The skinny: We did this program as both a book club program for Kindergarten-5th grade and as a Kindergarten class outreach visit. Both programs went great! These programs were born out of a mission of mine to incorporate more literacy into our STEM programming. What better way to do that than read a great fairy tale, incorporate literacy vocabulary by talking about the characters and what the problem was in the book, and then engineering our way to a better solution?
The cost: $0. We already had all the supplies on hand. But, if you don’t, you can buy clothes pins online for $6-10 for a pack of 100 and the tongue depressors for about $6 for a pack of 500. And, all the supplies are re-usable! You might also want to buy some small goats for the kids to play with as they are building their bridge. I searched on Amazon for “toy goat” and found some great options, like this pack of 25 for only $10.
Supplies needed: Clothespins, wide craft sticks, and the book, The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Paul Galdone.
Resources: Check out the Teach Beside Me blog where I got the bridge building idea for this program!
Time: Plan about 30-40 minutes for this program.
How it went: For the book club I did this as part of our Cookies and Milk book club series. We hold this on Tuesdays at 3:45 pm. To prep, I buy a half gallon of milk and a value sized bag of Cookie Crunch cereal. I never know how many kids will come so when they arrive I pour the milk and cookies while chatting with the kids about anything they think is important. Once they have their afterschool snack, I introduced our book, The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Paul Galdone. I had kindergarten through 5th graders, so everyone knew the story already. But, they had a glass of milk and another glass of cookies, so why not be excited? I read the story, having the kids help with the narration by asking, “And what did the troll say?” just to keep everyone engaged. After reading the story we talked about who the characters were (The Three Billy Goats Gruff and the Troll) and what the Billy Goats’ problem was (they did not have a safe bridge to cross). I brought out our clothes pins and tongue depressors and asked them to make me a bridge that would be safe. Some of the kids struggled with this, so I showed them a few ways to build. What I really liked about this was that it was simple enough for the youngest kids to do on their own, and yet difficult enough for the older kids to come up with bigger and better ways to build.
Have you tried Fairy Tale STEM? What are your favorite programs? I would love to hear from you!
How it went: We began the program by sitting in a circle and talking about paper airplanes that we had all built in the past. Kids have great stories about planes they have built and the different “flight” patterns their planes exhibited, and it was a great way to build comradery in the group and practice conversation skills. By the way, I had kids in the program as young as two and as old as ten. I then took out the book, Paper Airplanes by Jenny Fretland VanVoorst. Depending on the group you might want to read the whole book, or, especially focus on pages 12-19. For our program, we focused on the physics vocabulary terms” Gravity, Thrust, Lift, and Drag. After reading the book I wrote those four words on the whiteboard and we talked a little bit more about those terms with an example paper airplane.
The kids loved seeing their planes fly! We went back and forth between flying and going back to the work tables to tweak designs. In the end, I think we had about 12 rounds of flying the planes before having everyone sit down in a circle again. We talked about our four physics vocabulary words that help explain the forces behind why paper airplanes fly (and crash). I also was able to ask the kids how much money cargo their plane was carrying at the last round. After a few minutes of sharing, I asked the kids to help me pick up pennies that had dropped to the floor. Kids asked to keep their airplanes, which was a good sign they had enjoyed themselves. One mom commented that during a snow we had about a week ago her sons had built 70 paper airplanes in one afternoon! However, they did not know how to fold them correctly, so none of them flew as well as her sons wanted. She specifically brought her boys to this program to learn how to fold their paper airplane so it would fly, and I think her sons were some of the proudest children all evening of what they were able to build by following the directions.
This program was both difficult, and easy. I usually have Legos out in the children’s library on Tuesdays after school for kids to come in and build with freely. But, for this Lego Expo, I wanted the kids to be able to show off the projects that they work so hard to build. I heard a great idea from a colleague (
The skinny: This was a great program, and my students ran with it! They developed complex ideas and games just using their checkerboard and some random objects that I made available to them. Two students turned their checkerboard into the house in the Westing Game book. The goal of their “program” was to help a kid travel through the house without being hurt. I was surprised at how creative they took this, just using the simple instructions I gave them.
How it worked:
Today we get to work with puzzles! You only get 20 planks, and they all look the same. How many objects can you create with those 20 planks? A lot. How much fun will you have? Again…a lot!
We live in a binary world. Our computers, music, books, magazines, almost every form of media is digital and it all runs on the binary code. But, it is surprising how little many of us understand about the code that influences so much of our lives. For Teen Tech Week in March 2017, I wanted to do a program for tweens on coding and showing them the binary system. But, is binary code easy enough for kids to understand and write? Can we do a coding program without a computer? As we found out, the answers are yes, and yes!
Put kids and marbles together and you automatically have a great time planned. Add a few lessons about Push and Pull, and you have an experiment in physics that combines fine motor skills, creative design, an understanding of force, and lots of marbles that went home with happy families. We held this program as a our second Workshop in January of 2017.
Jennifer Boothroyd. I try to use a book at least for a few moments every Workshop because it shows that literacy and STEM go together in fostering curiosity! I did not read every page of this book. Instead, I prepared some post-it notes and I placed them on pages where I wanted to ask the kids questions. This helped keep the book engaging, and kids and me asking questions about what we were reading.
With snow on the ground and Wisconsin suffering from a cold snap, it was the perfect night to talk about how Inuit people build houses with nothing by the natural materials their environment gives them: snow and ice. And, what better way to learn about it than by experimenting with geometric shapes to build igloos of our own…in the comfort of the heated library with marshmallows and toothpicks as our building materials of choice!
This was the first Kids’ STEM Workshop we offered. We had a great attendance, and it was a wonderful way to kick off our series and let parents and kids know we would be doing this twice a month by offering an incredibly low cost program. And, what kid does not want to build the tallest tower in the room?
