3 Turkey STEM Activities for Thanksgiving
Updated: April 2024
Thanksgiving is fast approaching and we have the perfect STEM activities to be thankful for. These three exciting activities will boost engagement while laying a foundation of STEM skills. Join in the fun with a turkey STEM activity below!
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1. Flying Turkeys
Your kids are probably used to writing down what they are thankful for during this season, but have they ever made their thankful creations fly? Using our free turkey template (found in our free resource library), my kids colored their turkeys and wrote 6 things they are thankful for this year. Then we cut out the turkeys and tape them to a short segment of a large diameter straw (or rolled-up paper) with one end taped closed. They then use a regular drinking straw to put inside the bigger straw taped to the turkey and blow to make their turkeys fly!
Bend the feathers or turkey body to see if you can make your turkey fly higher or farther! Talk about drag forces and the effects of gravity on the flying turkeys.
2. Circuit Dough Turkey
A favorite activity in my STEM Lab is playing with dough circuits! We jazzed it up with some Thanksgiving creations this year by making turkeys out of conductive and insulating Play-Doh as well as some festive LED lights. I first talk to my students about circuits and electrical components using videos like this one from Sci Show Kids.
Then we talk about materials that are conductors and insulators and test our hypotheses about which items in the classroom are conductors using an energy stick. We hold the energy stick between two students’ hands and other objects between the hands of all the other students standing in a circle. If all of the objects that the students are holding are conductors, then the energy stick will light up and make a sound. If not, we hunt down the insulators and remove them from the circle.
Now comes the real fun. I use the easy recipes found here to make the conductive and insulating dough that I give to each student. They then must make a circuit using the dough and one LED light that I come around and complete with a battery pack. The conductive dough on each side of the LED light must not touch or must be separated by the insulating dough so as not to short circuit the light. The wonder and amazement on the kids’ faces when they get their creations to light up is priceless!
3. How To Catch a Turkey Unplugged Coding Game
Have you read “How to Catch a Turkey”? It’s one of my kid’s favorites! A terrified turkey is loose in a school and is chased by students and staff to avoid appearing on stage in the Thanksgiving play. After reading this adorable tale, we took pity on the turkeys of Thanksgiving and decided to help them escape!
Code-a-Turkey! Here is how you play while putting beginner programming skills into practice:
Toss small jingle bells on a table or floor and designate somewhere on the perimeter to be the “exit” where the turkey is deemed home-free!
Make a paper turkey to play with. Then have students find a partner— one to be the turkey and the other to be the programmer.
The “Turkey” must keep his/her eyes closed and begin with their turkey figurine at the edge of the playing area opposite the exit.
The “programmer” then must tell the “Turkey” how to move the paper turkey to navigate to the exit using only commands. If they hit a jingle bell, oops, they’ve been caught and must start over and switch roles. Play until each partner successfully sets their turkey free!
Bonus: if you have a large area (a gym or outside), use large jingle bells or lots of small ones and play with your students as the turkeys! Still form partners and blindfold the “turkey”. Have the programmer stand behind the turkey and carefully give commands!
Want more thanksgiving ideas? Check out our post on Thanksgiving STEM here. Let us know what other STEM activities you are doing this year in the comments below!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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