We all love a great story and a happy ending. Fairy tales have both of these elements, and also make great starting points for engaging students in many different learning activities. They can be used to explore the narrative genre and develop writing skills, provide examples of numeracy concepts, and open opportunities to discuss values, morals, and social skills.
Fairy tales can also provide a great context for students to practice creative, critical, and design thinking, and develop STEM skills by identifying and solving problems.
Fairy tales generally present some kind of problem or conflict that the characters try to solve. The characters often make several attempts to solve the problem before they are successful, making them great examples of iterative design thinking and persistence in developing solutions.
In this article I share ten examples of putting Makers Empire together with a fairy tale to make a great problem-solving lesson that requires very little preparation.
These activities are ideal if you have an hour or one lesson a week to devote to Makers Empire. Fairy tales can be used with any age group. These ideas have been written with students in grades K- 4 in mind.
Each example can be implemented using a simple lesson plan structure that can become a consistent routine for students to follow in your STEM lessons.
- Step 1: Read the fairy tale with your class (10 minutes)
- Step 2: Class discussion to identify and define a problem (5 minutes)
- Step 3: Brainstorm possible ideas for solving the problem (5 minutes)
- Step 4: Design a solution for the problem using Makers Empire (30 minutes)
- Step 5: Students share their designed solutions and give each other feedback. (10 minutes)
Use the provided Fairy Tale worksheet and the Design Thinking cycle worksheets provided below.