Christmas Candy STEM Challenge: Design a Chimney For Santa

Candy for Christmas, I bet you have plenty! I really love to build with candy. Gumdrops are perfect for candy engineering projects like our Christmas Candy STEM Challenge! Make sure to check out our 25 Days of Christmas STEM Challenge cards you print! This one is to build a chimney for Santa!

SANTA STEM CHALLENGE

CHRISTMAS CANDY STEM CHALLENGE FOR KIDS

Soft candy and toothpicks are a winning combination for structure building STEM challenges. Depending on the season or the desired outcome, there are so many variations to try. If you don’t want to use candy, consider straws and play dough or even apple chunks!

We have really enjoyed using gumdrops in the past for different STEM challenges as well as other holiday activities.

I love to come up with a simple Advent or Countdown Christmas Calendar each year. We have an awesome 25 Days of Christmas Science Countdown. We have a set of printable 25 Days of Christmas STEM Challenge Cards! Our Christmas candy STEM challenge to build Santa a chimney is one of them!

A couple of other fun and simple Christmas STEM challenges include:

A Christmas candy STEM challenge is an awesome open-ended invitation to build or it can have a specific challenge! My son loves a specific challenge. He was super excited to be engineering a new chimney for Santa as he is still all about Santa.

Click here to grab these free shape building cards too!

SUPPLIES

Toothpicks
Gumdrops
Small House {we used a dollar store gingerbread house themed box but you could also make your own with a milk carton!}

Or you can try these free papercraft activities first! Use the candy and toothpicks to build similar models.

Although this Candy STEM challenge has a specific task, it is still very much open to interpretation. Your kids can design Santa whatever chimney they like! Any size, shape, color, design, you name it. In fact, they can even build the house out of gumdrops too.

He also chose to build trees around the house which is another excellent way to work on three-dimensional design and shapes. White gumdrops are perfect for building enormous snowflakes too. Candy is great for science experiments too.

He also wanted to see if he could build a gumdrop tree taller than the house, so he set his own challenge! I love that he can challenge himself with his own ideas. It was definitely a great challenge for figuring out how to make a very tall but stable tree with the supplies we had.

Building structures is an amazingly quick and simple to set up STEM activity for kids to enjoy anytime. A great boredom buster, screen-free idea, or a stuck inside project that can really make an afternoon fly by any time of the year.