STEM: 3D shapes

With common core came many new things.  One of them being STEM.  Which I have completely fallen in love with.  I love the fact that students get to use what they know to solve real problem.

We just finished our unit on 3D shapes and decided to do a STEM activity to tie everything together.  During the unit we talked about cones, cylinders, rectangular prisms, cubes, and pyramids.   We describe each shape and compared the faces and vertices.  They had a very good understanding of what 3D shapes were.

To start our STEM project we read Jack's House by Karen Magnuson Beil and pointed out that builders use 3D shapes when they build homes. There task was going to be to build a house out of spaghetti and marshmallows that a small doll could live inside. We then demonstrated how they could use the spaghetti as the edges and the marshmallows as the vertices. 
After answering a couple questios about how many people in a group and where could they go we let them go.  Each group was made up of 2 or 3 students of their choice.  We gave each group a handful of spaghetti and marshmallows and let them explore.  It took many tires but eventually they got.  Here are some pictures of what they came up with.

When everyone was done they had to show the class the house that they built and tell what 3D shapes they used.  They had so much fun and still talk about all the shapes they can make.  What STEM projects have you done in your class?