STEM Tale - The Ugly Duckling Fairy Tale STEM Activity

Fairy Tale STEM Activity for The Ugly Duckling

If you are looking for a SUPER cute but engaging STEM activity for kids, this is such a fun one that requires minimal materials! It's the perfect activity to try for National Fairy Tale day, or when you are learning about camouflage, or if you are practicing map skills!

The swan has found out that he is not an ugly duckling. While this is a happy revelation, he realizes he needs to be with his swan family. The ducklings can help, but there are some obstacles they must overcome.

Materials Needed for this STEM Fairy Tale Activity

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• printable or rubber ducks (these are the ones pictured in the images in this post)
• paper, cardboard tubes, craft feathers

Before Getting Started with the STEM Tale

STEM tales work best if you read the original fairy tale first or do your own storytelling. Discuss the similarities and differences as you read through the story. To get started, you need ducklings. Use rubber ducks or the printable figures I have created (find the resource at the end of this post):

Fairy Tale STEM with the Engineering Design Process 

I have designed STEM tales so that as students read the story, they will follow the engineering design process. What is the problem that needs to be solved in the Ugly Duckling STEM Tale? In this story, the swan must travel through areas filled with predators to get back to his mother. The ducklings will go with the swan to make sure he gets back to his mother safely, but they must camouflage themselves so they won't get eaten.

Your students will read the story and draw their ideas in the booklet.

Design a Duckling Disguise

After brainstorming ideas, the students will then choose one to create. Will the duckling be camouflaged as another animal or blend into its surroundings?

Follow up with a Mapping Extension

Whenever possible, I try to extend STEM beyond science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In this case, there is a mapping extension activity. I created differentiated versions so you can use them for kids in K-3, and included the maps in both color and black and white. They can follow the path of the birds in the story:

This was one of my most fun STEM tales to create! The cute factor is through the roof, and the story really comes alive.

STEM tales are a great way to foster teamwork and problem-solving. This STEM tale usually inspires amazing creativity and excitement from the littlest engineers.

To find the full resource, which includes an 8-page booklet, check list for self-evaluation, and tips, visit this link:

 

Pin the idea for later:

To read more about how to conduct a STEM challenge, visit this post:

To see all posts in this series, click here:

Using Minecraft to Learn about World Landmarks

My kids have been into geography lately, and of course they are into Minecraft (whose kids isn't?). While I can appreciate Minecraft as a parent, I prefer when the kids are working on meaningful tasks as opposed to just roaming and killing mobs or animals. Last week, I had the idea to show them images of famous world landmarks and ask them to re-create their own version in Minecraft. They LOVED this task. Here are some images of their Arc de Triomphe interpretations.

Without prompting, they added so many little touches that I was a little blown away by the creativity! There were torches, and my eldest even included inside/upstairs, where he added statues and signs. My favorite was the one below, "Upstairs tour by permission of the French government only!" Haha!

There was even an "employees only" wing with beds to that the employees could rest as needed. Obviously, they did this in creative mode, but they couldn't wait for another assignment after they did the first one! You can take screenshots of your Minecraft creations by pressing F2, then create a digital scrapbook of all of the landmarks they create! If you'd like them to record the landmarks they create or get started with some landmarks that are fairly easy to create in Minecraft, I have a free printable for you! It includes both color and blakc and white versions of the 5 landmarks included (Acropolis, Arc de Triomphe, Brandenburg Gate, Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty). It's part fo my resource library, which is free when you join the Momgineer newsletter list.

If your kids are ready for even more of a challenge, you can try a Google Image search for inspiration or try some of the following landmarks:

• Burj Khalifa
• Christ the Redeemer
• Colosseum 
• Eiffel Tower
• Pyramids of Giza
• St. Basil's Cathedral
• Sydney Opera House
• Taj Mahal
• The Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore)
• Tower Bridge

I hope your kids enjoy this task as much as mine do. Not only will they be learning about geography and world landmarks, they will also be exposed to different types of architecture styles and history. I suggest taking books out of your local library to go along with this task to make it even more meaningful in your homeschool or classroom. If they create and landmarks, feel free to link to them in the comments below. We would love to see them!

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Studying U.S. States with Zoob

I can't take credit for this idea (that goes to my 7 year old), but I just love it so much I have to share it! We love hands-on learning at home, and I love that this is a fun way to look at some of the features of United States geography.

My son walked into the kitchen the other day holding up a shape he had made out of ZOOB pieces. "Hey Mom, doesn't this look like Nevada?" he said. We have been playing the game, the Scrambled States of America a lot lately, so it wasn't much of a surprise. I asked if I could take a photo of it with the card from the game:

Then I asked him if he thought we could make any other states. he suggested we start with an "easy" state, like Wyoming:

We then reshaped the loop of ZOOB pieces into many other states, and I took photos of several of them with their corresponding cards from the Scrambled States of America game:

Sorry this photo of Texas is blurry! My son realized he wouldn't be able to make the shape without adding more ZOOB pieces to the loop. This was some seriously fun hands-on geography learning that kept my son engaged for quite awhile!

The Scrambled States game is put out by Gamewright:

My 9 year old then had the idea of using the Scrambled States cards in a number of ways, so if you have the game you may want to have your kids do this too. You can order the states by geographic size by using the booklet that comes with the game. He also then had the idea of reordering the cards in the order they joined the union! At this point I'm pretty sure my kids know more about our states than I do!

