Fairy Tale STEM, Nursery Rhymes, and Fables

Spark imagination in your youngest students with a fairy tale, and then bring that fairy tale alive with a STEM activity. Fairy tales are one of my favorite STEM tie-ins for elementary aged students. Why? Fairy tales are bite-sized pieces of literature that help encourage retelling of a story, the characters are simple to understand, and there is always something fun and exciting that happens in a fairy tale.

If you are looking to go in-depth with fairy tale STEM, I recommend reading my STEM Tales blog series, which has ideas for 12 STEM challenges for students to really dive into a number of fairy tales.

3 STEM Challenges You Can Try with Your Students

If you want some quicker, more open-ended activities for your students, try out the ones below! If you would like printables that go with these activities, you can download them here, or sign up for my newsletter and gain access to my entire resource library.

Design and create a castle for Cinderella

Materials needed: recyclables such as cereal boxes and paper towel tubes, Legos or Keva planks, tape. Optional: a small figure or object that represents Cinderella – keep in mind this could be something such as an eraser, a marker, a block, etc. It will help students define the scale of their castle and can be used in conjunction with a constraint (for example, Cinderella must fit through the door).

Nursery rhymes and fables can spark imagination, too, to a lesser extent. They are often shorter or might not even make sense, so it can be more challenging to come up with ways to incorporate STEM into your nursery rhyme or fables lessons.

Design and create armor for the sheep

Save the sheep from the carelessness of the boy who cried wolf! Students will create armor so that the wolf can’t get the sheep.

Materials needed: stuffed animal to represent the sheep (it can be any animal! Students will use their imaginations), or you can use a small box as the sheep. Recyclables such as cereal boxes and tape work well for this task, but students may also want to use pipe cleaners, vinyl tablecloth scrap, fabric scraps, etc.

Design and create a clothesline for the maid

In “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” the maid is hanging the clothes! Have students create a mini clothesline for small clothes. First, they can create the clothing items out of paper (a sock, a shirt, a pair of pants, etc.), and then create their clothesline! Use miniature clothespins or small binder clips to secure the clothes. How will the line be supported so that it doesn’t fall down?

Materials needed: Recyclables, tape, string, or Legos, Keva planks, etc.

⬇️ Download these Printable STEM Tasks ⬇️

You can grab the download, and you’ll also gain access to all my STEM freebies when you sign up in the Free Resource Library!

Find More STEM Activities for Fairy Tales, Fables, and Nursery Rhymes

I have created a resource for each of these topics, or you can find the bundle by clicking the image below. Each resource has at least 20 STEM activity ideas, plus a choice board, and paper and digital recording options:

Save these ideas for later! Pin these ideas to an idea board to come back tot hem later: