Naomi Meredith  00:00

Looking for some fun Halloween STEM activities to try. I've got you covered. These are perfect for class parties, one-day challenges, and class rewards. Let's jump into these spooktacular activities. 

Naomi Meredith  00:47

To help me get in the mood for this episode, I wore my Jack-O' Lantern shirt. Let me tell you, I am definitely a STEM teacher elementary teacher at heart. My Teacher Honey and I aren't the same age. He's older than me. I tell him when it's Halloween time, I need to have my millennial moments and get in the mood and dress up, which makes it even more fun because we have our little dog Frederick and Frederick and I do the couple's costumes. My Teacher Honey doesn't do any of that. My first year when I got Frederick, I was an astronaut, and Frederick was my little rocket. I made him a little rocket pack out of water bottles that I painted with silver paint and used tissue paper for the flame. So super cute! I had that picture hung up on my wall for a long time, and the younger students kept asking me if I was a real astronaut, and they totally believed me that I was even though I'm holding my dog in the picture. Depending on what mood I was in, I would tell them, “Yes, I am. And that's why I'm a teacher.” But no, I'm really not a real astronaut, but it was a fun costume. 

Naomi Meredith  01:59

The second Halloween with Frederick, I was Miss Frizzle, and he was my little lizard. Of course, I wore that outfit to school but didn't bring Frederick along. When I brought him to doggy daycare and picked him up that afternoon, he actually won the costume contest, which I didn't even know was a contest. I just wanted to dress up, so that was super fun. This year, I am going to dress as a Starbucks barista, and he is going to be my little puppet chino. So poor little Freddy Fred has to dress up with me, and my Teacher Honey is off the hook. 

Naomi Meredith  02:36

So, of course, I'm very excited about this episode because I have five Halloween STEM activities for you to try. I think that you and your students are really going to love them. They aren't tied to Halloween specifically, so if your school or classroom doesn't celebrate Halloween, you can still do these in your classroom. They have a spooky twist, but they're not necessarily let's celebrate Halloween together. So you can still implement these in your classroom no matter what your school or classroom celebrates. Also, if you're looking for more activities, I have five different STEM challenges that I talked about in episode 23, and they are all about fall. You could do all of these Halloween-themed ones and all of the fall ones and just have a fun STEM-themed classroom experience. 

Naomi Meredith  03:25

The first Halloween STEM activity to try is Monster mouth. A lot of times when I am getting inspiration for my holiday-themed STEM activities, I like to browse the Dollar Tree and the Target dollar section to help me give ideas. Also, it's a good excuse for me to buy some things. So that's pretty fun, too. For this challenge, you will need plastic vampire mouths, googly eyes, and LEGO bricks. You can tie in a monster-themed story. One of my favorites is I need a monster. The book itself is so cute, but there also is an adorable little animation of the story that I will embed in the show notes that you should definitely watch with your class. It's a little spooky at first, but then it's just a happy, cute ending. I've even shown it to my Kindergarten class, and they're a little bit scared, but then they're okay. After reading this story, you can have students create their own monsters. You can have them start building right away, or they can plan their design. The creations are absolutely hilarious because of what they come up with. What makes this quite a challenge is they can't use any tape to tape on the monster's mouth. They have to engineer a way for the teeth to be held by the LEGO bricks. Students have such creative ideas, and it is so fun to take pictures of their creations and send those out to families in Seesaw, Flipgrid, or whatever platform you use. If you only have a small class of kids, you can let them keep those little vampire teeth. Or, like me, when I teach all the students in school, I do have to take them back. I will say I have had some kids walk off with them, and that's pretty disgusting because they have been used a lot of times. But this is a fun monster-themed challenge to try. 

Naomi Meredith  05:21

The second Halloween STEM activity to try is Jack-O'-Lantern robot coding. Back in that fall episode, I talked about the importance of having a grid for students to code the robot to, so make sure to go and listen to that part. But for this one, you will want to have a grid for your specific robots, with dice with different faces of Jack-O'-Lanterns on them and different sizes of pumpkins. Likewise, those same images you can have printed out on cards that are mixed up and spread all along the grid, students will roll one of each dice so one dice with the Jack-O'-Lantern face and one dice with the pumpkin size. In turn, they will code their robot to collect the Jack-O'-Lantern phase that will go on the corresponding pumpkin size. If you want to make this even more hands-on, instead of having cards, you could have felt pumpkins that you could cut out on a Cricut machine or even by hand and different Jack-O'-Lantern faces that you've cut out. Those could be lining the border of your coding mat. When students code to those different sections, they can actually build the physical Jack-O'-Lantern. So there are a lot of variations to this. You can have a lot of fun with it and have a different building experience when it comes to coding. 

