PEEPS Boat Engineering Challenge

If you can’t get enough of PEEPS® this spring, try this fun marshmallow boat Peeps challenge with your kids and learn about what makes a good boat, whether PEEPS can float, and a whole host of other STEM activities! It’s a fun Peeps STEM activity that kids will love! Add this fun engineering activity for kids to your Easter STEM activities.

PEEPS Boat Float STEM Challenge

Build a boat stem challenge materials:

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For the PEEPS® boat engineering challenge, all you need are simple household supplies and crafting supplies.

I wanted the project to be open-ended, so I simply provided a wealth of materials and allowed the kids to choose their own supplies to make their boats. You can use whatever you like, but it helps to include some of the following items:

How to make a floating boat out of household items (and Peeps)

Your role as an educator in the first part of this challenge is to discuss the properties of different materials and ask your children/students what they think will happen if they use certain materials.

I let Monkey design her boat entirely on her own (she is 9), but Bo received a lot of help.

I used Bo’s boat as the “control” boat using minimal supplies. Using a combination of materials, we came up with the following boat designs.

PEEPS Boat Engineering Test

After your boats are dry and ready to go, it is time to test them. We have two little ponds by our house, so we tested our PEEPS® boats there (making sure we could retrieve them first, we don’t want to litter!). However, a bathtub or bowl of water would work equally well for testing boat design.

Our goal was to see which PEEPS® boat was the sturdiest and which one could go the fastest.

This is how our boats fared:

Bo’s boat floated, but it fell over.

My pretty boat fell apart the instant it hit the water (although Bo grabbed it and tried to eat it right before we placed it in the water, which I think damaged its integrity).

Monkey’s tiny little boat was both the fastest and the sturdiest over time, probably because she covered the PEEP almost entirely in tape.