Engineering Christmas trees! We have been having a great time with a little something different these past couple weeks. Christmas STEM ideas! Besides our regular Christmas themed science activities, we have been exploring both engineering and technology with a few easy to do ideas! Simple materials, simple play, but big opportunities for learning, creating, and exploring with our Christmas STEM activities for kids!
CHRISTMAS STEM IDEAS WITH A CHRISTMAS TREE THEME
ENGINEERING TREES AND CHRISTMAS STEM ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS
Many of these include one or more of the different components of STEM learning including science, technology, engineering, and math. However, I tried to break them up into each different section to give you a better idea how to include the component of STEM into the activity! It’s such a huge component to building, engineering, examining, and exploring!
We even have a NEW Christmas STEM Countdown Calendar this year!
CHRISTMAS STEM: SCIENCE
These Christmas STEM ideas for science are really quite easy and use just a few common kitchen and laundry ingredients! Don’t be intimidated! They are simple and tons of fun! We have plenty of classic science experiments to check out as well. Please click on the red links to bring you to full post!
Slime is simpler then you think. Our no fail homemade slime recipe works every time!
2 ingredient oobleck is easy science any time! Also snowflake oobleck!
Common kitchen cupboard ingredients make this super fun activity! We also have melting snowmen!
CHRISTMAS STEM: TECHNOLOGY
Technology is a bit tough to work in with a young child who still needs assistance with many things and who may not yet be able to read! However, there are still tons of great ideas! Although not a Christmas STEM activity, our gumdrop building activity used technology to help us understand bridge building! Look what we found to try below!
Coding a Colorful Christmas Tree!
I found a terrific little program that was offering a simple project for the holidays, coding a Christmas tree on the computer! What fun we had together choosing patterns, colors, light movement, size and more. It gave me a great chance to visually show my son how people use this technology to make some of the awesome light displays he has seen around this year. Check out Light Projects from Made with Code to try it out!
CHRISTMAS STEM: ENGINEERING AND CHALLENGES
The first 2 projects below have links to take you to the original post for details. The others are quick projects, I will explain along with the pictures! All of these Christmas STEM ideas are easy to set up with common supplies!
Christmas Tree Engineering Project with surprise geo board
We also have another version of a holiday geo board to check out!
Icy Christmas Tree Engineering Project
Use icy blocks to build a tree! There’s a bit of math involved too!
CARDBOARD CHRISTMAS TREE STEM ENGINEERING
Super simple STEM with leftover cardboard, this Christmas STEM activity is perfect for quiet play, down time, or at a relatives house!
First we cut triangles and made slits half way down. To make a tree, make sure to cut out two large triangular pieces {math}. Make a slit from the top down for one triangle and make a slit from the bottom up for the other triangle. Make sure to stop halfway.
For the little triangles, we cut out a bunch and made a slit half way from the bottom up! You can make any shape you want!
PLAY DOUGH AND STRAWS CHRISTMAS STEM TREE CHALLENGE
Play dough and straws are a classic way to explore building structures and engineering concepts. A little bit of green play dough and Christmasy colored straws are a fun way to build a Christmas tree!
Talk about angles, corners, sides, stable bases and so much more! How tall can you build it? Can you make a triangle inside a triangle. What’s a 3D shape? This activity opened up so many areas to discuss and explore together!
MINI CUPS CHRISTMAS TREE CHALLENGE
The picture really says it all! Build with cups! How tall can you make your tree before sit falls? What kind of base is best? Ours needed some cheer so we decorated it!
ALSO CHECK OUT THIS CHRISTMAS TREE BUILDING CHALLENGE!
CHRISTMAS STEM IDEAS: Math
Note: For many of these activities we counted our supplies, explored shapes, patterns, and sizes!
Exploring and Measuring Evergreen Branches
We practiced using a ruler, scissors and tweezers to examine our tree’s evergreen branches.
Explore geometry with a tree shaped geo board!
I am always amazed at how much we both learn from these creation activities! Christmas STEM ideas, challenges, and activities are perfect for budding engineers are also terrific frugal play ideas that encourage imagination, free thinking and curiosity!
FUN CHRISTMAS STEM IDEAS FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON
Click on the photos below to check out more awesome Christmas STEM ideas!
Amazon Affiliate Links. Some of our favorites!
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