. He carefully pulled each one to the middle, but when they got too close to the edge, they flew back to the magnets. It was a great science demonstration of the power of magnets. 

Once we had finished making the train, I decided to pull out our horseshoe magnet to experiment with the bells. We were able to pull the bells from the sides of our houses with the magnet. Then, Buddy stuck the end of the magnet into the cup of bells. He was delighted to see that a massive amount of bells stuck to it. 

Buddy had a blast with the bells, and we’ve already pulled them out again. On that day, Buddy was trying to get plastic pony beads to stick to the magnatiles like the bells, so we talked again about how magnets stick to metal. And then we pulled the bells back out to play. I’m sure this will be an activity we do every December for years to come, and I expect we’ll probably do it outside the holiday season too. 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom STEM Game

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When I discovered Preschool STEAM’s blog this summer, I wanted to try out some of their Storytime STEAM activities for Time to Read Tuesday. This Chicka Chicka Boom Boom building activity made me excited because I already had all of the necessary materials. Plus we love the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

Originally, I had planned to do the activity the same way that Preschool STEAM did it. I gathered the materials to build a coconut tree (wooden blocks and popsicle sticks), and then I asked Buddy to see how many letters he could get into the tree. We read the story first, and then we started to build the tree. I didn’t have jumbo popsicle sticks, so we just used regular sized ones. However, I think jumbo ones would work even better. 

Once we started putting on letters, Buddy had the idea for turning the activity into a game. And I’m so glad he did, because we had so much fun! He asked to get our fishing pole from this bath set to use with the letters. (If you don’t have something similar, you can also use a kitchen spoon, string, and paperclip like we did in this fishing for magnetic letters activity.) 

Buddy decided we would take turns using the fishing pole to get a letter and then we’d put it on a tree. Of course, we said the letter as we picked each one. Whoever made the letters fall down lost the game. We also cried out “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” when that happened. It reminded me a lot of the game Jenga and a game from my childhood called Don’t Monkey Around. We had a great time playing together.

Every time the majority of the letters fell, we took down the whole tree and talked about ways to rebuild it to be stronger. We tried laying more popsicle sticks and arranging them in different ways. Then we’d play the game again to see if we could do better than the last time.

This activity is one of my new favorites. It took no time to set up, and very little time to pick up. It was a great way to practice letters with Buddy, and it was so much fun! We will definitely be playing this game again soon!

Do you have any other ideas for fun alphabet activities? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Planting a Rainbow Pattern Block Flowers

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I recently discovered Preschool STEAM’s blog, and it has a ton of great reading and engineering activities on their site. For this week’s Time to Read Tuesday, I chose their pattern block activity that accompanies the book Planting a Rainbow. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. This activity works on all of those topics except for technology.

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

Planting a Rainbow has a bunch of different types of flowers in each color of the rainbow. Buddy and I started by reading the book together. We paid attention to the different types of flowers in each color. We discussed the differences in the flowers and picked out favorites on each page.

Once we finished the book, I pulled out a set of pattern blocks. I actually use these in my 7th grade math classroom, but I have a separate set that I use at home with Buddy. They are great for discussing different shapes, colors, and patterns. If you don’t have a set and aren’t interested in buying one through the link above, you can download and print a set for free here. You can also use online pattern blocks here. 

Buddy and I went back through the book, and we made flowers using the pattern blocks. We looked at the colors and shapes we had available, and we used flowers of similar colors in the book. Buddy needed a little help making the flowers.  However, he was very interested in the process of getting the shapes to fit together in a way to make it look like a flower. This was a fun activity with no set up time. Buddy and I both enjoyed it, and I’m sure we’ll play with the pattern blocks again soon.