You save them every year and then buy a new box and remember that you still have a ton left from last year. Well, let’s put those Christmas cards to work and set up an invitation to engineer with our Christmas card engineering activity and STEM challenge for kids! We love simple and hands-on Christmas STEM activities for all ages!

Christmas Card Engineering Activity and Christmas STEM Challenge for KidsPin

Explore STEM This Holiday Season

Open-ended STEM activities like this Christmas card building challenge are perfect for kids who love to design, build, and test new inventions! Encourage your young engineer with easy STEM challenges perfect for the season. What kind of structures can they make with a pile of Christmas cards?

How many triangles can you count? What’s the tallest structure you can design with Christmas cards? This Christmas challenge is the best last-minute activity you will always have time to do. No mess and no fuss!

I always like to put together a STEM supplies kit for each season or holiday. This season of course we have a Christmas tinker kit filled with fun but inexpensive supplies to go along with our Christmas STEM activities.

TIP: Head to the dollar store and look around the house for supplies! Christmas STEM can be fun, simple, and frugal!

This fun Christmas card engineering activity is the perfect way to fit in a fun afternoon activity and a little hands-on learning. I love how learning opportunities can present themselves in so many ways.

You can easily use this Christmas STEM challenge at home, in the classroom, or with a youth group for an awesome holiday activity. Also keep in mind that it’s perfect for individuals, 2 person teams, or small groups to work on together!

Use The Engineering Design Process For Christmas STEM

This season, why not pair the engineering design process with fun holiday themes including candy canes, gumdrops, Christmas trees… you get the picture!

Engineers often follow a design process. There are many different design processes that all engineers use but each one includes the same basic steps to identify and solve problems.

An example of the process is “ask, imagine, plan, create, and improve”. This process is flexible and maybe completed in any order.

Remember, it’s ok to not get it right the first time. Good ideas take tweaking, designing and re-designing, testing and re-testing to get it right. Often it’s from our failures that we find success. STEM provides incredibly valuable life lessons for kids!

Read more about the Engineering Design Process and grab the free information guide.

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Helpful STEM Resources To Get You Started

Here are a few resources that will help you introduce STEM activities and challenges more effectively to your kiddos or students and feel confident yourself when presenting materials.

You’ll find tons of free printables, templates, and journal sheets throughout all of our activities or join us in the Library Club for instant access all year long!

Get your FREE printable Christmas STEM activities guide!

Christmas Card STEM Challenge

Supplies:

  • Christmas cards (old, new, recycled…)

Christmas Cards! Yes, it’s that easy. I am pretty sure, tucked away, you have plenty of leftover cards. Why not let the kids test their design and engineering skills with an easy Christmas activity!

TIP: Don’t have Christmas cards? Grab a pack of index cards and fold them!

Instructions:

STEP 1. Set out a basket as a simple invitation to build with Christmas cards. It’s as easy as that!

Christmas Card STEM Activity Pin

STEP 2. Challenge them to use all the cards to build a tall structure, or design a Christmas tree. Older kids can sketch their designs too!

Building with Christmas Cards Engineering ChallengePin

This Christmas card activity can be set up anytime! It can be left out for constant use too. Plus I believe, multiple ages will have working together or building side by side.

Patience, perseverance, and steadiness are great STEM and life lessons learned here today. Yes, the structure fell over several times. How can you solve the problem. Encourage your kids to keep going and not to give up. Through these failures come successes too!

Christmas Card Building STEMPin

My son had an awesome time figuring out the design needed to build this Christmas tree. He declared it a Christmas tree of triangles. He built it a couple of different ways too. That’s what is so wonderful about an open-ended activity like this one.

Christmas card tree building activity for kidsPin

More Fun Christmas STEM Challenges

Easy setup. Awesome fun. hands-on learning. And all of this was accomplished with leftover Christmas cards. Need more fantastic Christmas STEM activities to keep you busy this season? We never have a shortage!

Santa’s Chimney Challenge: Soft candy and toothpicks are a winning combination for building structures for STEM. Build a chimney for Santa. How high can you make it?

Jingle Bell STEM Challenge: This is our version of the classic egg drop challenge with a more Christmasy theme. Can you quiet a jingle bell so it doesn’t make any noise?

Christmas Tree STEM Challenge: The challenge is to build a Christmas tree with just 100 cups.

Christmas Catapult: Design and build a simple catapult, and test how far you can fling the red and white pom and poms. Almost to the North Pole!

Santa’s Balloon Rocket: A fun Christmas version of the classic balloon rocket. Explore forces as you send Santa flying across the room.

Check out more fun Christmas STEM projects here.

More Christmas Activities For Kids

Printable Christmas STEM Project Pack

200+ PAGES OF HOLIDAY THEME STEAM, STEM, Science, and Art!

  • 25+ Christmas theme science and STEM activities with printable sheets, instructions, and useful information all using easy-to-source materials perfect for limited-time needs. Includes a holiday theme engineering pack with fun, problem-based challenges for kids to solve! NEW observation sheets included.
  • Try a Santa’s Letter airplane challenge or take the gingerbread house-building challenge! 
  • Explore the five senses with a specially designed Santa’s Lab pack.
  • Try a mini nature study with your favorite type of Christmas tree.
  • Try your hand at building shapes with gumdrop structure challenge cards or build shapes with jingle bells. Or try the Christmas-themed paper chain challenge!
  • Christmas Screen-free Coding activities include algorithm games, binary code ornaments, and more!
  • Explore 6+ Christmas Art Projects with famous artist-inspired activities that combine art history, process art techniques, and more with simple to-do ideas. 

 

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