Kids at Home with MPPL

Maker Monday: Enchanted Engineering

Who knew that reading fairy tales could lead to engineering experiments?

Last month at our Zoom STEAM at Home event, we led kids through these fun building activities that were inspired by fairy tales. These projects are easy to do with stuff you probably already have around the house.

Robin Hood’s Bow and Arrow

Supplies: 2 popsicle sticks, (duct) tape, string, and an unsharpened pencil. 

You can experiment with different types of string and various lengths to see what works best. After you build it, place your pencil with the eraser on the string, pull back, and see how far your pencil goes! Just don’t aim at any screens or people please! 

The Three Little Pigs, Rapunzel, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears

For The Three Little Pigs, experiment with different materials to see what house is the strongest. You can use toothpicks, straws, LEGO bricks, or many other things you have at home. 

For Rapunzel, try building a slide for Rapunzel to escape the tower. Our slide was made of toilet paper/paper towel rolls and tape. You can experiment with making the slide steeper so she slides faster, or more gradual so it’s slower. 

For Goldilocks and the Three Bears, try to build a bed that can hold the most weight (we used coins). Some ideas for materials are cardboard, bubble wrap, tin foil, and cupcake liners, but there are many things that would work for this activity. Once you’ve built your bed, stack coins and see how many it holds.

Have fun and keep building! For more activities to do at home, check out this page.