ZOOB sets come in many different sizes and options. Look for them both at your local toy or learning store! They can be difficult to snap, and I would recommend them for children no younger than 6. My kids were happy building with LEGOs younger than they could easily work the ZOOB pieces, as they can be tricky to snap together. 

 
Have you used ZOOB in your homeschool or classroom, or do you have another fun way to learn about geography? You may also want to read about how we studied landforms and water forms using play dough:

Landforms and Water Forms Resource Roundup!

Landforms and water forms are something we revisit from time to time, and since we did again recently, I thought I'd share some ideas on ways to have fun with this topic!

First, here are two fabulous freebies I recommend you start with!

Landforms Dictionary from Miss Martin's Classroom (be sure to leave some feedback when you download!):

Free Montessori 3-Part Cards!

We started with the dictionary. While the kids were coloring their dictionaries, we talked about them and discussed whether we had seen them before.

(Yes, we often homeschool in pjs!)

 

Then we got to work with Play-doh, making as many of the land and water forms that we could! I recommend using blue, yellow, and green colors and avoiding brown since everything we tried to make with brown brought up snarky potty jokes. You can use colored paper or plastic sheets/lids as background if you like. Here is one we did with a blue plastic lid from the dollar store:

We added a few small animals and a Lego tree for fun. You can print two copies of the 3-part cards to play a game of memory. I love that this activity is simple enough to do several times a year. It seems to always be a favorite. 

A few more freebies to study land and water forms:

Landforms Around the World Card Game from Primary Punch:

Landforms Foldable from Jen Ross:

Landforms and Bodies of Water Memory Match Game from Christina Bainbridge:

Do you have a favorite resource on this topic? Feel free to share the link in the comments!

Flag Fun with LEGOs!

Build Flags of the World with LEGOs

My kiddo year old disappeared for awhile yesterday afternoon. I heard the sound of  LEGO digging, and when he emerged, he had made two flags out of LEGOs. We had just started tracking the Olympic medals in the morning, and he ran with the theme to create some adorable LEGO flags! He started with 5, but I had a feeling I would be seeing more of these over the next few weeks.

What is so great about these LEGO flags is that they can be really simple to make (see the flags on the left in the image below)! You can also get a little more creative and complicated, as with the ones above. Hopefully you can catch the details if you want to duplicate our flag designs.

This is especially fun to do while the Olympics are going on, but really any time you are learning about different countries around the world. Which flags would be the hardest to make with LEGOs? See what your kids come up with!

LEGO Pro tip - try buying LEGOs in bulk, either locally from craigslist or a similar-type Facebook group, or shop online at shopgoodwill.com and try to wait for a good deal. You'll have to wash and sort them (this can take awhile), but it's always been worth it for us. I aim for $5-7/pound but if you can tell there are a lot of good pieces in there, it might be worth more.

Looking for more LEGO activities or tips? Click below to go to

LEGO Tips and Activities

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed this LEGO geography activity!

Turn this activity into a learning opportunity

If you want to give this activity a more structured feel or use it in a classroom, I hope you will consider this resource I put together. Not only do students learn about another country and culture, they need to use critical thinking skills to create the flags. There are 36 flags and countries highlighted, though you can always create your own with this STEM Mats Activity for Flags:

Winter Olympics Activities

I have found a few freebies, crafts, and videos worthy of sharing to help you celebrate the Winter Olympics. I am excited to do this first one with my kids! Activity village has a "Learn to Draw" series that looks super fun:

NBC Learning has some videos all about the science and engineering of the Winter Olympics Games! You can get a close up look at Heath Calhoun's mono ski, and learn about the physics of figure skating. Definitely check these out! They are just about 5 minutes; long enough to learn something but not so long they lose your attention.

This craft was just way too cute to not share! Create your own Olympic ice skates! How sweet would these be hanging in your windows? Rhinestones and Pine Cones shares her tutorial here:

There is also a 100+ page download at Free Homeschooling Deals. I think it might be fun to keep track of all the medals with some of the pages they have provided!

 

How will you be bringing the Olympic Games into your classroom or homeschool room? I think we will have our own mini games at home:

• Speed skating: Racing on our wood floors in socks
• Curling: I will make a painter's tape ring on the floor and we can slide bean bags into the center
• Figure skating: I see lots of spinning around in circles ungracefully and falling on our arses 
• Hockey: We have mini hockey sticks as well as an air hockey table, so I think we will do both!
• Bobsled: Well, we have snow. We have sleds. We can use our imaginations and pretend we are going 50x faster than we actually are.
• Skiing/Snowboarding: I don't ski or snowboard since I got injured just about every time I tried to snowboard. I think we will skip this one, but perhaps we will instead make mini skis or snowboards and race them down our super cool racing ramp! Here is our super cool racing ramp, that my handy husband built for a LEGO party almost 2 years ago, and the kids racing pompoms with straws... I mean, here they are exercising their orofacial muscles to strengthen their speech:

 

seterra geography

Have you checked out http://www.seterra.net/? You can play online or download this awesome geography game (Windows only). Test your knowledge of all things geography! This will be a wonderful addition to our homeschool geography curriculum this year! Here is a screenshot of the downloadable game in world mode:

Some of the other ways to play: Cities, Provinces, Capitals, States, Rivers, Oceans, Mountains, and Flags! I plan on using this as well! This game keeps track of your time to complete each level, and the percentage of correct answers. You can also complete quizzes after you have played in game mode to check your progress. I don't know how I didn't find this sooner! Click on the button below to head over to Seterra: