STEM Activities to Try With Your Students for Halloween (or in October!)
Halloween is such a fun holiday to explore through STEM activities. Even if you aren’t permitted to use Halloween-themed activities in your classroom, you will find plenty of activities here to keep your kids engaged throughout the season. The writers at STEM Activities for Kids have put together some of their favorite Halloween challenges. Click through on any image to read more about the challenge shown.
From Brooke at Teach Outside the Box: Read Aloud with STEM
October is a favorite month of the year for so many teachers, mostly because it lends itself beautifully to so many favorite read alouds and Halloween STEM Challenges! Here are four Spooky Storybook STEM lessons that are sure to keep your Kindergartners, First Graders, and Second Graders engaged all month long. Read more about them at Teach Outside the Box.
From Vivify: A Halloween Candy Grabber
In the Halloween Candy Grabber STEM Challenge, students use the engineering design process to create a candy grabber that can reach and pick up candy from a given distance. This challenge teaches about levers, incorporates the science of force manipulation, and connects to the real-world STEM career as a prosthetist. Math extension problems are included covering areas, percentages, and graphing! Read more about this challenge here.
From Meredith at Momgineer: Building Brick Halloween Challenges
Building bricks are a timeless favorite of so many kids. Why not use them for a Halloween STEM building challenge? This can be a bit tricky, since many Halloween objects are rounded or have non-angular shapes (such as pumpkins or witch’s hats) so it takes a bit of creative planning and thinking to create them with rectangular blocks. Not only will kids use their design skills, they will also need to measure and test their creations to make sure they fit the design criteria. Read more about this challenge here.
From Carol at Teachers are Terrific: Build a Haunted House Elevator
My fifth graders loved this challenge and worked out so many creative ideas for the cranking device. Some of them wanted to just have a craft stick or straw that would roll up the string and lift the platform. But, the rules of the task required a cranking device with a handle. They were puzzled until I reminded them that a fishing rod works like this!
From STEM to STEAM Trio: Spider Web STEAM Activity
From Science School Yard: Go Batty!
From Get Caught Engineering: Bob for Apples
Halloween can offer some fantastic connections for STEM lessons, but many of us have to avoid direct references to that holiday in our communities. Respecting our school district’s holiday decisions does not mean we have to avoid seasonal STEM lessons in October. By focusing on nature, food, and animals we can still provide engineering curriculum that incorporates and integrates all the things we enjoy about this time of year. With the farmers markets and stores overflowing with apples of all shapes and sizes, a STEM activity that takes advantage of this bounty is just the ticket for a fun hands -on engineering challenge. Bobbing for apples is an autumn activity that has been around for hundreds of years. Turn it into STEM activity by asking your students to design a tool that successfully grabs the apples from the tub without the students getting wet! Find this challenge at Teachers pay Teachers.
From Feel-Good Teaching: Bone Bridge STEM Challenge
The Bone Bridge STEM Challenge is a perfect fit for your Halloween activities because it’s fun with substance! In this challenge, students build a bridge for length, strength, and/or capacity using cotton swab “bones”. But never fear, if you don’t do Halloween at your school, simply connect this to your content standards on the skeletal system, bridges/transportation, and/or forces and leave all mention of Halloween out! Specific content connection ideas are included in the resource. Head over to the Bone Bridge blog post to learn more and see a video walk-through of the challenge.
Don’t forget to visit this related post: Witch’s Brew STEM Challenge
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