The wonderful Christmas book The Stickman inspired this fun STEM Christmas building activity. Your children will have fun building basic shapes with sticks from outdoors, Lincoln Logs, or popsicle sticks on the free set of shaping building mats.
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If you have not read the story Stick Man to your children, you will want to read it to them. They are going to love hearing about all he goes through as he tries to return to his family. By the end of the book, Stickman does make it home just in time for Christmas. Your children will be cheering him on from the beginning of the book to its very end.
Getting Ready for this STEM Christmas Activity
The first thing you will need to decide is what type of stick your children will use to build. As I mentioned above they could use Lincoln Logs, sticks from outdoors or popsicle sticks.
You will notice that we used popsicle sticks for this activity. They were ready to use and didn’t take any preparation work.
Next, you will need to download the STEM printable set Learning Shapes with Stickman. You can open the setup with Acrobat Reader.
Finally, you will need to decide if you want to print them in color or black and white. If you print them in color, the details of Stickman, the sticks and the border will stand out.
Exploring the STEM Christmas Activity
Your children can work on building the shapes in the set in a variety of ways. Let me share with you some of the ways I came up with. You will probably come up with a number of ways on your own too.
Center Activity
You can set out a bunch of sticks and the mats you want your children to work on in a center. They can work on building them on their own or with a partner.
You Build and I Build
Young children might have fun building each of the shapes with you. You can take turns placing a stick on one side of the shape. They may have trouble placing them right on the stick on the mat. That is totally okay! The goal of this activity is to learn what each shape looks like.
Talk and Build
You can give each of your children a bunch of sticks and the same work mat. As they build you can have them share how many sides each shape has. You can also have them talk about how long each side it. Once the shape is built, you can ask them to share with you things that they think of that are that shape. They may suggest objects they remember seeing in the book.
More Building Activities
Here are some more great building activities your children can explore.
First, we have a Building Alphabet Letters on the Barn Door activity.
Next, we have an activity we call Building a Playdough Taco.
Then you can explore the Building a Snowman with Household Items activity.
Finally, Building Letters with Crayons will be great to explore.