Building Gumdrop Structures Engineering Activity

What kid doesn’t like candy? How about building with it! Candy like gumdrops or marshmallows is ideal for building and engineering structures and sculptures of all kinds. Building gumdrop structures are also a perfect use of all that extra candy you might have leftover from a holiday {think Halloween, Christmas, and Easter}! If you would like a healthier alternative, we have edible snack sculptures! Simple STEM for kids of all ages.

BUILDING GUMDROP STRUCTURES ENGINEERING ACTIVITY

If you are looking for a screen-free, boredom buster but still a bit of educational learning activity, this one is it! Simple set up, simple supplies, and simple fun. Building structures is a great activity to incorporate STEM into play by encouraging science, engineering, and math skills to design and build gumdrop structures.

SUPPLIES:

Gumdrops
Toothpicks

BUILD:

Building gumdrop structures can be whatever you want them to be whether they look more like abstract sculptures, a dome, the Leaning Tower Of Pizza or simple shapes. In fact you can add some Technology to this activity and looks up some structures to build. The last time we used gumdrops for engineering, we made gumdrop bridges. Plus there are other fun ways to explore gumdrops for science.

Building gumdrop structures is also an unique way to practice fine motor skills without over emphasizing the practice part. Naturally, to build the structures, your kid needs to push a toothpick into the gumdrop and fit it together with others. He thinks he is just building cool structures, but I know he is practicing finger grasps, finger dexterity, coordination, and so much more!

Grab these free cards to add to your building activities!

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We like to build tall things with our candy structures. Though this type of activity is also perfect for building 2D and 3D shapes. Check out our gummy candy rocket {sort of structure}. It was intense to build!

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Fine motor practice can happen in so many unique ways that even the most reluctant kid will fine super cool! We love using toothpicks, eyedroppers, squeeze bottles, spray bottles, and tweezers as part of our science investigations and STEM activities. You can also encourage your kid to draw their structure or draw a design to build from!

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Whether you have gumdrops, marshmallows, pool noodles, or anything else that you can poke a toothpick into, building structures is an awesome STEM activity that encourages fine motor skills, problem-solving, evaluating, and re-building!