It's finally December, the elves are up to their usual mischief, presents are being wrapped, and people are looking forward to plenty of festive fun with family and friends. My Turkey STEM Challenges are great for encouraging hands-on learning before or during the Christmas festivities.
Turkey STEM Challenges
Learn about strong shapes and stable structures with a Turkey Tower.
Find out why calcium is so important by making bendy turkey bones.
Build a Turkey Trap with items from your recycling bin.
Make and test a kitchen foil gravy boat!
Free Turkey STEM Template
My FREE turkey challenges and worksheets are great for adding a little structure to the investigations.
Turkey Tower
We used cocktail sticks (toothpicks) and marshmallows to build our tower. We found that creating triangle shapes in the structure made it much stronger.
Plasticine or some types of candy work well if you want an alternative to marshmallows.
Learn more about strong shapes with my paper column activity.
Bendy Bones
Bones are strong because they contain lots of calcium carbonate. My bendy bones STEM challenge uses vinegar to remove calcium from a turkey bone, demonstrating how bones lose strength when they lose calcium.
If you leave a cooked turkey bone in vinegar for about 48 hours, you'll find it becomes so soft you can bend it.
Activity taken from Gross Science.
Turkey Trap
The idea behind this activity is to build a trap to fit a small turkey toy or figure.
Gravy Boat Challenge
For this challenge, you need to build a boat shape using foil that can hold some gravy ( use water if you don't want to waste actual gravy ) without sinking.
Do you have more Turkey STEM Challenges we can try?
Last Updated on December 6, 2025 by Emma Vanstone
Leave a Reply