When I finally made the decision to integrate STEM into our curriculum, I decided the first lesson I chose needed to be simple and easy to implement. It only increases student’s creativity, strengthens problem solving skills, and teaches perseverance. Plus, there’s no down side to adding STEM activities to the classroom. As teachers, it’s our job to prepare our students for the real world. It’s also no secret that STEM is a growing industry. As a new teacher, I wasn’t really sure where to begin. My school didn’t provide STEM curriclulum. I didn’t take any college classes on teaching STEM. The idea of teaching my students a STEM activity in my elementary classroom used to sound anything but easy. Make Gumdrop Sculptures Got Pasta? Here are more projects for kids that use pasta.Confession time. More Projects like this oneĭIY Water Wall, it’s like a marble run, but with water! After watching Wujec’s video (above), I’m eager to see this in action with a group of young children. I would love to try this out with our Girl Scout troop or with my older daughter’s friends. You’ll want to watch this video of Tom Wujec’s TED talk on the Marshmallow Challenge. This challenge could lose a 4-year old’s attention □.Prototyping and iteration are important to the process.We probably should have built the second tower directly on the first one, rather than wait to add it at the end.Triangles are good shapes for these structures.I love my daughter’s idea to suspend the marshmallow from a string! What we learned? Not earth-shattering, but at least we had a supporting structure! Marshmallow Challenge In the end, we measured our marshmallow’s height and it clocked in at 10.5 inches. Our original idea was to build two structures – one that could support the other, to make our tower twice as tall.Īs we got towards the end of our time, the bottom towner couldn’t support the weight of the second tower, so we chose just one of the towers to use as a support for the marshmallow. We talked about how triangles build strong structures, so we started there. My little one lost interest quickly, but my older daughter stuck with it, pushing me with her novel ideas and keeping me going, right up until the timer ran out. It was exciting, frustrating (spaghetti is nimble and brittle!), and fun. My two daughters, ages 4 and 6, and I set our timer for 18 minutes, and started to build. Here’s how our marshmallow challenge looked: Marshmallow Challenge with Young Children Explain the challenge: B uild the tallest tower possible that will support a marshmallow, in 18 minutes.Marshmallow Challenge SuppliesĬhallenge: To build the tallest tower possible in 18 minutes that will support the marshmallow. If you enjoy this project, you’ll also like this STEAM Design Challenge to suport a mandarin with sticks and clay. Oh, and what group historically performs the BEST in the marshmallow challenge? The answer to that question is also in the video, and you will LOVE it. Watch the video at the end of this post for more on that. This last point, iteration, may be the most important. The basic idea is that a team is given a handful of supplies to work with - spaghetti, tape, and string - and given 18 minutes to build the tallest possible tower that can SUPPORT a marshmallow.Īnd the point of it? The team will practice the design process that includes thinking, doing, prototyping, and iteration. It encourages the design mindset and supports basic engineering principles. This is one of those legendary team-building challenges that I’ve been hearing about for ages and have never tried. If you have any marshmallows left over from the Microwave Marshmallow Experiment, this is the project for you! Do you know about the Spaghetti Tower Marshmallow Challenge? Set up a Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge with young children to explore the design process: thinking, doing, prototyping, and iteration: a great STEAM challenge.
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