Have you been enjoying my recent Christmas STEM activities? If you missed the last two STEM challenges, you can find them here:
This post will be all about our third and final STEM challenge, the Gingerbread House! You may not have thought building a gingerbread house could be a STEM challenge, but guess what, it’s a great one to use with the engineer design process.
If you aren’t sure what STEM or engineer design process even mean, you can read more about that here.
Gingerbread House STEM Challenge
Materials:
- Graham Crackers or Gingerbread Pieces
- Icing
- Piping Bag/Tips
- Gum Drops
- Other Decorating Candies
- Engineer Design Planning Sheet (optional)
The Problem: How can I create a Gingerbread House?
Step 1: Provide your child with the necessary materials and optional engineer design process planning sheet.
Step 2: Tell your child their challenge/problem.
Step 3: Let your child imagine, plan, and create their very own gingerbread house. You can either use precut gingerbread pieces or you can cut graham crackers into designated shapes. You can even use a gingerbread house kit (we did this year), but do not give your child any instructions. Let them use their own imagination to design their own house.
You most likely will need to assist your kid(s)/student(s) during this step. They may need help with the icing or putting their house together. Do not do it all for them, but help them if they need assistance by modeling how to use materials.
Step 4: Have your child reflect on their design. Did their design work? Could they make any changes or improvements to build a better gingerbread house?
Step 5: Let your child make any necessary adjustments or add more decorations to their gingerbread house.
When we were finished, my student reflected about her house on the left. She determined that the roof pieces she chose were too big for her house, and that’s why it wouldn’t stay together. In the future, she would make improvements by choosing smaller pieces for the roof that were not as heavy to have a design that would be stable.
I hope you enjoyed a new STEM twist on this classic Christmas activity!
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