16 Christmas STEM Activities
We have gathered some of the best Christmas STEM activities to help you keep your kids challenged during the cold winter months.
Filling up those cold days with activities that require kids to use their noggins can be such a daunting task. By adding some Christmas STEM activities to your day kids will have engaging activities and experiments to explore and complete.
Let the scientist, chemist, and dreamer come out with the help of these Christmas STEM activities.
Related post: Thanksgiving STEM Activities
One of my favorite Christmas STEM activities is blowing bubbles while the temperature is below freezing. You don’t need anything fancy, just some regular bubbles and cold weather.
Blow the bubble onto a cold surface and watch as it freezes before your very eyes! You can see the ice crystals forming in great detail. Plus, it is such a simple activity that requires very few supplies.
After you’ve given that a try, take a look at the rest of these fantastic ideas.
Christmas STEM Activities
STEM Challenge Build a Chimney for Santa: Use toothpicks and gumdrops to build a chimney for Santa Claus. The gumdrops make great connection pieces for the toothpicks which allow builders to make standing structures.
Christmas Science: Use Magna-Tiles and jingle bells to build Christmas-themed structures and shapes.
Christmas Lights STEM Activity – Use Christmas lights, aluminum foil, and a battery to learn about electrical circuits.
Candy Cane STEM Building Challenge: Challenge your kids to build a 3D structure that stands on its own. The best part is you get to put all of those candy canes to use in a constructive way. Candy towers make an excellent Christmas STEM activity.
Reindeer Toothpaste: Get your chemists ready. This idea gives the experiment, elephant toothpaste, a Christmas twist by adding a few special ingredients!
Christmas Melting Ice Art and Science Kids’ Activity: Adding a little bit of art to the STEM equation introduces another wonderful element and turns our topic into a STEAM activity. Use food coloring and water to make a colorful ice cube to create art.
Bend & Shape Candy Canes: With a little bit of heat, kids can re-shape the candy cane altogether!
Design a Sleigh for Santa: Unfortunately, Santa’s sleigh does break down from time to time. Help him by designing a new and improved version. This activity reminds me of the book, The 12 Sleighs of Christmas.
Reindeer STEM Challenge: Christmas stories tell us that reindeer can fly. Now it’s your turn to see if your kids are up to a unique challenge. Can they make a reindeer fly? They might, with this fantastic Christmas STEM activity.
Candy Cane Marble Maze: Use candy cane sticks to construct a marble maze. The canes are used as the walls. Encourage kids to plan the design by drawing it out on paper before executing the final plan. Encouraging them to take steps will help them succeed.
Holiday Science Sink or Float: Put holiday items such as pine cones, ribbon, oranges, and more to the test by seeing if it can float.
Dancing Jingle Bells: Simple, yet so mesmerizing. This activity is a great way to get kids to ask questions and explore.
Candy Cane Slime: This stuff never fails to keep kids entertained. Add a candy cane twist and you have a Christmas STEM activity!
Christmas STEM Gift Ideas
While we are talking about all of these wonderful activities, let’s touch on the topic of Christmas STEM gift ideas.
These items make excellent gift ideas, but also double as a STEM activity! Take a look. This list contains affiliate links.
- PixBrix building toy. We LOVE these! They even work with Legos. Here is our review of them.
- MagnaTiles
- Dash Robot Coding Bundle
- Marble Run – When we bring these out, even adults want to see how crazy of a marble run they can construct!
- Scientific Explorer Wacky Weird Weather Kit
- Insta-Snow
- Snowflake Bentley book – highly recommended!
You might also be interested in my post Top 25 Robot and Programming Gifts for Kids for even more gift ideas.
With all of these activities, I’m sure you will be able to keep your kids busy at least for a little while.
I hold a master’s degree in child development and early education and am working on a post-baccalaureate in biology. I spent 15 years working for a biotechnology company developing IT systems in DNA testing laboratories across the US. I taught K4 in a private school, homeschooled my children, and have taught on the mission field in southern Asia. For 4 years, I served on our state’s FIRST Lego League tournament Board and served as the Judging Director. I own thehomeschoolscientist and also write a regular science column for Homeschooling Today Magazine. You’ll also find my writings on the CTCMath blog. Through this site, I have authored over 50 math and science resources.