Three Little Pigs STEM Challenge

I've recently begun trying to incorporate a fun STEM activity into our homeschool day. It's been a lot of fun, but also a little challenging coming up with something every day! Last week we were reading versions of "The Three Little Pigs" and comparing them during our language arts time, so I decided to incorporate that theme into our STEM time!

I gave my son some materials and a small plastic pig and had him try to build a house that would stand up when we tried to blow it down. I spread it out over a few days, so the first day I gave him some drinking straws and index cards. It was a little bit of a challenge to get them to stay together, but he got something built.

 

As expected, we didn't have to blow very hard for this house to fall down.

 

The next day I added some popsicle sticks to add to the building materials. It was much easier to build.

But it too came down pretty easily with some huffing and puffing.

 

 

Finally the last day I added some dominos to the building materials.

 



It was a little stronger, but it didn't stand up to a blow dryer, which was our ultimate goal! After this one knocked down I asked him to brainstorm other ways we could build a house to stand up to the big bad blow dryer. He finally came up with the idea of using some heavy books. So we built the house with the dominos and sticks again, but this time we placed a heavy book on top instead of the index cards, and it couldn't be blown down!

During the week we also did some of these fun Three Little Pigs 120 Chart Mystery Pictures to add in some math!

You can get this pack of 120 Chart Pictures HERE!

 

I also have this super easy emergent reader version of the Three Little Pigs HERE!

 

 

We had so much fun with this story! I'm dreaming up ideas for our next fairy tale! :-)