Building Bridges

Who plans, designs, and builds bridges? Some of our community helpers do! Civil Engineers plan and design bridges for our construction crew to build. These important community helpers get us where we must go, especially if we must cross large bodies of water like rivers. Design and construct your own bridge from simple supplies. Building bridges is a fun STEM project for all ages!

Building Bridges For Preschool STEM

This bridge building activity is a great engineering project for kids. It starts with the planning and designing process and ends with the building process.

Design and engineering are important parts of STEM. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. Learn more about what is STEM.

STEM is a big part of the world around us, and is definitely used in building bridges! An engineer must take into consideration many things when planning a bridge or even fixing an old bridge.

• Who will be using the bridge? Cars? Pedestrians? Bicyclists? Big trucks? All vehicles?
• How long must the bridge be? What is the water like?
• What is the land around the water like? Rocky, muddy, sandy?
• What materials should be used to build the bridge?
• What style should the bridge be? Great time to provide pictures of different styles of bridges for kids to check out.

Our community helpers including engineers, designers, contractors, and construction workers all work very hard to build safe bridges for our communities. Bridges are very important for connecting places and allowing us to travel easily.

Do you have bridges in your town? Do you cross bridges often? Next time you do, point out the bridges features. Ask your child what they think about the bridge? Can you build the same bridge?

This bridge planning, designing, and engineering activity has so many possibilities for kids to be creative, explore different materials, test ideas, and problem solve. Plus, it uses fine motor skills too!

It also makes use of common supplies you would already have at home or in the classroom making it perfect for large groups or an afternoon project with the family.

Why Is STEM Important For Preschoolers?

Kids are curious and always looking to explore, discover, check things out, and find out why things do what they do, move like they move, or change as they change!

Indoors or outdoors, STEM is amazing! Let’s introduce our younger kiddos to STEM at a time in their development when they have so much curiosity about the world around them!

STEM surrounds us, inside and out. Preschoolers love tinkering with things, building structures and tearing them down, helping with cooking, and of course exploring stored energy! Check out 50 awesome preschool science projects to get started!

There lots of easy concepts that you can introduce kids to very early on! You might not even think about STEM when your toddler or preschooler pushes a car down a ramp, plays in front of the mirror, plays with a magnetic wand, builds bridges or bounces balls over and over again.

See where I am going with this list! What else can you add if you stop to think about it? STEM starts early, and you can be a part of that with setting up science at home with everyday materials.

Or you can bring easy STEM to a group of kids! We find a ton of value in cheap STEM activities and challenges. Check out our helpful resources below.

Bridge Building Activity

Supplies:

• Paper, pencils, and crayons or markers for planning and drawing bridges.
• Blue paper to use as water.
• Building supplies (see our list above).
• Tape and paper clips are easy ways for young kids to attach materials without a mess, but glue can certainly be added too.
• If applicable, provide appropriate scissors.

Instructions:

STEP 1. If you have time, include a simple research component. Discuss and look at images of different bridges. What types of bridges are kids familiar with?

We started our bridge building activity by looking at different styles of bridges on our iPad. My son’s favorite was the drawbridge.

We also discussed how strong our bridge should be. Will it be for cars or just people? We also talked about the landscape around the bridge. He decided it was rocky.

STEP 2. Use paper and pencil to develop a design for your new bridge.

STEP 3. Now to build your bridge with the materials you have.

Next we moved on to the building stage. I cut out several bodies of water from blue construction paper to use for building bridges.

With a set body of water, he could build the bridge accordingly. He decided to put two bodies of water together. He used most of our materials to make his bridge.

You will see he even included a drawbridge and built his own boat. Originally he had decided that only pedestrians and bicyclist would be crossing the bridge.

Our finished bridge!

More Fun Building Activities

We love helping our kiddos learn in a multi-sensory way with one of these fun, hands-on activities below. See our list of building activities for kids.

• LEGO Water Dam
• Paper Bridge
• Toothpick and Gumdrop Bridge
• Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower
• Spaghetti Bridge

More Fun Pre-K Learning Activities

• Shadow Activities
• Exploring Volume
• What’s Magnetic and What’s Not
• Toy Car Friction Activity
• Nature Investigation Table
• 5 Senses Sensory Station