Gingerbread Cookie STEM Activities
As you may know, STEM is an acronym and it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. STEM activities comes in a shapes, sizes and use all kinds of materials, as long as you apply all four pillars of knowledge. In this post, we will make some creative gingerbread cookie STEM activities to try at home this holiday season.
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Gingerbread Books and Cookies
For any activity we do in our homeschool, we like to read books about that topic. Here are some fun gingerbread cookie books to read for this topic. The Gingerbread Pirates and Ten Tiny Gingerbread Men are a lot of fun because they have several gingerbread characters. Also, for our STEM activities, you will need at least 4 dozen gingerbread cookies for each child.
Recommended Gingerbread Man Books for Kids
Read about the Gingerbread man or girl adventures with one of these books. Then go ahead and bake your own gingerbread man cookies. That’s always fun.
The True Story of the Gingerbread ManThe Gingerbread GirlHow to Catch a Gingerbread ManThe Gingerbread ManThe Gingerbread BoyThe Gingerbread Man (My First Fairy Tales)
Gingerbread Cookie STEM Activities
For the STEM activity, I introduced the kids to gingerbread cookies, we tasted them and we read some books about them. Then we started off easy. We made a vertical stack of the cookies. The key was to keep it balanced so it doesn’t tip over. Once my daughter built the tallest tower she could before it tipping over, we measured it with a ruler to include Math in our activity.
We used Science (physics) and Engineering for the building part and patterns. Lastly, we used technology (our DSLR camera) to have the kids take pictures. They photographed their creations to compare the ones they made first to the ones they made after they got more confident and more familiar with this STEM activity.
My son made the horizontal row instead of a tower. This one was a challenge for him at first because he had to figure out how to keep the gingerbread cookies vertical.
Then he got it: he stood two back to back and then built the row on either side of them! This took some testing and some thinking, but it was worth it.
Critical thinking, Logic and Problem Solving skills are some of the most important and some of the most lacking skills in these newer generations. Activity like these are not only a lot of fun, but they are very beneficial for kids!
Recommended Science Books for Kids
Grab one of these cool science experiment books to get your kids excited about doing science together.
STEAM Kids: 50+ Science / Technology / Engineering / Art / Math Hands-On Projects for KidsAwesome Science Experiments for Kids: 100+ Fun STEM / STEAM Projects and Why They Work (Awesome STEAM Activities for Kids)What Can I Be? STEM Careers from A to ZKitchen Science Lab for Kids: 52 Family Friendly Experiments from Around the House (Lab for Kids, 4)Steve Spangler’s Super-Cool Science Experiments for Kids: 50 mind-blowing STEM projects you can do at homeMaker Lab: 28 Super Cool Projects
Once my children got more confident, they enjoyed coming up with many amazing creations and designs!
They had such a great time and the fun really started when they began challenging each other with things like “who can build a support to carry the most gingerbread cookies?” and “who can build the tallest gingerbread cookie pyramid?”
Thank you for visiting our Gingerbread Cookie STEM Activities post!
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What a great way to use those extra gingerbread cookies after the holidays! In my house we always make cutout sugar cookies – the cookies aren’t as thick, so I imagine that would alter the physics of the activity as well.