Fairy Tale STEM Challenge | December Lesson Plan Ideas
Fairy Tales are a great December preschool theme or a December kindergarten theme. These STEM challenges will enhance your kindergarten fairy tale unit and are great kindergarten December activities. If you are trying to decenter Christmas in your classroom, I have got your December lesson plans covered.
Fairy tales is a great theme to do during the month of December. It goes great with your fiction reading unit. You can put these centers out during your center time or you can do these as STEM challenges after you read each story. Fairy Tale STEM challenges are a great December activities for kindergarten.
There are many wonderful versions of the fairy tale stories to make your fairy tale unit really rich and diverse. My favorites are Rapunzel and Little Red by Bethan Woollvin, it is great book for an illustrator study and I love the message of the girls saving themselves. The Rough Faced Girl is a great book to compare and contrast with Cinderella. These books will enhance your kindergarten December lesson plans.
Click on the picture for a list of fairy tales. (Amazon Affiliate link).
STEM Challenges
Can you Build Rapunzel's Tower?
We Read Rapunzel by Bethan Woollvin. Then, I challenged the students to build a tower for Rapunzel. I just pulled out our Legos bin and the students had so much fun building different towers for Rapunzel. We talked about stability and that taller is not always better. It does not need to be complicated and you do not need buy additional materials, than what you already have in your classroom to do a meaningful STEM activity.
Can You Make a Gingerbread Cookie Play dough Center?
Your Students will love this play dough center. We read The Gingerbread Man and The Gingerbread Girl
In the party trays, I included brown play dough, (Michaels usually has brown play dough in November/December.) I included goggle eyes, cookie cutters, buttons, gems, mini erasers and puff balls. I found everything except the play dough at the Dollar Tree.
Can you build a gingerbread house?
For the gingerbread houses center, I got Gingerbread erasers for the Target Dollar Spot and Legos.
Students can also make a paper version. Simply by photocopy the house onto brown paper and the candy pieces on Astrobright paper. The students can decorate their gingerbread house without the mess of icing and sticky candy.
The template for the gingerbread house is available in my Fairy tale STEM Centers Resource. Click the Picture below to check out the packet.
Can You Build a Bridge for The 3 Billy Goats Gruff?
We read The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We made a "river" on the floor using blue paper. The students were challenged to make another bridge for the Billy Goats to cross over. They could use any building toys that they wanted to build their bridge.
Can you make Gingerbread Man or the Gingerbread Girl?
This gingerbread man/girl craft is great for math. It is the perfect December craft for kindergarten or preschool. The students can use buttons or gumdrops to make simple addition problems.
You can also copy the gingerbread body onto different shades of brown. Let your students be creative and decorate their gingerbread however they want. Then, discuss how every cookie looks different and that what makes them (us) unique. This a great December writing prompt to inspire your little writers.
Click Here to check out the Gingerbread Craft
Can you Build a Safer Wall for Humpty Dumpty?
We read After the Fall by Dan Santat. Then, I gave each student a plastic egg. The students were challenged to build a safer wall for Humpty Dumpty with Legos. I let students build their own. Then, halfway through, I went around and shook the table. We talked about why some walls were more stable than others. After that, they went back and made changes to their wall.