Easter Toothpick Structures STEM Challenge

Toothpick structures are a fantastic, low-cost, and easy STEM challenge that keeps kids busy for hours. We used cocktail sticks, but you could also use straws or spaghetti.

I set the children a challenge to build a structure that would hold a chocolate egg off the ground.

toothpick towers STEM challenge. Image of towers built with toothpicks and plasticine as part of an Easter STEM Challenge.

Toothpick structure materials

Toothpicks or cocktail sticks

Plasticine

Paper

Chocolate eggs

How to build a toothpick structure

There are no instructions for this one, apart from building a structure that:

Stands up with no extra support.
Only use the materials above.
Can hold a small chocolate egg without falling over.

Don't be limited by our rules, though, you can make your own.

These are the structures my children built. What do you think?

STEM Challenge - toothpick Structuress with creme eggs on top for an Easter science activity

toothpick structures with chocolate eggs on top for a fun Easter STEM Challenge

We then tested to see if our structures could hold chicks and rabbits. Since these were lighter, it wasn't much of a problem.

toothpick structures to hold small chicks for an Easter STEM challenge

Things to think about - building a strong toothpick structure

Shapes are a good thing to consider when building toothpick structures like this. We found a square shape with extra support in the form of triangles, which made a stronger structure.

Triangles, arches and domes are all strong shapes are used by engineers to make structures strong. Next time you see a bridge, count how many different shapes you can see.

Imagine a square made from straws. If you push down, it will fold down on itself, but a triangle won't collapse unless one of its sides breaks. Any force applied to a triangle is evenly distributed from the vertex to the base. This means triangles are much stronger than squares.