Kindergarten Engineers

The kindergartners have been working on a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) project.  We began this project by reading the story of The Gingerbread Man who runs away from the old woman and the old man who baked him, and finally gets eaten by the sly fox.  

After reading and acting out the story, we asked the following problem to the kindergartners: The Gingerbread Man ran too fast for the Little Old Man and the Little Old Woman.  If they bake another Gingerbread Man, how can they catch him before he gets to the fox? 

We looked at examples of traps built by children to catch a kitty who needed a bath. In our discussions, we talked about what engineers do and included vocabulary such as solve, design, tool, bait and camouflage. The kindergartners then designed a trap made out of recycled materials to catch the Gingerbread man. Thanks for all the materials that were sent in for this exciting project!

Here are some of the different traps that were built to solve the problem of catching the fast Gingerbread Man!