Naomi Meredith  06:45

The third Halloween STEM activity to try is spider pulleys. Again, this is another low-prep one, but the kids absolutely love it. After talking about the science of pulleys and different pulleys out there, students can create their own pulley system that will help pull the spider up to their web. For this challenge, all you will need are those cute little spider rings that you know as a kid, you got to put one on every finger and think you're beautiful. I'm not saying that I did that. Wink wink. But you have those spider rings, yarn, and pencils, and you tie a long piece of string on those rings and onto the pencils. I recommend doing this ahead of time, so they're ready to go. This is a big challenge for a lot of kids to make those tiny knots. So just go ahead and tie those before you start the challenge. Then you have tiny spider webs printed out on paper and LEGO bricks, or you can even use Makerspace items. Students will create a system where the pulley can be in their design and be steady, and while they turn the pulley, the spider can go up the web. Again, you could send kids on their way with these rings or keep them for a lot of different classes. 

Naomi Meredith  07:57

The fourth Halloween STEM challenge to try is slime explorations. I know a lot of teachers and parents have different opinions when it comes to slime. I recommend, if you can, and if the weather is nice enough, doing this outside. It's a great way to explore the outdoors with this messy experiment. This is also a great lesson on matter and all three states of matter. You can explore how slime does not always follow the rules of solids, liquids, and gases but is more of a non-newtonian fluid. You could talk about all of that science with students. This is also a great way to try different recipes, and students can compare the different types of slime and what they can and can't do. For example, some of the things you can have students observe are which one was the stickiest, which one was the smoothest, the gooiest, the most bouncy, and the most stretchy. My favorite slime out there uses baking soda, glue, and contact solution. You can just Google it and find the recipe. A way to make this even spookier is you can buy glue that glows in the dark. I know that it glows in black light, but I'm not 100% sure if it glows in just a dark room, so test it out. They make big jugs of it, and it's sparkly and so much fun. Another thing too for the slime is having some gloves on hand for students who have sensory needs. Not all kids like the sensation of slime, so having this available is a great backup for students who still want to experiment with this fun challenge but don't necessarily want their hands in contact with the slime. 

Naomi Meredith  09:43

The fifth Halloween STEM challenge to try is There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat. I have four station ideas that you can use in your classroom. This will get two days of planning done for you if you do two stations a day after you read this story or listen to an audio version. Now, most kids think this book is really funny. I had a Kindergarten class one year that had the weirdest reaction. They kept saying, “Eww! This is gross,” or, “Oh, what's wrong with her?” So that Kindergarten class wasn't a huge fan. Most classes just laugh and think it's funny, but this class had a totally different response. So read that story and have the different things that the old lady swallows and pictures of those things. They could be real or clip art versions. 

Naomi Meredith  10:37

Here are the four different stations that you can use that go along with this story. The first one is students can use LEGO bricks or whatever type of blocks that they have. They can build the different items that the old lady eats and then have an old lady face, and they can feed her all of those different items in the order that it happens in the story. This is really good for the beginning, middle, and end, paying attention to details and having the sequential steps of a story. So you're tying in those ELA standards. At the second station, you can add in some robotic coding. You have the different pictures of those things that the old lady ate, and students can code to those different items in the story and in the order that they happened. The third station that you can have is students can create pixel images of those things that the old lady ate. My favorite way for kids to create pixel art is using the boards that are from the Bloxels kits. I will link this in the show notes for you. Bloxels actually has a paid subscription where students can use the images that they create on the board and then put them into a game that they can create. I actually don't buy the subscription. I just really liked the boards, and the kids love the little pieces. It's great for fine motor skills and seeing the big picture, and breaking it apart into sections. The Fourth Station that you can have that will go along with the story is that students can build the different items that the old lady ate using digital blocks in Seesaw or ones that you can create in Google Slides. You can even have students graph the number of different blocks that they use. For example, if they create a bat using specific pattern blocks, they can graph how many of each type of block they used in their design, so you are adding in that math piece. 

Naomi Meredith  12:27

As a recap, here are the five Halloween STEM activities that you can try in your classroom. First are monster mouths. Second, Jack-O'-Lantern robot coding. Third, spider pulleys. Fourth, slime explorations. Fifth, There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat STEM stations. Also, I would love to invite you over to my Ultimate STEM Resource Library where these challenges and even more October-themed STEM challenges are there for the rest of this month and other fun bonuses as well. You definitely want to jump in on this membership because there are some awesome changes coming up for 2023 that I definitely don't want you to miss out on. Thank you so much for being here, and have a happy Halloween.