Halloween STEM Activities Your Students Will Love

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

Building a Haunted House Elevator is a fantastic STEM Challenge for upper elementary. The challenge has several parts including building an elevator platform that will support weight and a cranking device that will lift the platform. And, of course, making the structure resemble a haunted house!

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!

They also really enjoyed decorating the haunted houses. We used boxes that I cut in half for the houses and the decor items were all from a dollar store. Ask parents to donate the decorative items and an office supply store will save their copy paper boxes for you. The heavy item we lifted in the elevators was either a small pumpkin or a black cauldron full of candy! Read all about this challenge here.

From STEM to STEAM Trio: Spider Web STEAM Activity

This activity is best for upper third, fourth, and fifth graders. Students work in small groups. They will read an informational passage about three types of spider webs and then plan and build one type, and a spider to go in it. I encourage the groups to use iPads or computers to research what type of spider goes in the web they decided to create. The materials needed for this are common everyday things that teachers would have in their classrooms or at home. You can find this resource here.

From Science School Yard: Go Batty!

October is a time when kids can go batty…for STEM that is! Teaching about echolocation and the science behind it is a perfect way to tie in the science behind an engineering project such as build a bat. Before we dive into our project though, I love to build background knowledge. I love to open EPIC books, which is free for educators and use the book What Is A Bat? by Bobbie Kalman. Using non-fiction books in your lesson helps build schema!

Want to grab a perfect fiction book to teach the difference between bats and birds? Go ahead and read Stellaluna by Janelle Cannon. Once you give them the background they need so that they can build a bat that hangs upside down on a roost, give them colored paper to create a bat…set up roosts around the room, and let them find a way to get their bat hanging the way bats do! I give them paper clips, binder clips, masking tape, and even magnets! I love to see them problem solve!

Bats are a perfect way to integrate science into your October plans as well as incorporate a hands-on STEM activity! Read more October STEM ideas at Science School Yard:

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.